• “What if King Shark was mentally disabled and completely unable to contribute to dialogue in any way?” “Will it be funny?” “Not at all, but Sylvester Stallone really wants an Oscar.”
• Harlequin gets a wedding proposal from a Che Guevara dictator. “Do we have any plan to go anywhere with this?” “Not at all, do we need one? Nobody said we needed one.” If this seems like it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, you’re right, but she did vote for Bernie.
• Waller’s afraid she’s going to look a fool with a Senate friend because she can’t golf. Was zombifying Chicago not bad enough? Are we pretending the first movie never happened? I can live with that. Are we going with 100 Senators being dumb enough to not realize what happened in the first movie? Also workable.
• Every second with Weasel. Polka-Dot Man has a running gag where he sees other people as his abusive mom. I wish I could see Weasel as Rocket Raccoon instead. I suspect the stand-in actor for Weasel (and also Rocket) does too.
• “Bloodsport, why are you afraid of rats?” 1) Because useless 2) Because oppressive father. The movie tries treating this as a mystery, but it’s okay because we can see #1 and can guess #2.
• Idris Elba playing a Louisianan child mercenary turned soldier and criminal who has apparently spent 20 years in the British educational system. He actually has sounded American before, I’m not sure what was going on here. He also sounds kinda posh for someone whose father stuck him in a rat-filled crate but I’d rather have that than Vince Vaughn trying to play a ridiculous blue-collar tough guy (also rat-tortured by his father) in True Detective.
• The team doesn’t have any pre-mission training. Might have been useful to figure out if any of the members had a crushing fear of another teammate’s powers, whoops.
• The team lead has no control over who goes on the team. This makes sense for Bloodsport (if Waller lets him pick his own people, he might stack the team with people who will betray Waller). But why screw Flagg like this? If Waller doesn’t trust him, either, that probably deserves some explanation which could help develop Flag’s eventual hero moment.

–This is the worst King Shark since Harlequin’s animated series. At least he’s not a social media dork this time. (If anyone had asked Sylvester Stallone to try getting offended by shark stereotypes in like a third of his scenes, Stallone would have shoved a copy of Demolition Man up the director’s tailfin).

–Villain selection is MUCH better. Almost everybody is shootable, which is a great fit for a team that is mostly shooters and sharks.

—-It’s ridiculous that a power-worshipper like _____ (spoiler removed) could have conflicted feelings about murdering a character as weak as _____ (victim removed). None of these blanks are “social media expert King Shark” or “uncredited cowriter Howard Zinn” or “celebrated kabuki choreographer B. McKenzie”, but any combination of these would probably have been more interesting than what we actually saw.

–Communications between Waller and the team are down for most of the movie, so she looks less incompetent that she loses eyes on the team. This is a better execution than in the first movie, where she apparently forgets to keep eyes/ears on her murder-slaves.

–Action choreography not great. Harlequin’s breakout scene is just Harlequin doing her thing with very little interaction or threat from her enemies. Not great. Korean/Japanese/Hong Kong action movies usually get a lot more emotional impact out of melee combat than this.

–Rick Flag, besides *maybe* his hero turn, still does not have any chemistry with anyone. Harlequin is not much better, but spends a considerable amount of time on her own subplot.

An Icelandic local gets offended that Bruce offers Curry money to talk outside, and even the local’s confused about what he’s doing in this scene. “How dare this dog speak to us like children? Ooh, magical man from the sea! We are poor. Not stupid.” When your supernatural savior is handling a conversation with a stranger that seems to know his secret, antagonizing the stranger is a real dumb move, and it’s hard to imagine that he thinks this is helping Aquaman.

Instead of wasting a minute on a detour that goes nowhere (Aquaman claiming not to be Aquaman), I’d suggest focusing instead on Aquaman shooting down Batman’s request. For example, he’s jaded about being a ruler — the political situation in Atlantis looks awful for a new ruler with very little experience or political ability. I wouldn’t have him claim he’s in Iceland to get away from people – it obviously isn’t true, he’s close enough to the locals that they serenade him and sniff his sweater and oh God I hope that’s weird even in Iceland. I think it’d make more sense if he wants to choose his own problems, ones that he can actually fix. All of this points him away both from Atlantis and Bruce’s warning of impending danger.

Batman clumsily drags Superman into the conversation. CURRY: “Strong man is strongest alone. You ever heard that?” BATMAN: “You ever hear of Superman? He died fighting next to me.” If anything, I’d have Aquaman bring up Superman’s death first, as evidence that Batman’s plan is doomed. If you can’t make it work with Superman, it won’t work whether or not Aquaman joins.

14:30 – 15:30: Martha moves out of her foreclosed house. This is bizarrely slow, and won’t ever go anywhere. The only person fighting to keep this scene in the movie was U-Haul.

15:30 – 16:30: Bruce Wayne lands helicopter and discusses his recruiting failure with Alfred. Alfred’s main role in this movie is to narrate at people and be narrated to. When he’s not doing that, he’s being the even sadder guy in a room which is already well-steeped in morosity and lethargy.

16:30 – 18:15: Lois Lane gets coffee and exchanges pleasantries with a cop at Clark’s memorial. There’s a ridiculously over-the-top dirge. I think the point here is establishing that she’s still grieving over Clark’s death, but it’s hard to tell, since most scenes so far have been this bleak.

18:15 – 26:00: London. The world’s most incompetent terrorists shoot their way into a courthouse to buy time for a 4-block-radius bomb they could easily have detonated outside. Then they forget that bombs can be detonated instantly, so they set a minute-long fuse, which is enough time for 20+ cops, 5 police vans, 2 snipers and a superhero to show up. If you’re getting your hopes up for non-superheroes to do anything useful, don’t worry, we’ll next see the cops when debris from the last terrorist’s corpse rains down on them like a particularly bad construction accident. There’ll be a hat too. Welcome to London.

21:20: The bomb counter starts. 22:10: clock shows 30 seconds left, but it really should only have 10. Everything in this movie moves slower than normal, even bomb fuses.

Wonder Woman has an awful lasso of truth moment with an extraordinarily boring terrorist. Among other things, this guy expects to be dead within 60 seconds, and he’s under a lasso of truth, so he might have some unexpected emotional cues, e.g. maybe he’s got some regret about how it went down or he’s grimly confident that blowing up this bomb won’t accomplish anything he’s looking for, but it’s more about making a statement, or maybe he fears that bringing back the Stone Age might not work out all that well for his parents. He doesn’t need to be a likable character, but it is on-brand for Wonder Woman to bring out humanness in characters that normally don’t get it. It is NOT on-brand for Wonder Woman to dismiss the world’s most boring terrorist with “Boring!” If your scene is so lame that this feels like an appropriate response, get back to rewrite.

23:10: Wonder Woman leaves with the bomb. At this point there is 1 terrorist with no bomb and a pistol. 23:30: The terrorist points pistol at the crowd. The hostages do… absolutely nothing but scream. 15 seconds later (!), the terrorist reconsiders and picks up a rifle from a dead comrade. The hostages do absolutely nothing. The terrorist points rifle at the crowd and now the crowd starts ineffectually putting their hands out. 23:55: Wonder Woman bursts in as the world’s slowest terrorist opens fire. I saw 15-20 adult hostages, mostly men. Not only are they so helpless that they don’t attempt to flee at any point or grab one of the rifles lying around or charge the shooter or do literally anything besides wait to die, they don’t even take the front row to body-block for the 20+ kid hostages. Shockingly, there are adult hostages *behind* the kids, which I think is a lesson for kids not to get caught with hostages this useless.

Wonder Woman savages the last terrorist and the cops watch inertly as his hat slowly drifts to the ground, which is a perfect visual for this scene. If you added clownish special effects the pointlessly long hat drop would BE this scene.

“Can I be like you someday?” If you sit down for your death, probably not. You know she wouldn’t have.

These kids have seen some REAL stuff. There’s been 30+ shots fired at them, multiple people have been murdered, they’ve seen a bomb count down to 10 seconds, the bomb eventually explodes, and later the windows explode with enough force to wreck a cop car. This cutesy “Can I be like you someday?” line seconds later is a terrible mismatch for the tone of the scene.

26:00 – 27:30: The Amazon Queen investigates the Mother Box. “Any changes today?” “No, my Queen.” What? Wasn’t the entire point of the opening scene that the box started acting strangely? Everybody in the room saw it change. 27:30 – 28:00: People around the island react to skybeam coming out of the Mother Box’s vault.

28:00 – 37:00: Action scene. If you’ve seen any movie with the heroes trying to protect plot coupons from invaders, at least the first 2 will be easy wins for the invaders. It didn’t have to be this slow, though. E.g. there’s a 2 minute sequence between the Queen taking the box and leaving the building.

37:00 – 37:45: Amazon denouement. They’re going to light the warning fire, a plot line riddled in logic holes to get Diana in position to see a visual history of something her mother might already have mentioned to her, seeing as her mother was part of an army that saved the planet against an enemy they know will return. It’s hard to imagine this is some sort of arcane secret hidden in a shrine if they keep 50+ Amazon guards around the clock guarding their Mother Box.

37:45 – 38:45: Steppenwolf setting up a Russian base. He deploys search teams to smell out the other two boxes. He’s trying to prove his worth to Darkseid. This is surprisingly non-bad for an alien invader. The less we see of Darkseid, the better this setup works. PS: His plan is way better than lighting a warning fire.

