Column #15 - That Elusive Great Idea

What makes a great "movie idea"? If I knew the answer to that, I'd be making them instead of writing about them. But there are some common tenets that all good movies enjoy. It's gotta be simple. You don't need a Ph.D. to understand it. It's gotta be explainable. When someone asks about it, it doesn't take a dissertation and pie-graphs to relate to it. And...It's gotta be fun. You have to like talking about it, to the point that it's infectious, that the listener is so intrigued they can't stop listening despite a kettle whistle and their pager going off.

Die Hard, the original not the increasingly ludicrous sequels, now that was a great idea: Terrorists take over an office building. Certainly not the first time anyone had done this. Pick any number of World War II flicks, the Germans were taking over buildings faster than their panzer divisions could fill their gas-tanks. But Die Hard was the first to really capitalize on the modern trend of not only trapping the hero with the villains, of not only putting the hostages in mortal danger next to the hero, or not only personalizing the conflict by having the villain discourse with the hero's beloved, no, what sets Die Hard apart, aside from the excellent I-can't-believe-nobody-used-this-title-before, is that all of the above...was a RUSE. Hans Gruber, the flick's magnificent bad-guy and his motley-crew were bank robbers, thieves, common criminals...No, they weren't. Holly, the hero's beloved: "After all your posturing, all your speeches...you're nothing but a common thief." Hans, chief villain and the best bad-guy ever: "I'm an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane. And now that I'm moving up to kidnapping, you should be more polite." You know, he's right, he is an exceptional thief. Who else but an evil genius would use the specter of terrorism as a masquerade for stealing some bucks? Of course, six hundred million bucks in negotiable bearer bonds is pretty good motivation at the best of times.

Alien, the original, including the almost-but-not-quite-better James Cameron sequel, was an absolutely brilliant idea on several fronts. (Why is it that so many good-idea movies come back in increasingly pernicious sequels? This isn't rhetorical, please STOP doing that. You devalue the whole franchise and take my money). What really sets Alien apart, I'll talk about it's many fine qualities momentarily, was its LOCATION. Much like real estate, in which location is so important it gets repeated three times, Alien had the simplest of settings, an old mining vessel inhabited by blue-collar grunts and white collar skels traveling through the deepest, darkest reaches of space. It really was that simple, by setting the story of Alien in space, it forever trapped the crew with the aforementioned title character. There was nowhere else for them to go, nowhere to run, no place to hide. Their salvation was also their damnation - and this was brilliant.

Space was the third character in Alien, after the crew and well, the alien. It moved and breathed and at all times threatened to push its way inside when you weren't looking. Let's examine, alien in spaceship, simple, check; alien in spaceship, explained, easy to understand, check; viscous K-Y jelly dripping H.R.Giger erotic nightmare vision of an extraterrestrial, can you say 'fun', check. Additionally, Alien worked so well for two other reasons. One, the alien enjoyed acid for blood, the corrosive kind not the type you find at frat parties. Couldn't kill it, blood would eat through your hull and kill you, the nastiest piece of catch-22 since Catch-22. Two, the survivor, the one who beat the alien, who survived its never-ending onslaught of gunfire staccato-like terror was a...woman. A strong female protagonist, heck a female protagonist of any stripe, was not the usual choice in science fiction, not the usual choice for an action film. Remember this was the '70s; chicks were either window-dressing or damaged goods. Ellen Ripley, lone survivor of the Nostromo, was neither. She was something new, something better, something cool. She was...capable. As any man, as any xenomorph. But mostly she survived.

Don't forget, Alien had the best tagline ever: "In Space No One Came Hear You Scream". In contrast, Alien Resurrection made me want to scream at its plot contrivances, dialogue so wooden...what's a good way to describe wood that so wooden it's not wooden anymore...asphalt, maybe, no, petrified. Alien Resurrection had petrified dialogue. And some of the acting was positively Paleozoic. Right down to its borderline offensive title, of course Halloween copied that five years later and don't even get me started on that, and I use the word begrudgingly, franchise. Alien Resurrection might be the worst movie ever conceived, ever developed, ever executed, and ever released. Heck, I think all those involved should be hunted down and executed post-haste. Even the writer, Joss Wheedon, agrees. About the low quality of the flick, not about being executed.

Special kudos goes out to those ideas that are so brilliantly simple they also fall into the "Why didn't think of this first?" category. Terminator - time-traveling robotic assassin, why didn't I think of that? 24, the television show - it's so simple, episodes executed in real time, why didn't someone do this before? Oh wait, they did. It was called Nick of Time, starred Johnny Depp and sucked. See, it's not only the idea that's important, and it is very important, it's the execution.

Titanic, been done a hundred times, boat smacks into berg, boat loses. But when James Cameron did the story in 1997, it shattered box office records unheard of, pulling close to 2 billion (that is billion with a "b") dollars worldwide. To put that in perspective, that's roughly 1/3 of the world's population, the national income of Zimbabwe, or what Bill Gates pays in taxes monthly. Why was Titanic so...titanic? It was simple, easily explainable, and a lot of fun. Whether it was the grand vision, the breathtaking special effects, or merely the tiny joy of Leonardo Dicaprio sinking to the bottom of the ocean, Titanic had something for everyone. Heck, even I was moved by that powerfully-moving Celine Dion song that ends the flick. Until I heard it on the radio again...and again...and again... and again...
Jess Nakaska is an aspiring screenwriter always on the lookout for the next great script idea. He'll let you know if he finds it. Feel free to contact him at jessnakaska@hotmail.com.