A 10 Year Old's DreamGenre: Sci-Fi (Pure, true, straight up sci-fi. None of this I’m also an action film, I’m also a drama thing you see in a lot of recent scripts)
Premise: Logan, a “Sandman”, runs away from a society that kills off people over the age of 30.
About: The film won an Academy Award for Visual Effects. It was also nominated for Oscars in Cinematography and Art Direction. Also, it won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, and was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Script. Rocky won Best Picture that year. Ebert called the film "vast, silly extravaganza", but as evidenced by his hatred of Pasolini, John Waters and most of David Lynch, Ebert’s never been good at understanding or reviewing slightly weird or alternative films.
Writers: The script has one credited screenwriter (David Zelag Goodman) and is based on a novel co-written by two other writers (William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnson). Reading these people’s credits is like running over a litany of brilliance. Goodman co-wrote Straw Dogs with Peckinpah. Enough said. Nolan is the type of old regime writer who doesn’t have any Blockbuster credits but has a solid repertoire of smaller works (the Black Mask series, the Sam Space series, won the Edgar Allen Poe award twice, co-wrote Burn Offerings, and wrote the script that eventually became “The Thing”). And George Clayton Johnson (who looks like Alan Moore’s long lost brother) wrote the treatment for Ocean’s Eleven, the first aired episode of Star Trek, and the Twilight Zone episode’s Kick the Can (Speilberg did the film version of it with Scatman Crothers), The Prime Mover, and The Four of Us Are Dying. Wow.
Today’s my last day of bad Sci-Fi Week, and I caved. I reviewed a script that’s actually one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi films. It wasn’t unanimously received as great or classic by people, though, and was easily eclipsed by Star Wars the following years, but I love this film. I read a script a few drafts before the shooting draft, but it was virtually what I had remembered.
Is this film amazing? Not quite, but it’s pretty good and I hold a very special place for Logan’s Run in my heart. The character Jessica is the first time I ever remember being sexually attracted to a woman. And at the time, I didn’t know what sex even was. But if the English chick in the light green dress was there, it was a sure bet it was hot.
The script does a few things really well. It succeeds in the places where all the scripts I reviewed this week failed. Remember how Planet of the Ape ultimately had no larger meaning or point? Logan’s Run makes a really scary and thematic point about a society that promotes youth and buries its elderly. Everywhere you go, and every character you meet bangs this theme all the way home. Remember how Hollow Man was ultimately a monster movie without any larger driving thrust? Logan’s Run is terrifying because it manages to relate its main action to its main thematic point (by running he’s going to become old, if Logan is caught he’s going to be killed and the youthful society wins, and the subplots? Hell, even the minor threads about a cosmetic surgeon who makes people youthful and an old man living on the fringes of society draw us in because they’re original and they make the whole theme resonate even louder). Remember how boring the characters were in Arena? Logan is a pimp. He’s hilarious. I’ve never seen a character like him in another film. He considers having casual sex with every woman he meets, is some sort of solitary lone gunner figure, and has internal pains and questions I’ve never seen in another character (He was raised in a nursery and wonders what it’s like to have a real mother). And World War X’s pointless reliance on Sci-Fi gimmicks? Not here. Every alteration Logan’s Run makes on our accepted world is used for both a thematic and plot-driven point. In other words, this is high quality Sci-Fi.
Is it a perfect script? Not at all. The concept is a bit goofy, but if you accept that most sci-fi films aren’t exactly fare for being taken literally (Planet of the Apes, Night of the Living Dead, Star Wars) then you can move on. And it ends on a sort of overly utopian note which reeks of a Hollywood ending. My biggest complaint would have been I wish there would have been more sub-plots or other things to focus on. But really, I was pretty damn happy with it. Logan’s Run is definitely one of my top Sci-Fi scripts.
Scooby Doo (Complete Crap)
Atilla (Poor, Few Redeeming Qualities)
Wedding Crashers (Mediocre)
Hot Rod (Good)
X - Definitely Maybe (Pretty Darn Good)
Isla Prospects: I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but they’ve been discussing a re-make since 1994 (if anyone has a copy of it, please send!) and Isla could knock the Jessica-6 role right out of the park.
What I Learned: Logan’s Run does a great thing. It commits the protagonist to an insane goal, and everybody responds to his objective with a mixture of skepticism, mockery, or laughter. As a result, the reader commits more to the character and his aim. It’s a great device for making us sympathize.
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