38:45-40:15: Batman discussing possible Flash sighting with Alfred. Alfred’s not sure the goal of putting together the team is doable. He’s not convinced of the threat, or of their results so far. Batman needs to set him straight that this doom-and-gloom counsel is not helpful. And not necessary, we already have Snyder.

40:15–42:15 Dr. Stone leaves work super-late. Janitor finds a pile of rubble. Note: despite holding Superman’s ship, this place isn’t as well guarded as the courthouse with the magic cops. Alarm systems later heard aren’t on here. The janitor stumbles in on a parademon without knocking and, spoilers, it’s EXACTLY what it looked like, a serial killing in progress.

42:15–44:30: Amazons light signal fire in the off-hand chance that it gets carried by the news and that Diana happens to see a news update from a no-casualty fire 1000+ miles on Crete.

44:30–45:45: Diana happens to see a news update from a no-casualty fire 1000+ miles on Crete. Well, glad that worked out!

45:45–47:15: “What’s your rank, Doctor?” If you try to pull rank but you can’t guess who outranks you (e.g. the oldest person that everybody’s deferring to in conversation), you probably won’t be working many super-cases. PS: It seems very unlikely that there’d be an obviously nonhuman murder at the facility holding Superman’s ship without the investigators having even the slightest clue about why the facility is important. It also seems impossible that you could grab 8 people at a secure facility without getting caught on camera but at least this sets up a cool and senselessly dramatic sketch ID.

47:15-48:15: Dr. Stone goes home, and tells Cyborg that the Box isn’t safe at home, that people were abducted by a monster. Cyborg: “You know a lot about monsters, don’t you? Especially how to make ‘em.” What the Bojangles. This editing is just the worst. We don’t at this point have any of the beats established to either make this dialogue impactful or even for it to make sense. Later on, we’ll get a fairly good set of scenes laying out Cyborg’s conflict with his father, and it all would have made a lot more sense if we saw that before the first parademon attack involving Dr. Stone’s lab. Of the first 45 minutes, there are at least 20 that could be cut or moved back to make room for this.

48:15–51:00: Wonder Woman at Shrine of Amazons. She sees a history of the Darkseid invasion and the backstory with the Mother Boxes. Don’t worry, if you miss it here, she’ll also have a scene narrating the history to Batman.

51:00–52:45 Aquaman saves a boater from drowning. He grabs a whiskey, which is pretty much the only scene in the movie where they passed on product placement. “It’s on him” is probably the first very good line so far.

52:45 – 53:45: Curry downs a whiskey and marches out to a 20% badass song and his second shirt-removal scene. At least it doesn’t get sniffed this time, I hope.

53:45-57:00: Curry’s tutor Vulko finds him at the gravesite of an ancient king. Vulko gives a pretty plausible reason that disappearing sentries are a problem for Curry — the existing authorities, under Aquaman’s half-brother, are trying to blame it on the surface. That’s actually a pretty cool setup. Across the board, I really liked what we saw of Atlantis in this movie. It’s delightfully dysfunctional and feels *exactly* like how a superpowered aristocracy would struggle with people coming to power that have a terrible personality mismatch for actually ruling. Aquaman is a PERFECT reflection on this disaster. Thamyscara mainly shows up to burn like 15+ minutes on two excruciatingly long action scenes with 50+ extras getting mowed down, which is the role that fictional places like Atlantis/Thamyscara/Wakanda usually provide for team movies.

57:00 – 59:30: Steppenwolf gives a status report. Destroy their will, unite them under Darkseid, repeal the capital gains tax. DeSaad narrates that Steppenwolf betrayed Darkseid in some prideful mistake. Implied character development: he’s not particularly hubristic in the movie. His attack plans are rather modest, and he flees almost immediately after acquiring each box rather than try to stick around and accomplish secondary objectives or eliminate downed enemies. When he sees the relief army of Amazons coming, he leaves.

–Maxwell’s wishes can be revoked by the recipient, so it’d be in his interest to NOT screw people he needs on board. E.g. when Minerva asks to be an apex predator, my instinct would run towards “humans ARE apex predators” rather than “make my most committed soldier into a cat monster.” If you feel obliged to keep the cheetah connection, perhaps she has the speed of a cheetah but does not actually look like she came off the set of Cats.

–“Firing a particle counts as touching” is one of the lamest workarounds for a superpower limitation I’ve seen in a while. Among other alternatives, the 1980s had several human chains with millions of participants (e.g. 2 million people in the Baltic Way calling for independence from the Soviet Union or 5 million for Hands Across America). I think millions of people gathering for a cause, particularly under fear of government suppression, is more inherently interesting than touching someone with a particle.

–The setup where Maxwell Lord can add secret costs to wishes (knowing or otherwise) leads to a lot of unclever problem-solving with zero interesting interaction between him and his targets. It might feel higher-stakes if the targets knew they were in a high-stakes situation and that the cost of making the wish would be serious.

–Lord gets too much screen-time for a villain that’s at best forgettably mild and at worst a cartoonish maniac.

–I don’t think the climactic showdown is very clear. Wonder Woman shows Maxwell a flashback of his own traumatic childhood along with a glimpse of his missing/distressed son to help show him that his playing with wishes is having a terrible effect on the person he’s trying to impress. As actually shown, I don’t think it’s clear that this flashback is of Maxwell rather than a live victim in real time. PS: Given how quickly the situation devolves into nuclear warfare, this appeal by Wonder Woman shouldn’t be necessary for this villain.

–I like the concept of a mostly non-physical showdown between Max and Wonder Woman.

— Some scenes that could have been reworked:

• The decathlon scene is zero-stakes and most of this ~10 minutes could be better spent elsewhere. It doesn’t matter at all whether she wins or not; she’s never expressed any interest in being an athlete before, and it’ll never come up again. The stakes MIGHT be indirectly higher if the competitors were closer to her in age so we can see how she stacks up against other girls from similar backgrounds. Also, if the actors were of a similar age, they’d be able to run at similar speeds without making Wonder Woman look slow. (As it is, the older actors were definitely holding back and the cinematography didn’t do a great job hiding it). PS: I liked that the film shows the shortcut without screaming “this side-path is cheating” and also that the young Diana doesn’t claim “nobody said it was against the rules” but accepts that it’s a violation of the spirit of the competition. Contrast to how a more modern character might handle this (e.g. Captain Marvel takes a shortcut racing against her friend and, when called out on it, asks “Since when is a shortcut cheating?”)
• Diana’s setup as a Smithsonian researcher is executed in a low-stakes direction. Thinking back to the original movie, there’s a delightful contrast between an idealistic hero-warrior and one of the most disillusioning wars in history, and in a low-key way she’s a perfect fit for the setting and the story.
• Every moment of the movie focusing on the 1980s as strange. There’s not enough material to justify a scene where Trevor tries out a bunch of super-1980s clothes or gawks at people in the subway. I’d suggest 5 seconds at the most. PS: before you make a movie set in the 1980s with mohawks and pink polos and stuff, I’d recommend checking out works FROM the 1980s. It’s much less pronounced in, say, Back to the Future’s 1985 scenes than in Wonder Woman’s DC subway, which is a total mismatch for the setting.
• Cheetah only shows up for a weak fight scene, and I’d just cut Minerva’s turning into Cheetah altogether. The character concept hasn’t aged well and the character design and execution are memorably awful.
• A shopping mall jewelry shop is an odd setting for a mythological/exotic smuggling operation. Did they need a shopping mall scene that badly? Why? I think a lower profile setting would probably have fit what they’re trying to do with her being semi-unknown to the public. (In terms of smoothly fitting in with other movies, Batman later on does research on her going back 100 years to connect the dots. The less public she is now, the smoother it works later).

There’s a crazy amount of contrivance going on:
–Randomly running into Maxwell Lord leaving Cairo and instantly recognizing him.
–The first person to stumble upon Minerva beating up her assailant happens to be the one person in town that she regularly speaks to.
–Wonder Woman responding to the mall robbery almost instantly.
–Everything about the jet. Her Smithsonian ID has access to an airfield with an unaccompanied jet fighter ready to go. Steve Trevor, who hasn’t flown planes since WWI, is able to fly it. She sprouts anti-radar invisibility powers out of nowhere. There’s enough fuel for a return flight around the world. God knows where they landed it on either end. No one asks about her ID being used the night of the theft. The stated rationale for going through all this is that Steve doesn’t have a passport and they don’t check on the body he’s inhabiting. There’s a lot of better solutions here, but she’s a Smithsonian researcher and maybe she smuggles him in a shipment of items being returned to Egypt? Or maybe she pulls strings with a smuggler or something?
–Later on, she randomly gains the ability to fly almost immediately after Steve dies. This probably isn’t necessary here. This system for the President to deliver a speech into the world’s televisions would presumably be most convenient if it’s located near Washington DC, so it plausibly could be accessible without flying there. If you absolutely need Wonder Woman to have a mobility superpower for later appearances, I think occasional teleportation would probably cover the movement logistics without leading to flying brick fight scenes.
–The Dreamstone: Diana doesn’t recognize it or otherwise sense its importance, even though she’s on a first-name basis with the god that created it and works full-time researching archeological and mythological mysteries. If you want the villain to be THAT ahead of her, an oil executive who can’t afford a full-time secretary is an odd choice unless there’s some better explanation than what we got. Rethinking the scene where he invites himself to the Smithsonian to meet the researchers, he doesn’t sound at all like he might ever have gotten interested in finding a long-lost artifact or somehow pulled it off. I think it might help if he gets a rewrite to be more cerebral and ambitious, maybe even obsessed, with ancient artifacts. To develop his awareness, I’d have him interact more with Diana in this scene than Minerva. She should get the feeling that he’s way more than just a TV salesman. He might get the sense that she’s definitely more central to this case than Minerva is. This is star-sense. Stardom: Diana lives it, Lord craves it, and Minerva doesn’t even know what she doesn’t have.
–Wonder Woman somehow remains an open secret despite dressing like an Amazon and stopping crimes in broad daylight. She makes a point of letting kids know that they need to keep it quiet and she destroys the mall’s security cameras but the DC press would have to be more incompetent than normal to miss a superhero operating like this.
–There’s a receipt with Max Lord’s name on it in the Dreamstone’s carrying case. Despite this super-obvious clue, Max STILL gets close enough to the Dreamstone to steal it from the Smithsonian.
–When Max Lord meets with the President, there happens to be a tech presentation on the only system in the world which meets a bizarrely particular “I have to be able to physically touch everyone” requirement. But… what’s the presentation doing there? The President wasn’t even supposed to be in the office. (He mentions confusedly that he remembers being somewhere else altogether).

