Eyes on "EIKO"
January 24, 2011
22 May 2011
#94 Eyes On Eiko
A few months back a fellow screenwriter by the name of J.G. Edwards wrote a very interesting review of my screenplay Eiko. Unfortunately J.G. has left Amazon Studios and his feedback is no longer shown on Eiko's page. However due to the wonders of the internet, I was able to retrieve his epic review.
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I use the term "mistake" to refer to the usage of a screenwriting device or convention that is (by consensus) either inappropriate, cliched, outmoded, or overly abstruse. Such rote screenwriting devices might also be called "technicalities."
For instance, on page one of EIKO I run into "ROLL CREDITS" and a way-too-on-the-nose VoiceOver ("then you'd know what I felt..."You would know..." "... Why this man must die.") I also see a reference to an apparent weapon used in martial arts (the "katana") with which the ordinary reader wd. not be familiar - and no accompanying definition.
Such newbie gaffes are offputting to an experienced writer/reader. But let's be honest, they're also par for the course for ninety-eight percent of the scripts on this website - and not a few produced screenplays in Hollywood (even some successful ones). To be fair to this screenwriter, I'm going to try to read past them, and deal more directly with the story.
Again (granting that trouble w/ technicalities is usually a red warning flag that the writer is having trouble with his story): in trying to nail down technicalities, I think we're starting to miss larger issues of concept, plot drivers, character arc, et al, which more urgently need to be addressed.
Technicalities can be dealt with via a combination of mechanical upgrades, (like screenwriting software), and application of any of the excellent dramatic & screenwriting books out there, from Lagos Egri, Syd Field, and Robert McKee to Linda Seger, Dara Marks, and the late great Blake Snyder. (Christopher Riley & David Trottier also have excellent books on format and form if you don't want to get into the software).
Anyone willing to invest a few dollars and a little time can rescue a technically ailing screenplay that has potential. But it demands inspiration, motivation, and persistence to improve a good concept that falls flat as a story.
Not that EIKO necessarily has any such problem with its story. I have to read it to decide. Then we'll talk about it.
A NOT-NECESSARILY-PAGE-TO-PAGE READ (*spoilers* - read the screenplay or proceed to "CONCLUSIONS!")
Good first ten pages. But why did SHIROKAGE attack the village, particularly in such a bloodthirsty manner?
We jump forward nine years. Liked the training fight atop the pillars. Good imaginative action scene there.
But a disturbing scene w/ BENIMARU doing magic over Eiko's prone form, while Eiko complains about AYANE'S experiments on her. Issues of child abuse are raised that need to be resolved in a way that does not alienate the reader/viewer (have someone "come to the rescue -?").
Along w/ martial arts, Eiko apparently developes magic skills, but the entire experience is like a Parris Island for Ninjas - with instructors who may kill her, in forcing her to perfect her skills. The brutality is almost comically extreme and, again, tough to see inflicted on a child.
But - not to worry - Benimaru brings Eiko back from death's door with some of his life-infusing magic, which he apparently permenently imparts to her. Nevertheless -
By the break to Act Two, (the fight w/ Ayane and the KUNOICHI, Ayane's death, etc) Eiko is left mainly with her hatred - which started w/ the murder of her village and her Mother, and increased exponentially with the brutality inflicted on her by Ayane, and now threatens to morph Eiko into a weapon of mass murder.
This is a different kind of turn for a hero's-journey-type script. It's as if we jumped to the second sequel of SPIDERMAN (where he turns into a kind of dark reflection of himself) without Spidey ever doing much good. Let's see if the writer can continue down this fairly creative road -
I'm picking up X-MEN vibes as Eiko graduates from killing Ayane into the super-ninja/magician school.
The sheer murderousness of the ninja school and Eiko in particular is going to create problems in promoting this to the studios. And as an indie it's too grandiose to get much traction.
Nevertheless, I like the direction you've taken here. The trick will be to rewrite it in a such way as to make the child brutality theme more palatable for a mass audience (but I don't know if that's possible without changing the edgieness of the idea which gives the screenplay its originality).