• Every line addressed to or about the cat. E.g. “Who’s a good kitty huh? Huh Goose? Yes, that’s right. Who’s a good kitty Goose? You’re a good kitty.” I cannot imagine what raw footage the editors were looking at that made it look like this was the most promising option.
• “Then dig deeper. Lawson is our link to the light-speed engine. And everything we’re after…” When you’re having two characters talk about what they already know, I’d recommend sounding smoother than “As you know, Bob, this is what we already know.” In this case, I think something like “Then dig deeper. Find me the engine” would have sounded more natural.
• “Where’s Pegasus?” “That’s classified. Not unlike the file I’ve started on you.” This response is awkward and disjointed, and a missed opportunity to bring Fury into the scene in a more interesting way.
• Maria: “The Air Force still wasn’t letting women fly combat, so testing Lawson’s planes was our only shot at doing something that mattered.” 1) This superiority complex towards support teammates is ironic now that she’s a support teammate that matters much less to Captain Marvel’s mission than support staff do to USAF operations. 2) In a better movie, this would probably be used to establish conflict or that there’s something lacking about the character. E.g. in Cars*, a movie that needs children to quickly recognize that the main character is being an asshole, having the protagonist call out his teammates as beneath him or “your work doesn’t matter” would definitely work. If you’re not trying to establish the character as an asshole, I’d suggest having her see these other careers as not hard enough or not exciting enough rather than they don’t matter enough.
  *This is probably the first time Cars has ever come to mind as a positive example. Cars is terrible, but it’s not this terrible.
• There are few if any moments where Talos feels believable as a military commander, and his phrasing is all over the place (e.g. “jazz hands”, “bad trip”, “young lady”, “science guy”). First, anyone stiff/formal enough to say “young lady” probably shouldn’t be using “science guy” or “bad trip.” Second, he’s slotted into a Drax-like “can’t get it” role like not knowing what a cat is, but none of this attempted humor lands at all and there’s no reason to have it. He’s a mind-melding shapeshifter, how can he not get it? If your character knows what “jazz hands” are, how does he not know what a cat is? In contrast, Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy is very consistently literal-minded and the character’s dry portrayal makes it effective. E.g. “Nothing goes over my head. (pause) My reflexes are too fast.” This is a lot better than “What’s a cat?”, or any other Talos line, for that matter.
• The “young lady” exchange.
• Every line including the word “emotion” or “emotional”.
• “All life on Earth is carbon-based, not this guy. Whatever he runs on, it’s not on the periodic table.” If you’re going to rip someone off (or “pay homage” or whatever this is), I’d suggest a better movie than Man of Steel. PS: A completely emotionless protagonist with no good dialogue didn’t work there, either.
• A Kree soldier mentions to Carol that it was disturbing seeing a shapeshifter take his appearance. CAROL: “Maybe if you were more attractive it would be less disturbing.” SOLDIER: “You think you’re funny, but I’m not laughing.” Carol’s one-liner is alright, but there was an opportunity here for a better followup, if the story hadn’t handicapped itself using a “No emotion/humor allowed” planet.
• “Name a detail so bizarre a Skrull could never fabricate it.” “I can’t eat toast that’s cut diagonally. But you didn’t need that, did you?” “No, but I enjoyed it.” This is probably the first good exchange in the movie. 40 minutes in. PS: It’d be cool if the first hour had a well-executed exchange that developed character or plot points more important than toast preference.

6. Side characters are grossly unable to contribute what they need to. None of the side-characters contribute anything useful that Captain Marvel doesn’t already have, e.g. no distinctive capabilities or skill sets (e.g. a shapeshifter that doesn’t shapeshift, a pilot on a team whose main character already is a pilot, and a gunman that spends more time talking to a cat than shooting). If they all stayed home, it’d be hard to notice the difference. It’s not like they’re contributing to interesting dialogue or charming moments, either.

6.1. Lawson the superscientist makes her scenes worse. She has no good lines at any point and her entire first scene is low-stakes chatting with no bearing on the plot. She doesn’t contribute anything besides a superpowered engine. In contrast, most logistical support characters (particularly Marvel super-scientists) create interesting conversations with their leads. E.g. Iron Man and Rocket are in a league of their own, and I’d also recommend checking out Beast in First Class, Shuri in Black Panther, Pym in the Ant-Man series, and Edna in Incredibles. It’s hard to imagine any of these characters ever having a scene as boring as what we got from Lawson.

6.2. Nick Fury has a great car chase. After that, he gets a lot of screentime but doesn’t actually contribute anything. I think Incredibles’ approach to Frozone and Black Panther’s approach to the CIA pilot was more effective here – their screentime is brief and impactful. They’re never useless. Nick Fury should either have been written out after Marvel enters the military base or been given a reason to stay around. As it is, he gets beat up by Talos, he’s reduced to holding a cat in the final mission, he loses an eye to a cat, he sings a Marvelettes song, and he helps with dishes. I don’t think I can point to any moment post-car-chase where Fury makes a scene more interesting, and he bends over backwards to make them worse. In particular, the baby talk between him and the cat is just embarrassing. Rereading the transcript, I feel so bad for Samuel L. Jackson. This is worse than getting eaten first in Deep Blue Sea.

6.3. Maria and secondarily Monica. First, Maria doesn’t have any capabilities Captain Marvel doesn’t, which makes her mostly useless in a movie where Captain Marvel is doing 99%+ of the work. If you need her around, I’d suggest giving her some unique ability to contribute (e.g. better at piloting a particular plane or a better scientist or whatever). Splitting the team up for some missions would also help — for example, a secondary objective might involve handling explosives, taking down a shield generator, creating a diversion, adding air support, providing an escape route, etc). As it is, the only thing Maria adds that Captain Marvel doesn’t already have is the ability to gush about how amazing Captain Marvel is, and God does she use it. “You are Carol Danvers. You are the woman on that black box risking her life to do the right thing. My best friend… who supported me as a mother, and a pilot when no one else did. You’re smart and funny, and a huge pain in the ass. And you are the most powerful person I knew, way before you could shoot fire from your fist. You hear me? You hear me?” Across the board, 20% of her lines (14 out of 70) cover how impressive Carol is or how much Carol means to her. In more effective movies, there’s ups and downs in team cooperation (e.g. check out friction between teammates in Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers, and Into the Spider-Verse). Protagonists usually have more setbacks and have to work harder to prove themselves. PS: If you absolutely do need to have someone deliver gushing praise to Captain Marvel, it’d probably sound less bad coming from the grade-schooler than a hardened fighter pilot, and preferably after the villain is defeated (less damage to pacing).
PS: I would guess that this movie had more lines praising the main character than Lincoln or Gandhi. It’s a distinctive approach for an action movie, particularly one with a main character this meh. I think it makes more sense in the opening of Iron Man because a character whose signature flaw is massive ego problems and/or overconfidence NEEDS to be highly competent to avoid massive likability issues. Also, Iron Man is extraordinarily charming from minute 1.

6.4. Neither Captain Marvel nor her side characters have any charm or chemistry together. An effective side-cast could have helped somewhat. I think the two biggest issues here are the lack of conflict within the team and Carol’s lack of personality. (E.g. the side-antagonists she shared with Guardians of the Galaxy had much better scenes with Quill in GOTG than with Captain Marvel, and let’s not even talk about the huge downgrade she gave Nick Fury).

7. The movie is unusually heavy on unnecessary audience cues. Don’t call out your viewers as idiots, and don’t waste time.

• “TORFA: KREE BORDER PLANET.” This comes seconds after a scene mentioning that they were going on a mission to this planet.
• “SUPREME INTELLIGENCE – AI LEADER OF KREE CIVILIZATION” – this could have been handled more smoothly in-scene.
• There’s no need to have Fury’s boss Keller reveal himself to the audience as a Skrull by caressing the corpse. First, doing this with humans in the room makes him look careless/incompetent, which reduces the threat level. Second, the later scene in the elevator covers this better, and I don’t think there’s any plot need to reveal this before then.
• “That’s no MiG”. What gave it away, the lasers? Or the spaceflight?
• “She’s trying to break out.”
• The heroes see a steaming cup of coffee on a ship they expect to be abandoned. “We’re not alone.” I think that’s obvious to anyone older than 8. Having a character silently alert other characters to the coffee should be enough, and maybe Captain Marvel charges up her photon blaster to cue kid viewers that the threat level is higher than it was a few seconds ago.
• “It’s firing behind it” – a close-up shot on rear-mounted lasers and Captain Marvel dodging incoming fire would probably cover this more smoothly.
• “Species: Flerken. Threat: High.” Talos panicked after seeing the flerken, so it should be pretty obvious that the cat is dangerous.
• “I’m Just A Girl” – If you’re going for 1990s songs that are uncreatively on-the-nose for Captain Marvel, I’d suggest Wannabe, I Don’t Have the Heart, and Frozen.

8. Scene timing: There’s an early scene with Carol and the Supreme Intelligence, but they’re probably not able to have an interesting scene at this point. They don’t really have anything to talk about besides the backstory with the Skrulls and making Carol completely emotionless, neither one of which is particularly promising. The backstory with the Skrull war is common knowledge in-setting, so we might be able to handle this more smoothly in a news blurb about a Skrull imposter getting arrested or an update in the war on the Skrulls. Alternately, it might be possible to handle this in the briefing scene for the mission to Torfa.

9. If you’re creating an alien species, I’d recommend that they either all look human or all look non-human, especially if your plot involves a human taken in by aliens. Yon-Rogg looks 100% human, and we shouldn’t have to guess whether he’s a human or not. (PS: He’s not).

9.1. Having Lawson as a Kree rather than a Skrull creates some plot holes. It doesn’t make much sense that the Kree, a warrior species with no shapeshifting capabilities, would have a critical scientist work as a lone infiltrator on a remote world where they have no other presence. It’d be in character for the Skrull, though, and it’d make sense why a shapeshifting Skrull would look exactly like a human. This feels like they were originally planning for Lawson as a Skrull but switched her to a Kree without thinking it through.

10. Captain Marvel takes place a few years after Desert Storm. If Maria is willing to threaten violence over “young lady”, I’m guessing she’s a civilian now because she got court-martialled the first time she met a Saudi. My personal canon is that she caused somebody’s son to draw a weapon to protect the tribal honor based on what he heard third-hand from somebody’s cousin who separately has a blood feud going against Western forces for backing a military commander from a family that stole his great-grandfather’s herd three generations ago. And it’s still a better love story than Twilight.

11. The challenge level is unusually low. When the threats are this weak, it considerably reduces opportunities for suspense and excitement.

• No lasting consequences to any setbacks. For example, in classic Star Wars, losing a fight might mean a major injury like losing a hand, a major character death like Obi-Wan, or even the destruction of a planet. In Captain Marvel, losing a fight means being involuntarily transported to the next scene, but they don’t even take your equipment. These aren’t even low stakes, they’re no stakes. PS: If you ever have a prisoner who can shoot a laser through your ship, don’t let her keep anything that would let her survive in space.
• All it takes Carol to win the fight with the Supreme Intelligence is to remember getting back up after falling off a bike, and pulling off her Kree control device. I think this neuters what should be a climactic moment. I’d recommend checking out each confrontation between Luke and Darth Vader for a classically effective progression of a hero gradually overcoming a threatening villain. More recently, I love how Dr. Strange handled a protagonist taking on a far superior foe (cleverly forcing a draw).
• For most characters, falling out of a plane would be a major setback. No worries, she discovers she can fly. Unless you’re writing a Saturday morning cartoon, this is probably the least interesting option available for overcoming this setback.
• Having discovered she can fly a few seconds ago, she can fly well enough to catch a salvo of warheads and a fleet of interceptors from wrecking Earth. This is not as bad as Kylo Ren losing to someone holding a lightsaber for the first time* but it’s on the spectrum.
  *I think?
• She blasts her way into a secure facility rather than let Fury trick their way inside. This is a boldly reckless move that obviously should create some problems (e.g. the base might go on alert, Fury might become convinced she’s an unreliable partner, some records they came for might get destroyed, etc). Instead, the photon blaster actually turns out to be just a much faster way of getting through a door than picking the lock. What the hell sort of maximum-security facility is this?
• She may or may not be able to defeat her ex-boss in melee combat. No worries, she lasers him. This shoots a potentially interesting opportunity for melee combat in the face.
• She isn’t shown having any unusual technical background (either before or after she gets taken in by aliens), but she’s able to engineer a payphone to make an intergalactic phone call using parts she got from Radio Shack. That seems like a Tony Stark-grade technical problem, something that requires skills amazing enough that they shouldn’t be coming out of nowhere. (Tony Stark would probably also get a longer scene showing his first attempts and how it gradually gets amazing over time).
• When they need to run from the military base, there’s a plane fueled and ready to fly. Of course there is. (Very thoughtfully, USAF/NASA armed it as well, just in case we need live rounds in a test plane, I guess)*.

*In case we need to shoot down space MiGs.

• She’s able to build an intergalactic pager.
• Virtually everybody she interacts with for more than 10 lines regards her as singularly impressive. In particular, Maria’s gushing praise for her is embarrassing and Fury naming the Avengers after somebody that hadn’t been important enough to mention before is odd.

12. Carol’s demeanor and bearing does not feel believable for a fighter pilot. Even before the Kree capture her, she’s unusually restrained in a position that’s iconically daring and bold. If your character has a personality that’s at odds with her life goals, there might be some quality opportunities there for conflict and/or personality development. At it is, she’d probably be more believable as an intelligence analyst or doctor or an accountant. E.g. if she is supposed to be unusually gutsy (like her go-kart wreck suggests), maybe give her some bold missteps along the way? As it is the closest she comes to an unusually bold move is blasting a door into a highly secure section of a military base, but the story plays it like she is taking a stealthy approach (no guards are alerted, they’re able to quietly find the records they are looking for, etc). Her boldness never really creates problems for her, which I think is a major missed opportunity. (Similarly, Maria’s threat to kick Talos’ ass is a bold move that creates no problems and is instantly forgotten). PS: if you have a main character that plays it this safe, I’d suggest against naming any characters (particularly a cat) after a Top Gun character.

12.1. In her climactic moment, she’s challenged to melee combat (by someone that’s previously bested her in melee combat) and she instead blasts him with a laser. Blasting him is entirely reasonable, but she attempts to glorify taking the easier route as “I don’t need to prove myself to you” and it’s miserably pretentious. If someone tries to kill you, you don’t need to explain why you shot them — e.g. you know Han Solo or Indiana Jones wouldn’t have wasted any time there, and they’d have been helluva more charming, maybe with a self-explanatory smile. PS: What sort of test pilot passes on an opportunity to push themselves to their limits?

12.2. Military scenes: Compare “That’s not a MiG” to this amazing scene where Ms. Incredible pilots a plane under enemy fire. This Incredibles scene is extremely tense and one of the most judicious and effective uses of professional jargon I’ve ever seen. The acting, the dialogue and the fight choreography create danger and suspense completely missing from the Captain Marvel equivalent. Secondarily, there are some really cool things going on here like subtly creating a backstory for Ms. Incredible without ever explicitly saying that she was a military pilot. I’d much rather have 4 minutes of this scene than 4 minutes of Carol being generically rejected as a stockcar racer/cadet/pilot/whatever. It advances a major central conflict, it moves the characters forward in the plot, and it’s balls-to-the-wall exciting.
PS: The Incredibles scene uses anti-missile chaff without saying what it does. Having the plane barrel engage in evasive maneuvers as it’s firing the chaff makes it easier to see that the chaff is protection against the missiles. (Also, having the chaff angle towards the missiles is a good call – this gives viewers more information about what the chaff’s purpose is than a more passive drop would have). If a rated-G audience can figure out chaff, PG-13 filmmakers should have had more confidence in their audience’s ability to figure out what steaming coffee on an abandoned ship means, and in their own ability to provide context clues to help them.

12.3. One unusual plus to aerial combat for writers is that it’s one of the only kinds of combat where combatants have good reasons to talk during the fight and can sound natural doing so. If you’ve got an opportunity like that, you can do a lot better than “That’s not a MiG.”

13. Comparing Incredibles 1 to Captain Marvel, I believe that Ms. Incredible comes across as much more competent and active than Captain Marvel, even though they come from similar backgrounds. Some potential causes here:

• Ms. Incredible is treated as an individual in-story (e.g. no overt demographic discrimination), and the conflicts she has with other characters are more three-dimensional than anything Captain Marvel gets. E.g. contrast her conflict with Bob over how his desire to be a superhero causes them to have to relocate their family vs. Maria’s conflict between being a single parent and wanting to accompany Captain Marvel on a suicide mission. Maria almost instantly ditches her kid for a very high-risk mission because her kid tells her it’d be setting a bad example otherwise. First, caving like this is probably out of character for Maria (too soft, too squishy). 2) There are no consequences to this decision, it’s pretty gutless. One possible consequence would be that the person/people she needs to ask as potential parental surrogates are not 100% cooperative (e.g. an ex-husband that already thinks she’s not the most responsible parent). Another possible consequence would be that Maria might handle the mission a bit differently than a non-parent would, e.g. backing out on a particularly dangerous phase of the mission that she wouldn’t have as a younger pilot. (Bob not making this adjustment 100% is one of the main conflicts of the first half of Incredibles).
• The dialogue and acting/directing in Incredibles are much better. When I’m seeing a scene executed by very good actors, I know I could never do that even if I had the script in front of me, and a great actor would make me feel silly for trying. There are very few Marvel superheroes that get scenes that are so leaden that I wonder if one of the stuntmen or lighting staff* on-set could do a better job acting than the actors actually did, and besides Hawkeye and Peter Parker all of them are in Captain Marvel. In particular, Talos’ scenes are so mediocre that I wonder if I could do better. (I am confident that I wouldn’t be much worse, and if any data analyst is feeling bold enough to publicly make a claim like that, the acting/direction is probably not movie-ready).
  *It’s not like the movie needed them for lighting. Look at how oppressively dark and washed-out the first 20-30 minutes are.
• Incredibles’ stakes are real and the adversaries are more competent – in particular, I’d recommend checking out the scene where Rohan and his fleet watch helplessly as they get wrecked by someone that learned how to fly 30 seconds ago. In comparison, Syndrome and his agents learn and adapt quickly to heroic tactics and they’re never a joke.