Act Two accelerates w/ the seduction/assassination of the loathsome GREDUS. (I'd make it a little more clear that he was indeed killed in the explosion).
It wd. also be helpful if Gredus was more intrinsically tied to the (revenge) plot. In any case, if killing Shirokage is Eiko's goal, it seems that she's overshot her mark by a mile. At this point, with all of her powers, and youth on her side, killing Shirokage would be like swatting a fly. (Another reason to dispense w/ the VO at the beginning: it doesn't really work as a motivator before the fact).
GINKAGE - Eiko's mentor figure - shows up. He's been monitoring the YOKO/Eiko/GISEI team's work, and highly approves.
And another team emerges, led by Shirokage. The respect between Ginkage and Shirokage is all that keeps the two teams from flying at each other's throats.
Ginkage's team moves on to Verona (Italy? Clarity.) Eiko makes the acquaintance of SAKADA by fending off an ambush by him and/or his minions. Sakada takes over mentoring duties for the team while Ginkage goes off on his own mission.
They apparently assassinate the ArchBishop, another contract. Then Ginkage shows up again - he must have orchestrated the hit - applauds their expertise, and offers them the opportunity to take a year's sabbatical in Verona.
Eiko is upset, however, since he stipulates "no killing."
Yoko and Gisei fall in together, and Eiko soon makes the acquaintance of RAI, with whom she spends her time in Verona.
The interlude comes to a tragic end when Eiko is ambushed by a Ninja hurling purple fireballs. Rai is killed protecting her.
Shirokage and Ginkage have a council of war (still in Verona?) and decide to send Eiko, Yoko, and Gisei back into action in the assassination game.
Literal wartime goes by. With Shirokage in control, the team is more and more battered and besieged. Sakada is mortally wounded saving the time from the army of a local warlord. Spectacular scene as the team unites their magic to annihilate the army.
Dying, Sakada warns the team that Ginkage's time is next, and the moment of decision has arrived for Eiko.
Sakada's demise is nicely handled:
"The sound of a bell ringing.
SAKADA (V.O.)
This will allow you access.
EIKO (V.O.)
I don't understand any of this!
SAKADA (V.O.)
(fading out)
Neither did I."
The team proceeds to a safehouse where they find heaps of bodies from a major battle. Among the dead is Benimaru. Ginkage is there also, writing in a book.
He has been wounded in the preceding battle. He warns of Shirokage's treachery and "TAKESHI" (where does he come from?), the black hole of power behind Shirokage. Before dying, he sends the three back to Kurohana Fortress to settle the score, set things right, etc.
The confrontation in the 70-pg + area feels like more than just the break to the Third Act: it comes across as the climax to the story - and we still have 40 pgs to go. I'm interested in how the screenwriter wraps up that difficult end stretch.
The fight w/ Shirokage's ninja is spectacular, like a climactic clash out of Harry Potter ten times over. The forces of Shirokage are too much: Yoko and Gisei sacrifice themselves to hurl Eiko away from the scene of carnage.
Shirokage sends his ninja after Eiko. Who returns to Verona, seeking refuge. (This, I guess, is the REAL Third Act break. Nice feint, earlier - you certainly had me fooled).
Eiko starts to commit suicide, but the words of Ginkage come back to her, and she sees his book with the pages flapping, opening to- an hallucinatory string of images that establish Ginkage as Eiko's grandfather (?! No wonder he had trouble putting Sakura to death!).
Shirokage's ninja arrive to find Eiko gone. She ambushes them, but in her wounded condition cannot fight off all of them. At the last second, Rai returns - apparently from the dead - and reveals that he actually departed to become a Flame Master. He uses his new skill, and allies gained in the pursuit, to destroy the attacking ninja. This is a good reversal, one w/ a reveal inside, which makes it work all the better.
The only change I wd. make to the spectacular sequence above is to set up Rai's team a little better. Just as we didn't know who Rai really was, the team members shd. take an early bow as incidental (and unimpressive) characters back in the Verona subplot. This wd. help expedite interest as we see them now in their true form as ninja.