• Peter accidentally calls a drone strike on his own bus within seconds of being given the drone system.
• Peter has two fights with elementals without realizing that they are holograms.
• Peter could have stayed home from the water elemental fight and the outcome would have been largely the same. A more competent hero might have picked up some information which could have been useful later on and/or been more successful at whatever he attempted.
• “Peter tingle”
• Every conversation Peter has with Mr. Harrington or Aunt May.
• Peter getting fooled by illusions of Nick Fury twice. Even on first viewing, Peter clearly has to be severely concussed or otherwise mentally damaged not to suspect anything when “Nick Fury” asks Peter who he told about Mysterio’s fraud. (Arguably this is worse for a character that loves movie references. If you’ve seen a movie ever, when someone asks you “who have you told about this criminal activity?” they’re ready to murder you and the witnesses. If I were trying to make Spider-Man sound non-dumbass here, I’d suggest a rephrase like “We need an ironclad case. Do you have any corroborating witnesses or other evidence?”)
• Jake Gyllenhaal calls him awkward.
• In a good movie, a protagonist should be able to speak with a love interest and make it interesting. In this movie, Peter concocts a half-assed plan where his friend pretends that he has an allergy in a scheme to get her to sit next to Peter. Having his friend deliver these lines somehow makes Peter look even more pathetic.
• Arrested by the Dutch.
• “Even Dead I’m The Hero”. Even dead, Tony Stark has more of a pulse than Spider-Man.
• “I love Led Zeppelin!” during an AC/DC song. He’s designated himself as the pop culture guy, that’s his thing (pathetic as it is), and he can’t even do that right. Having a character fail ineptly at something he’s supposed to be really good at… I generally wouldn’t recommend this for superhero movies. (The only positive example that comes to mind outside of superheroes is Michael Scott in The Office — I think he’s comedically effective largely because he’s a chaotic mix of brilliant boss, complete mental case, and rolling HR disaster. He also gets great lines and great acting).
• Talos/Nick Fury thinks Peter isn’t even worthy to bring up Captain Marvel (“don’t invoke her name”). That’s rock bottom, isn’t it? Is it possible to be more inadequate?
• I’ll give a pass for an alien shapeshifter not knowing that opera is not the best way to keep teens occupied. A shapeshifter soldier surviving a genocidal war getting fooled by Mysterio pretending to be a fighter surviving a genocidal war? Oh, God. That’s like Dr. Strange getting fooled by an alien pretending to be a human surgeon that has never before met either a surgeon or a human. I would REALLY hope the writers give Strange a better explanation than “wow, his costume was amazing.”

6. Out of all of the common concepts for a sequel, “Same characters as last time, but now they’re in Europe” is one of the least promising. No surprises here, taking bland characters and taking them on a Euro vacation is actually worse than leaving them at home – doing tourist stuff does not generally make for very interesting material, and the setting is probably going to take time/space that otherwise could have been used more effectively. (In fairness to set-in-Europe sequels, “let’s refilm an animated movie in live action” and “let’s refilm a movie but with a younger cast” are probably worse).

6.1. In a good sequel, you might see dramatic themes expanded upon, interesting character arcs built upon, etc. E.g. looking back to the 2000s Spider-Man movies, I think Spider-Man 2 did a great job building on Peter’s conflict between maintaining a normal life vs. being a superhero. In Far From Home, the only theme brought back from Homecoming is “Peter Parker is still completely a joke at being a superhero, and if he got hit by an asteroid the audience would be better for it.” I’ve never seen a movie as committed to a theme as this one.

7. One bright spot: in the post-credits scene a villain took Spider-Man’s secret identity public. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of scenes where other characters have to be mentally damaged to protect the secret identity.

8. Other bright spots: the action is surprisingly competent, definitely better executed than other drone battles in Avengers 2, Iron-Man 2 and Venom. The hallucination powers are creative. The villain (pre-reveal) is notably more engaging than Spider-Man. Weirdly, he’s more believable as a fake hero than he is as a live villain given how thin his motive/plan is.

9. The fake hero setup creates interesting opportunities for hero-villain interaction. Hey, not EVERY supervillain has a daughter you can date.

10. The editing in this movie was notably weak. There were a lot of moments that stood out here, but I have to call out the villainous reveal scene as some of the worst exposition I can remember. E.g. “They called me unstable” sounds like a B-film about a mad scientist. More generally, there was a lot of wasted time:

• Most of what happens before the water elemental fight (e.g. the fundraiser, most of Venice, and maybe the airplane scene).
• Every Flash Thompson line
• Aunt May’s side-romance with Happy.
• The Netherlands scene was funny but Peter Parker desperately needed time/space to be competent. (Also, if we’re pretending that his secret identity is interesting at all, having a character get arrested and unmasked without any followup is probably bad plotting).

10.1. The editing is sloppy enough that consistency issues were noticeable during a first viewing. E.g. Mysterio gets prompted for safety concerns after launching a drone strike in his own area but Peter somehow didn’t get this safety alert when he called in a drone strike on his own bus.

10.2. If Tony Stark builds a drone strike system that doesn’t have any safeguards against assassinating a busful of kids, maybe it’d help to give it to someone less dumbass than Peter Parker. Peter Parker is not just a raging storm of stupidity, he infects the people around him. Other victims include Talos, the real Nick Fury, the love interest, classmates and teachers, and whoever signed off on making this movie.

11. The plot hinges on Mysterio setting up fake crimes to pump up his own status by beating up holograms. He carefully choreographs everything and pre-tapes footage about how the fight will look before it happens. Spider-Man making an unscripted appearance against the water elemental should have been a bigger deal. This would have been a good opportunity for Mysterio to improvise something to keep Spider-Man from figuring out that the fight was a sham. This would probably have a more satisfying outcome than “Maybe Spider-Man will spend the entire fight trying to keep a tower from collapsing but not even accomplish that.”

12. Peter and MJ figure out that Mysterio is a fraud by stumbling upon one of the hologram generators he used. It’d probably be more satisfying (and help develop their competence) if they worked harder for it. For example, thinking back to the first Avengers movie, there’s a scene where Captain America realizes that he’s being deceived when he’s introduced to an “Army nurse” pretending it’s still the 1940s. CA picks up on subtle clues that things are off (e.g. she’s wearing a man’s tie, her haircut doesn’t meet 1940s regulations, and she’s got a modern bra on). How lame would it have been if Captain America had realized the WWII setup was a sham because the nurse accidentally dropped a modern newspaper?

12.1. What might a competent hero might have been able to pick up on to suggest that something is up with Mysterio? I have a lot of ideas on this, but to start with, Peter should have an interest in Mysterio’s equipment. It’s noticeably more effective against the elementals than anything else they’ve tried, and any super-engineer should be trying to figure out how to build more of it. Peter might offer help on routine repair/maintenance (and get shut down), and maybe wonder about how exactly Mysterio is keeping a futuristic suit repaired by himself. Secondarily, Mysterio’s visual style is very flashy/Hollywood (e.g. flying around with a cape), and that’s a really odd move from an engineer who claims to be one of the survivors of a failed war against elemental invaders.

• R movies are making up the quality gap with PG-13 movies.
• Superhero movies are improving. Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the average superhero movie is averaging 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, up from 58% from 2000 to 2012.
• Marvel properties tend to score better on Rotten Tomatoes than DC properties — Marvel’s averaging 65%, compared to 51% for DC properties and 69% for other superhero movies.
• Both DC and Marvel movies are getting better over time. Movies based on DC properties averaged 55% over the last 5 years, up from 48% over the 12 years before. Movies based on Marvel properties averaged 74% over the last 5 years, up from 59% over the 12 years before.

• Sci-fi movies and drama movies do noticeably better than average.
• Thrillers and fantasy do noticeably worse.

Notes on genre classifications: Each of the movies had 2-3 genres assigned by Google metadata. I changed any values that struck me as obviously wrong (e.g. according to Google’s metadata, Spider-Man 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy are “action / fantasy” and Green Lantern is “fantasy / thriller”). Disclaimer: Genre classifications are always highly subjective and arbitrary.

Getting superpowers is sort of a long story. Some people are born mutants or work in a nuclear power plant. I got an organ implant from a doctor I found at an IHOP. (I mean, I got the DOCTOR at the IHOP, not the ORGAN, that would just be nasty).

When I’m not doing anything, I make fun of X-Men and my studio and my writers, that keeps me plenty busy.

The last Canadian I met tried to murder me with his claws a few times. And that was before I tried hitting on his sort-of-daughter, who ALSO has Canadian murder-claws. That’s since been adapted into two movies, Logan and Saw 3. #CanadianDating

“Why do you wear a mask?” To make it possible for Ryan Reynolds to play me in the movies. With the mask off, he looks more like an avocado than a mercenary (and about as threatening as a door-to-door Bible salesman).

“Why do you wear red and white?” It’s easier to wash blood out of red clothes. White helps if pigeons are around. New York has a lot of pigeons.

Yours,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Deadpool

Mr. Deadpool,

Is it true you don’t like to be called a hero? I like it when you make jokes. They’re really funny.

In your movie, why did you count your bullets when you could have picked up an enemy’s gun?

I also heard you don’t like the X-Men, is that true? How many enemies do you have?

I don’t call myself a hero, but I don’t care what other people call me, except for the time that Spider-Man called me Cable’s sidekick. NOT TRUE, CABLE WORKS FOR ME. He doesn’t have a movie yet. He doesn’t even know what a chimichanga is, so he’s no good for food orders either.

“I like it when you make fun jokes.” Thanks! Sometimes inspiration for a great scene hits me. Colossus bet me $20 there was no worse way to die than watching Green Lantern. The next day I found a Zamboni, and also eight henchmen trying to kill me, and the rest is history. PS: Colossus refused to pay up because he is a LIAR. And a Russian. Don’t bet with Russians.

“How come you counted your bullets instead of picking up an enemy’s gun?” Guns are like girlfriends: you don’t swap them out. Unless you find one much better. Or you have a katana. Trust me, it’d all make sense if you had a katana, or a girlfriend.

“I also heard you don’t like the X-Men.” TRUE. When I was in Wolverine’s movie, they sewed my mouth shut. When I asked Wolverine to be in my movie, or maybe someone badass like Gambit or Cable, the X-Men sent me a Twitter-addicted negasonic teenage warhead.

“How many enemies do you have?” I don’t keep like a running kill-count or anything but 100 less than at the start of my movie. Several remaining names: Wolverine (tried to kill me after I flirted with his daughter WHO TOTALLY COULD HAVE BEEN 18), Wolverine’s daughter (same), Sweden (The Katana Incident), Madcap (me but less funny), and Modok (he’s a floating head).

–Deadpool

Deadpool, how’s your granny? I heard your girlfriend kicked you out of the house. What do you think of your job? I hope your girlfriend will take you back.
How’s your day? When are you going to make another movie? In your last movie I liked it when you got your girlfriend back. I hope you make a new movie soon.

“How’s your granny?” SHE’S NOT MY GRANNY. She’s just someone I’m sharing a room with, who happens to be a granny, and also probably addicted to cocaine. That’s how she went blind. It’d also explain why she took a hitman as an AirBNB guest, just saying.

“What do you think of your job?” I have a job? I didn’t get paid anything for taking down Ajax. I wasn’t even able to sell the Zamboni. If Batman and Iron-Man have taught us anything, being a billionaire playboy is every bit as amazing as it sounds. If I have taught you anything, don’t go on a one-man journey of revenge and murderous redemption without getting paid for it.

“I hope your girlfriend will take you back.” Unlike the granny, she’s not blind (and I’m not a billionaire), so it won’t be easy.

“I hope you make a new movie soon.” Deadpool 2 is coming out next year. My sidekick Cable’s going to be in it. More importantly, me too.

–Deadpool

Why did you think about becoming a hero when you got an offer? I love the part in your movie where you cut your hand off, that part made me laugh so much.

Why did you make a movie? Why is your name DeadPool? Why do you live with an old lady? Do you have a pet? Do you have a car? If you wanted a car what would it be?

“I love the part in your movie where you cut your hand off, that part made me laugh so much.” When you’re filming a movie, most scenes get practiced 30-40 times to get the performance just right. Check out the take where I pass out from blood loss. Comedy gold.

“Why did you make a movie?” My life is grim, dirty, and loaded with murder and betrayal. It was either Hollywood or politics, and I don’t look good in a tie.

“Why are you named Deadpool?” A deadpool is when people bet on who’s going to die first. I had cancer (and a lot of it), so most of the people at my bar thought I was going to die first. JOKE’S ON THEM, SUCKERS.

“Why do you live with a old lady?” She’s blind and slow, two of my main requirements in a roommate. Anybody else would have run to the cops years ago.

“What was your favourite part in the movie when you were acting?” The romance scenes were all my idea. And, no, we didn’t use stunt doubles. The studio is still working out whether my ideas for the sequel are okay for a rated R movie, though. Or legal.

–Deadpool

Each submission will be a supervillain sitting at a huge table explaining why they should be voted as the Supreme Archvillain, then they go into a story, etc. Reprint excerpts and new writers welcome.

If you can get through this scene without shedding a tear or smiling at all, I’d recommend talking to a WB casting director because apparently they’re really into that. Also, the dialogue in this scene takes about 1:15. Compare to 3:15 of “Goodbye, my son, all our hopes and dreams travel with you and maybe also an AI which will spend another 5-10 minutes narrating to you later.”

(For some extra tragedy, this scene from Inception is a dream sequence created to trick the son into breaking up his father’s empire. In actuality, the father probably actually was a bastard).

2.1. When Pa Kent reveals to his son that he’s an alien, he bends over backwards to be weird about it. E.g. “You’re not on the periodic table”, “You’re the answer to ‘are we alone in the universe?’”, and “You need to decide whether to stand proud in front of the human race or not.” Clark doesn’t respond at all to this weirdness (his father gets 146 words in this scene, and Clark gets 13 – like most scenes between Clark and a parent, it’s more of a parental monologue than a conversation).

2.2. When Ma Kent’s son locks himself in a closet at school, mixing in some conflict would probably be more interesting than trying to be a yoga instructor. (“Focus on my voice. Pretend it’s an island. Out in the ocean. Can you see it?”) Alternately, maybe having Clark react when they take conversations in exceptionally weird directions. In this scene, Clark’s mom gets 80% of the words. Contrast to more effective conversations in Dr. Strange – even the most New Age-sounding lines from the Ancient One address problems and advance goals in a serious, practical way.

3. A question-and-answer session between two entirely cooperative characters is almost never the most interesting way to convey information. If the backstory of what had happened on Krypton actually were important, I’d recommend cutting the first 20 minutes of the movie on Krypton and most of the conversation between Clark and Jor-El, and have General Zod briefly mention or allude to important pieces when he shows up. Even that’s probably unnecessary.
3.1. If you’re rewriting a scene that feels like an 100% cooperative Q&A session, I’d recommend considering building some conflict between the characters, some mistrust, some concealment and/or lying and/or self-serving, not being willing and/or able to tell the whole story, and/or unreliable answers, etc. Also, there may be some degree of “cost” to the questions — e.g. if you sent your son to another planet and could have come yourself but chose not to, you might be uncomfortable freely admitting that because he’d probably think that you abandoned him. There probably should have been some pushing/conflict before Jor-El elaborates on what happened there.

4. The movie heavily overfocuses on Clark’s parents, who delivered twice as many lines as Clark/Superman gets (26% vs. 13%). Minor characters (mostly the military and minor Kryptonians) made up another 39%. Giving 2/3 of the lines in the movie to minor characters that have little bearing on the plot, little personality, and almost no unusual decisions between them is a bad idea. If your superhero is so boring that sidelining him for his parents might be a good idea, something has gone catastrophically wrong for your superhero story.

4.1. Arguably the worst part of the conversations between Clark and his parents is that his parents are windbags that relentlessly info-dump at him in the most grandiose, messianic terms what he symbolizes and the unbelievably wonderful things he’s going to accomplish some day when he gets off his ass and stops listening to windbags telling him about it. Jor-el: “You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. You will help them accomplish wonders. You will guide them so they might not make the same mistakes we did. You will show them this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal.” Pa Kent: “You were sent here for a reason. All these changes you’re going through, one day you’re going to think of them as a blessing, and when that day comes you’re going to have to make a choice, to stand proud in front of the human race or not… You just need to think about what kind of man you want to grow up to be, because whoever that man is, good or bad, he’s going to change the world.” Who the **** cares what he symbolizes? Get him doing and saying interesting things. In the first hour, he doesn’t come close on the first or attempt the second.

4.2. If ANYBODY takes 80% of the lines in a conversation with your main character, the scene-stealing characters damn well better be hyper-charismatic and/or critical to the plot, on the order of a Hannibal Lecter or Han Solo or Blake (the “coffee is for closers” sales instructor in Glengarry Glenross). In Man of Steel, virtually every scene with Clark’s parents sidelined Clark, which is very unusual for a lead character. I don’t see what they were going for. Clark didn’t get a lot of opportunities to have personality, develop himself and/or be interesting.

4.3. There’s one point at which the ghost of Jor-el tells Clark “If only Lara could have witnessed this.” Nah, three hyper-generic parental figures should be enough, I think.

5. The entire plot is a festering cancer of incompetence.. Being in Man of Steel is like barrel-rolling a Jeep full of incontinent donkeys. Nobody walks away looking good.