Rai's team has its own beef with Shirokage. They join forces w/ Eiko to attack Kurohana Fortress.
The assault breaks up into a series of one-on-one fights between Rai's team and Shirokage's cohorts, virtuosically rendered and w/ no small amount of humor (well done!).
Rai and Eiko use the distraction of the fighting to steal into the fortress. Using Ginkage's katana, Eiko takes down her archenemy SANKEN, leaving only Shirokage to be dealt with.
The two break through trap corridors and rooms, into the Great Hall where Yoko and Gisei were killed. Ayane returns from the dead to fend off Eiko, aided at the last instance by Shirokage (who IS Takeshi - this shd have been set up better).
In the apocalyptic final battle, masks are flung aside and last reveals made: Ginkage's visage was actually that of a young Takeshi, etc. I think this may not work so well in a full-on action sequence, but it's your movie -
The motivation for Shirokage/Takeshi taking out the village from the first scene is finally revealed.
Tremendously effective final battle sequence, w/ Gisei and Yoko, and all the dead hero ninja, assisting Eiko from the grave.
Rai and Ayane blow up the Fortress in their battle. Eiko and Takeshi fall through the flames, land - producing a crater - and continue a running fight through the forest, leading on to the surface of a lake - which boils from the energy being released.
Finally Eiko out-blasts Takeshi, and cuts him to pieces w/ Ginkage's katana.
Ayane ambushes Eiko, to avenge Takeshi. Rai joins the fight, and Ayane dies at last, once and for all.
The enemies are dead. Rai travels on w/ his band of ninja. Eiko returns to Verona for a (last?) visit.
CONCLUSIONS
Despite a powerfully original turn in rendering the female protag as an antihero, this screenplay still follows the "hero's journey" track laid out by Carl Jung, popularized by Joseph Campbell, turned into a major subdivision of screenwriting by Christopher Vogler, and finally brought to as close to perfection as it's going to get by John Truby.
Whether the author of EIKO has actually read Campbell, Truby, or Vogler, or whether their influence filtered in through THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, Harry Potter, STAR WARS, super-hero movies like BAT-, SPIDER- and X-MEN, et al ad infinitum - the hero's journey paradigm is highly visible in the screenplay - except that, in an ingenious twist, it's rendered in a largely negative light.
I approve of this take on hero's journey, and I'll tell you why:
The problem with Jung/Campbell/Vogler-inspired writing is that, by consciously following the hero's journey pattern again and again, it's easy for a writer fall into simply replicating that pattern, rather than blaze any new trails. In making Eiko an assassin of unfathomable skill, this screenwriter has at least departed from the usual path of hero's journey.
There's also a lot of theological awe and spiritualist mumbo-jumbo associated with Jungian psychology in general, that stifles innovation in literary art, whether written for the page or for the screen. This is another reason I think hero's journey shd. be dispensed with, at least as the self-conscious meme it's become.
Beyond which, if the hero's journey is to work at all - and I'm increasingly convinced that as a vein of creative ore, it's just about played out - it needs to be spontaneous, natural, unfeigned. Like great rock&roll or jazz - musical approaches that likewise have become depleted in recent years - it can't be forced.
The irony is that, in laying down the Jungian pattern as an ideal to be followed, the purveyors of hero's journey ARE forcing their work. And that contradiction has become more and more of an impediment to good storytelling as time has gone on.
EIKO stands out in taking a counterintuitive step away from hero's journey. In point of fact, I think Eiko's departure from the paradigm should have been even more extreme, perhaps w/ an element of satire if not black humor. Nonetheless, EIKO's strategy is enough to push it solidly into the "four stars" review category, which is something I rarely grant on a first-seen screenplay at amazon studios (only VILLAIN has gotten five stars, right off the bat).
Much as I approve of this strategy, I should also mention one other way to rewrite EIKO that could make it a stronger movie: that is to break out of the boundaries of setting and character laid down for it.
Thirty years ago, the Far Eastern atmosphere and characters of EIKO would have been a refreshing breath of fresh air in the action and thriller movie genres.