• The military and Superman have one Kryptonian weapon against the Kryptonian invasion. Instead of doing a conventional aerial assault, like the last one that got totally wrecked by Kryptonians flying at Mach 20, why not have Superman fly it in?
• Krypton’s codex, the only means by which Kryptonians can have children, is completely unguarded. Jor-El doesn’t even need to pick a lock to steal it, let alone deal with any guards. It’s less secure than the average 7-11.
• Zod moves at an exceptionally slow pace when trying to recover the codex .
• Zod: “I was bred to be a warrior. I trained my entire life.” Zod and two soldiers with rifles are unable to defeat a scientist in combat, and the scientist punches Zod out. Nor is he able to prevent a journalist from shooting her way out of captivity. I’d get a refund on that training.
• When Zod stabs Jor-El, he doesn’t secure Jor-El’s gun even though Lara is a few feet away from it. You sure you can’t get a refund on that training?
• Zod has at least 10 Kryptonians. Earth has one. Might have helped having more than 2 of the invaders try superpowered fighting.
• Clark not figuring out a way to save his father secretly from the tornado (e.g. creating a distraction with heat vision and then running in while people are distracted).
• Less blatant, but I think a smarter superhero could have spared Metropolis some devastation by drawing Zod away from the city.
• Here’s the first lines exchanged between Hardy and Lois. COLONEL HARDY: “You’re early. We were expecting you tomorrow.” LOIS: “Which is why I showed up today. Look, let’s get one thing straight, guys, okay? The only reason I’m here is because we’re on Canadian soil, and the appellate court overruled your injunction to keep me away. So if we’re done measuring dicks, can you have your people show me what you found.” That… got out of hand quickly. To make Lois come across as tough rather than mentally unstable, I’d suggest giving her an actual provocation to respond to rather than just a military officer gently pointing out they agreed to a different schedule. Treating that as “measuring dicks” makes her sound completely in over her head and/or massively insecure. Also, I’d recommend giving her some social skills – check out Maltese Falcon or The Killers for much better examples of characters working on hostile sources of information. Introducing yourself by declaring “YOU’RE OPPOSED TO MY INVESTIGATION!” for no benefit generally isn’t very sharp, even if the target actually were opposed to your investigation (which Hardy doesn’t appear to be, in this case).
• Clark: “I don’t know if Zod can be trusted.” Zod has threatened to devastate Earth and Jor-El mentioned that he launched a coup against Krypton. I’d recommend taking this in a badass direction (e.g. “he’s probably going to kill me, but it might save the planet”) rather than “I really am that dumb”.
• Perry evacuates the Daily Planet about 10 minutes after an alien warlord’s spaceship reaches Metropolis and a few minutes after the bombardment begins. If an alien that has threatened dire consequences for Earth parks a warship over a major city, sticking around to watch makes it less of a murder and more of a suicide. This is probably obvious to everybody in the world but Metropolis.
• The conspiracy blogger was a pleasant surprise. He’s fully aware that Lois is trying to use him, and throws a wrench in her plans the first chance he gets (revealing that she knows who Superman is). It’s badass and makes Lois’s habitual idiocy sort of tolerable here. (If you need to blindly trust somebody, telling them how much you detest them while asking them for a favor probably should not work out all that well. That’s probably obvious to everybody in the world besides Lois).
• Perry refusing to run a huge story on a UFO sighting because he thinks that Lois might have hallucinated it. Okay, but did she hallucinate the multiple collaborating eyewitnesses? And her laser wounds, and the massive ****ing crater where a spaceship flew out of a mountain? To make Perry look less idiotic here, I’d recommend making Lois’ case a bit more sketchy (e.g. she has several military contractors who will anonymously corroborate her story but no one willing to go on record, and there’s a plausible alternative explanation for the crater, like a volcanic eruption). Alternately, have Perry refuse to run the article because he’s been badly burned by Lois’ sources before and/or he suspects there’s something she’s not telling him (e.g. she’s in love with the subject of the article, probably has a vendetta against the military, is a BS artist, and generally is a walking time-bomb of incompetence and conflicts of interest).
• Speaking of chronic incompetence, about 2 seconds after Perry refuses to run her UFO article, Lois gives it to a conspiracy blogger to run. She’s still surprised that Perry figures it out. (She gave him the article to read. How could he have NOT figured it out? There weren’t any other journalists within 100 miles). I’d suggest having her handle this in a more brazen, daring way (e.g. she knows that Perry will figure out what happened, and maybe doubles down when Perry confronts her about it – his decision to sit on an ironclad blockbuster story because there was an official denial is bad journalism).
• Jor-El: “We’ve had a child, Zod. Krypton’s first natural birth in centuries.” Why tell him that as he’s about to kill you? It accomplishes nothing but endangering Clark. It’s also unnecessary from a plotting perspective: nothing Zod does later requires knowing this early that Jor-El sent a child (when Clark later activates the SOS beacon on the ghost ship, Zod can figure it out on his own).
• If you’re driving a schoolbus, and blowing out one tire (out of 4-6) causes you to completely lose control and drive off a bridge, you probably shouldn’t be driving a schoolbus.
• If you’re an infantryman and you bring a grenade launcher on a cargo plane carrying the military’s only superweapon, you probably shouldn’t be on this mission. Particularly if the enemy has proven utterly immune to conventional explosives.
• If you’re a military planner and you have an alien in custody, you might want to try learning more about Kryptonian capabilities, Zod’s goals on Earth, whether Zod can be trusted, the backstory between Zod and Superman, or anything else that might be useful if the obviously sinister Zod turns out to be a major problem moving forward. Taking a tissue sample might also be useful for developing ways to kill Zod if it comes to that (and, based on the way Zod introduced himself to Earth, it should be obvious it’s going to).
• Military planning: if an alien is immune to heavy aerial munitions and can fly at supersonic speeds, anybody that sends in riflemen next probably shouldn’t be a military planner. Maybe nerve gas? Sound-based weaponry? Biological weapons? Anything more creative and/or potentially useful than weaker versions of what you’ve already tried? (Alternately, if the point is that the military is unable to respond in ways that might be effective, why give it so many scenes?)
• When a building collapses towards Perry, he tries outrunning it in the same direction it is falling. E.g. the Chrysler Building is ~1000 feet tall by ~100 feet wide. If the building is falling south, running south will take 1,000 feet, whereas running east/west will take 50 feet.

6. Emotional variety is missing. I think Clark smiles twice in the entire movie and there are literally no moments that are exciting or cool. Compare to much more effective dark movies, like Chronicle and Deadpool and Kick-Ass and Watchmen, which have a lot of despair and suffering, but ALSO have some levity and a lot of energy. E.g. in Chronicle, one of the main characters has an abusive father and is generally an outcast at school, but everybody gets occasional bursts of excitement and happiness and most of the characters are living semi-functional lives. Man of Steel is a gray pile of sadness where Superman stumbles from one tragedy to the next.

6.1. Here are some faceshots from the movie. Clark’s emotional expressions could use some work (e.g. his pose for seeing Lois for the first time is virtually identical to when he sees by a corpse).


6.2. I can sort of understand the rationale behind doing several scenes with military extras – Superman has virtually no good dialogue in this movie, and his powers don’t lend themselves well to interesting fight scenes. However, if you spend so much time on military characters that they have more lines than Superman does, I’d recommend having the military extras actually be sort of useful (e.g. taking down one of the minor villains or something rather than just shooting ineffectually).

7. Jesus Christ, how tragic can one person’s life be?

• One father dies in a tornado, and the other gets murdered in a 5-minute civil war. And then gets murdered again by the same guy.
• His father died because some asshole left her dog in a car. He couldn’t save his father because there were randomly hundreds of witnesses on a highway in the middle of Kansas.
• His mother dies when his planet explodes. His Kryptonian father who turns himself into a ghost apparently forgot her. Probably just as well, they were just going to get murdered again anyway.
• According to Jor-El, his parents could have accompanied him but chose not to, shooting him into the middle of Kansas instead and guessing that’d be good enough. They’re the ultimate deadbeat parents. (Superman doesn’t remark on this, but given that he himself was a deadbeat dad in Superman Returns, I imagine it’s a sore subject). Seriously, not even sending a robot or something to make sure that he’s cared for before humans find him? Also, dressing him first?
• The only other people that survive his planet exploding are hardened criminals that had previously vowed to track him down across the galaxy.
• When Zod shows up with a warship orbiting the Earth and demanding that Clark turn himself in, Clark doesn’t remember that Jor-El had previously mentioned Zod to Jor-El and might have some insight into whether Zod is as nutso as he appears (“yep, actually he murdered me”). He asks a random priest for advice instead.
• A fishing cage falling when he’s right under it.
• At least five people start a fight with him because they’re assholes (two sets of school bullies, and a drunkard in a bar).
• His school assigns Plato.
• Millions of people die when Kryptonians attack the planet. Zod thanks him for (unknowingly) activating the SOS beacon that gave them directions.
• His schoolbus loses a tire just as it’s going over the bridge, and everybody nearly dies.
• An oil rig explodes near his fishing boat.
• Yellow sunlight makes him invincible and green sunlight makes him interesting. I’ve never seen a green sun, either.
• Falls in love with Lois “Catastrofe” Lane. She can’t ****ing cross the street without getting kidnapped twice, and she’s not much better at journalism.

8. A recurring problem for Superman: an active Superman is so powerful that he can instantly solve most problems that come his way. For most of the movie, they opt for “Clark wants to act but instead does nothing to hide his powers, and then has a 3+ minute debriefing where a parent monologues about why he had to do nothing to hide his powers.” If you’re going to have so many of these scenes, I’d suggest at least having him TRY to overcome his problems without superpowers (e.g. talking his way out of it, run for help, or make some friends by having any outside interests or anything going on in his life besides random disasters and tragedies) or maybe some sly use of superpowers like using his heat-rays to start a fire alarm to bring out witnesses at an in-school fight.

9. Characters should respond more naturally to each other. For example, if Clark says something like “You’re some guy that found me in a cornfield” to his adopted parents, please write a sharper response than “Clark!” / “No, honey, it’s alright.” If you want to have Lois to declare that Hardy is trying to measure dicks with her, please give Hardy a sharper response than nothing. Other moments in the movie that probably deserved more of a response than they actually got:

• Clark finding out that he’s an alien, and that his adopted parents have been keeping that from him for a long time.
• Jor-El telling Clark that he’s Clark’s father.
• Jor-El heavily implying to Clark that his parents could have accompanied him to Earth, but chose not to. (Alternately, maybe a slight rewrite like Jor-El and/or Lara attempt to accompany him to Earth, but die of wounds taken during the civil war?) This conversation sort of starts to explain why Kryptonian society thought Kryptonians couldn’t be trusted to have their own kids. They’re really, really bad at it.
• Any of the lines where Jor-El sounds strangely lukewarm about Zod, even after getting murdered by him.
• Clark locking himself in a closet at school.
• Clark’s parents deciding that he shouldn’t have any friends. (We hear this from a kid at school, it never comes up in conversation between Clark and his parents).
• Any exceptional strangeness from Clark’s parents.
• Pa Kent sacrificing himself to save some asshole’s dog that, spoiler, will probably get euthanized in 5-10 years because its owner won’t pay $6,000 for hip replacement surgery. Clark’s parents (both sets) repeatedly screw Clark, and certainly a father screwing his family on behalf of a stranger’s dog is pretty rough, but at least they didn’t send an infant alone to an alien planet, right?
• Clark’s father not creating a ghost for Clark’s mother.

10. For a dramatically effective version of soldiers fighting an impossibly powerful enemy, I strongly recommend looking instead at the final scene of Rogue One (doomed rebels in a terrifying encounter with Darth Vader). The scene lasts less than a minute and is completely non-redundant with everything else in the movie. In contrast, Man of Steel (and Suicide Squad) have 4+ emotionless scenes where military extras get mowed down emotionlessly just to burn time off the clock.

(Much) more to follow for the masochistically inclined.

• Characters
• Plots
• Accidental deaths falsely claimed as murder-suicides
• Double-crosses, triple-crosses, and maybe a quadruple-cross depending on how you interpret a self-defense kill with a fishing reel.
• A complex plot that is extremely easy to follow as it unfolds.
• A character falsely disgracing himself for the greater good, but more smoothly and dramatically than Batman taking the blame for Harvey Dent in Dark Knight. This is straight-up tragic.

• Boomerang’s heist – there’s no emotional impact to the betrayal, and he comes across as helpless. No exaggeration here: this is probably the least interesting interaction I’ve ever seen between a superhero and a villain in any medium. Compare to the vastly better-executed heist scene in Dark Knight, which establishes Joker’s disloyalty and unpredictability and his conflict with more conventional criminal groups. I believe it’s an especially memorable scene because he makes major decisions (e.g. preemptively betraying his own men) that 99% of villains wouldn’t have made in the same situation.
• Katana’s scene stabbing a criminal in Japan was a heavy-handed way of showing her revenge angle, and it contributed to the movie in no other way. Easily removable.
• Diablo torching a prison yard, shown twice. Not terrible. The crown of fire is a neat touch (but seems to imply that he hasn’t changed as much after killing his family as he’s trying to show).
• Deadshot has 3 (a sample assassination which does a good job establishing his personality, getting taken down by Batman, and an inexplicably long scene where he shows off his skills by firing at dummies for 45 seconds straight).
• The Joker/Harlequin takedown by Batman is probably unnecessary – it covers a lot of the ground of Batman taking down Deadshot, but that scene did a better job establishing Deadshot’s relationship with his family.

18. The movie took far too long before the teammates first meet each other 45 minutes in. Virtually all of the moments in the movies that actually worked featured Squad members interacting together (or Deadshot with Flag or his daughter), and getting the Squad together much sooner would probably have helped with the pacing. If your first 45 minutes of the film give more screentime to Waller, faceless government extras, and Joker than the titular heroes, it’d really help if these side characters got more opportunities to be interesting or memorable. In comparison, most of the great superheroes movies that introduce the main case exceptionally late, like Iron Man 1 and Incredibles, used the extra time early on for scenes that were very interesting, hilarious, emotionally effective, developed the main characters, or developed critical plot elements – hell, Tony Stark’s “Merchant of Death” scene and Bob’s attempt to prevent a suicide went far on all 5. In Suicide Squad, the first 45 minutes don’t have anything that well-executed… I’d argue the closest is Deadshot’s interactions with his client, which create some character development and humor.

18.1. The odd men out here are definitely Waller, Joker, Enchantress and her brother (Incubus), and arguably Batman. Ideally, I think it would have helped to replace Enchantress/Incubus with villains that could interact with the heroes more directly, made Batman’s scenes more distinctive or removed him altogether, and significantly accelerated the setup to the squad coming together. I think Joker would be a candidate for lead villain, but I wouldn’t keep him on as a side villain because there are so many characters fighting for space. Also, overhauling Waller (more competent, more believable, more logical, more reacting to an actual problem rather than creating a problem that doesn’t exist yet, more threatening to teammates rather than maintaining no surveillance on the team, etc).

19. A point worth belaboring: Waller is outlandishly incompetent.

• At one point, she warns the squad, “Remember, I’m watching, I see everything.” Except that she doesn’t have, you know, team microphones or anything, which might have let her hear Boomerang goading Slipknot into bolting, or Deadshot telling HQ that he was going to kill Flag and the SEALs but needed Joker’s help with the nanites. So she’s less well equipped than a Counterstrike team.
• She appears to get off on lying for no apparent reason (e.g. goading Deadshot into pulling the trigger on a VIP security officer by telling him that the gun was disabled, and telling Rick that it was a standard terrorist attack).
• It doesn’t seem to occur to her that trying to trick Deadshot to kill somebody for no reason in front of the victim might cause the victim (who runs security for the prison housing her team!) to become less cooperative. And she doesn’t take any precautions against it, getting completely blindsided by a major asset getting turned by Joker, or his high-risk behavior playing in a heavily criminal casino. Nor is she aware that he’s slipped Harlequin a phone, and frankly there weren’t many places to hide it. She apparently trusts that to prison security, even after trying to have one of them killed for absolutely no reason.
• She’s not aware of her helicopter getting hijacked by Joker. The resulting surprise gets many people killed.
• Not being able to destroy the heart remotely, or put in a verbal command to someone who can. That seems like a pretty important capability, given that she knew Enchantress could teleport.
• She murders her own subordinates because “they weren’t cleared for any of this.” First, this serial killing feels completely unnecessary. However, if it were necessary, it might be safer to wrap it up before Flag and Deadshot can witness it. Second, she’s not even good at being bad – she shoots four people once each, and doesn’t check to make sure that they’re dead. That’s really sloppy… there’s a high risk that at least one will survive.
• No security precautions on the second doll.
• Her decision not to destroy the first doll after Enchantress goes rogue and/or takes over a city is a major plot hole that makes the movie significantly worse. If she’s not going to use this lever at this point, it’d probably be better not give her this lever – otherwise she’s just developing herself as weak/passive/incompetent by not using it.
• She allows herself (and the first doll) to be taken by Enchantress.
• At no point does she approach basic competence. The movie is jaw-droppingly consistent that she’s an active liability to everything she’s trying to accomplish.

19.1. While Rick is not as legendarily inept as Waller, he’s not exactly covering himself in glory.

• “I don’t do luck. I do planning and precision.” Except for, you know, any sort of plan that accounts for 50%+ of your team plotting to kill you, and you having no surveillance on them even as you have SEALs within 10 feet of the plotters. If your team’s situational awareness is that bad, you might as “do luck” and randomly blow up a teammate, because everyone on the team besides Katana and KC is openly discussing killing you.
• Flag lets HQ back onto the team even after she sides with Joker and gets most of his SEAL friends killed.

• Surnames of VIPs, usually explorers and major political leaders (e.g. Houston, Columbus, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Jacksonville).
• Anglicized spellings of Native American terms, usually related to geography. E.g. Shikako (“skunk place”) -> Chicago and Myaamia (“downstream people”) -> Miami.
• Southwestern cities usually use Spanish terms, usually San/Santa + Spanish name or Los/Las/El/La + Spanish term (e.g. San Jose, Los Angeles, and El Paso).
• Some cities settled by the French use French terms (e.g. Detroit / “strait” and Baton Rouge / “red stick”), are named after French places (e.g. New Orleans) or French saints (e.g. St. Louis).
• Some cities settled by the English are named after English cities (e.g. Boston and New Amsterdam getting renamed to New York).

2) If you’re looking for something more exotic and/or more thematic, I’d recommend starting with a syllable that has the right sound/feel and then adding suffixes from there. E.g. if I were trying to name a city that was economically wrecked and high-crime, I might start with a syllable like Bent or Pac or Mar, and then add a suffix (don, ion, ola/oma, burn, dere, atur, ville, port, er, burg, boro, rst, oma, sen, iet or whatever suits you). In this case, maybe Marburn or Bensen or Paccola.

3) Unless you’re going for a very “comic booky” feel, I recommend against combining an English adjective/noun and “City”. For example, names like “Central City” and “Star City” tend to be very generic and don’t sound like actual names. (Of the 100 largest U.S. cities, only 4 end in “City” and only 7 use a common English word besides a surname: New York City, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Jersey City, Aurora, Phoenix, and New Orleans).