But we're far beyond that point now: when a screenwriter like Quentin Tarentino - who loves Hong Kong movies, and Chinese, Japanese, and martial arts flicks, probably more than he does '70s B movies - makes use of this material, he throws in hardcore American cultural references and a customized approach to story that if nothing else serves to reinvent Asian movies for a (post) modern audience, and thus reinfuse them with life.
The writer may object that, with the Verona episode, etc, the cultural blinders have already been removed from the protag. But there's little local color from Verona in the screenwriting, and I had no impression of Rai being Italian, or different at all from the Ginkage crew except in his "lack of skills."
On one level this is a problem of characterization: local color and cultural tropes can act as powerful shorthand in sketching incidental and secondary characters who otherwise remain blank.
But monotone limitation also undermines the impact of everything else, from the concept to on-the-screen presence. Put it another way, you might get this screenplay optioned, if you're lucky, but it's going to take a few re-writes before it's (Hollywood) screen-worthy. And that's largely because EIKO functions in a purely Asian context.
The future of the world may be on the far side of the Pacific, but even if we live there, the World Street leads in large part through the Americas, South and West Asia, and Europe, and that powerful reality needs to be factored into the creative equation, especially when dealing with mythological material.
This need for a broader palette isn't limited to EIKO. One of the reasons I didn't care much for LORD OF THE RINGS - as opposed to the Harry Potter movies - is because L.o.t.R. seems almost parochially European to my relatively World-centric eyes. Ditto STAR WARS, which happens in an All-American Space Empire of the future.
Of course, L.o.t.R. and the STAR WARS series ARE enormously successful films. But they're also projects that have a huge train of cultural baggage and real-world backstory pushing them forward: fifty years of cultural iconization for L.o.t.R. and a Sistine-chapel-sized work of con artistry on the part of the ingenious but troubled screenwriter of STAR WARS.
For the rest of us, tapping into our own individual stories and sometimes connecting them to the larger picture is, I think, the way to go, to grow, and hopefully to prosper.
It's something to think about in rewrites of this screenplay, and in doing work that has a similar setting and cast of characters.
COMMERCIALITY
There are be two tracks that might be taken, if this script were to be produced: anime and live action (maybe even 3-D!)
I'm not a big anime fan but a good script is like a good melody - it shd work in any filmic medium (tho the idea of THE GODFATHER as a Warner Bros cartoon may bring a cringe). PONYO was one of my favorite movies from last year, (I even got a copy of it for my Taiwan-born niece and nephew).
There is a big market for anime in America, and the West in general, today. You can see it on the SyFy Channel, rent it from Netflix, access it on all the streaming video sites.
The problem is that, in America, scripting for animation is done in-house, by the animators themselves. There isn't a local system that I know of whereby animators contract out a script, and pay a writer for his work.
So that leaves the famous Hollywood system of spec script, option, etc. Now, for a big-budget item like EIKO - or any similar work the author has to offer - to get attention in Hollywood, I'm afraid there are going to have to be added elements in the form of attached stars, PR, etc., to help it gain traction. And even this may not be enough, when you consider the opposition.
Go to some of the screenwriting blogs - particularly the "auditorz'" - and see the attempt being made to convey a notion of Richard Stern's VILLAIN as some sort of trailer-trash-written exploitative potpourri. And VILLAIN is, as I've said elsewhere, the best "amateur" script I've ever read.
Then consider the source from which that springs - an entire subclass of hugely ambitious but frustrated writers who've invested their lives, educations, and futures in writing that one spec screenplay, out of hundreds of thousands, that ultimately gets produced.
And that's only a small sampling of the opponents likely to be militating against you. You also have lit people who don't want to know nothing, academic snobs who think a chair being filmed for ninety minutes is a great movie, agents who won't return your call until you are a produced screenwriter, actors with the brains of rodents in the greenlighting cat-bird's seat. I could go on and on.
So don't feel bad if you have to put in a lot of work to get noticed. The result - if you ever see it on the screen - will be worth it, many many times over.