Watchmen

Mixing genres is the fundamental story technique of mainstream Hollywood moviemaking. If you want to play in that league, you need to master the technique. But be warned. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you end up with a big mess.

Watchmen left me with a strong sense of missed opportunity. This movie had the potential to be another deep exploration of the role of the savior in modern American life, with a shot at reaching the heights of the best of the form, The Dark Knight.

The challenge facing the writers was huge. They had to weave at least three stories, each from a different genre. First is the fantasy superhero story about who these characters are, why they formed their team, and why they disbanded it. Second is the detective story where Rorschach tries to uncover who is assassinating his old superhero pals. Third is the action story where someone is out to destroy the world.

In putting these three genres together, the writers have created a massive Rube Goldberg mechanism that lumbers along, puffing and wheezing, pushing forward, backing up, until it finally collapses at the finish line 2 hours and 43 minutes later.

Watchmen is a textbook example of how to write, and not write, a superhero origin story. The origin of a superhero is often the most fun aspect of the character and is a complete story unto itself. So the writer has to figure out how to combine a fairly long origin story with a full-blown crime or disaster tale, and make both lines seem like one.

Batman Begins gives us a model for how to execute this job properly. There the writers begin by crosscutting Bruce Wayne’s ghost as a youth (the bats and the death of his parents) with the training he receives from Henri Ducard of the League of Shadows. Then Bruce returns to Gotham to fight crime as Batman and eventually uncovers the plot to destroy the city, concocted by none other than his teacher, Henri Ducard.

But notice one huge advantage the Batman writers have in doing their adaptation: they have to detail the ghost of only one character. This difference is the source of all of Watchmen’s structural problems. The Watchmen’s writers tried to provide detailed ghosts for all nine of the Watchmen superheroes. They realized putting all of these origin stories together at the beginning would create its own movie and have little to do with the assassination/world destruction plot.

So they tried using an advanced story structure form (which I discuss in detail in the Advanced Screenwriting Class). In this form you set up a character with an intense desire line. Then at various intervals, you halt the narrative drive and you explore some dramatic issue or delve deep into character. This technique was used in both Forrest Gump and Lord of the Rings.

This advanced storytelling form has some great strengths but also grave dangers. If you don’t set up a strong enough desire line, the side trips eventually collapse the story. Similarly, if you go too often or spend too long in the side trips, your narrative drive stops. And if these side trips are about ghost – information about the past – then your narrative drive is really in trouble because you are literally going backwards.

All of these problems occur in Watchmen. The writers use a detective story for their desire line: Rorschach wants to find out who is killing the retired superheroes. This appears to be a good choice, since the detective form has one of the cleanest and most propulsive lines of any genre. It is also a form focused on finding out what happened in the past, usually having to do with who committed a murder. So the audience is more accepting in this form of looking backwards.

But the detective form has nowhere near the narrative drive needed to support this many backward looking journeys, for this many characters. And it cannot then flip to an action story line where a team defeats a supervillain who is trying to destroy the world.

The result is a film of three stories in which none is done well. Of the three, the most interesting by far is the story of the origin of this band of superheroes. Had the writers focused on this, they could have had a terrific film.

Of course all of this implies that the writers had a choice. All kinds of forces could have dictated that they somehow make the three-in-one story work. Faced with that task, you do the best job you can.

But whatever the reality of this film, Watchmen shows screenwriters that there are limits to how much you can hang on the narrative line. When mixing genres, the main rule is the pick one genre to be the primary one. Then be very careful how many other genre elements you hang on it. Or you’ll end up with some very nasty wreckage.

Hollywoodland

I'm sure it seemed like a great idea at the time. Cross cut between a detective story where a guy digs into the seedy underbelly of Hollywood and the drama of a C-level movie star committing suicide. These are two very different genres that have the potential of getting to the dark side of the American Dream. Some of the greatest movies in film history deal with this theme.

But it doesn't work here. In fact, this story devolves. A quick look at why highlights how important it is to explore your premise thoroughly before you write your script.

The first big structural mistake has to do with the detective line. This one doesn't build its revelations, leading to the biggest reveal of all, who-dunnit. Building revelations are the main reason people go to see detective stories, so that's a pretty big mistake. The detective in Hollywoodland goes through various scenarios. But about halfway through it becomes clear that his investigation is just one big stall. Without the rewards of ever-bigger reveals, the fuel runs out of the desire line. The result: the audience gets really pissed off.

The second structural problem has to do with the second storyline: the drama concerns a person I don't care about. This guy supposedly commits suicide because he can't get any parts other than Superman. That's a drag, no doubt, but Norma Desmond he ain't. A drama about a personal tragedy has to start with a complex character who has great flaws but also has an heroic quality, even when he's Willy Loman. The George Reeves character is bland, with little talent. He doesn't have great flaws. He doesn't have great strengths. Without a complex character to start with, the drama can't build as it explores the deeper issue at the hero's core. So again, the story becomes less, not more, interesting as it proceeds. You can't make a bigger mistake than that.

The third cause of failure has to do with the requirements and expectations of a cross-cut structure. When you do a cross-cut over the course of an entire story, you are highlighting the comparison between the two main characters and the two lines of action. That means that the juxtaposition between scenes in each line must create a greater meaning that only comes from comparison. That doesn't happen here beyond the most superficial level. Yes, both main characters are little men in the hierarchy of LA. Yes, both have personal problems with petty jobs and broken families. But you need a lot more detail than that for a comparison to trigger new insights.

If you want to see how to write a good drama and figure out the structural problems buried in your premise, take a look at the Great Screenwriting Class. Techniques for writing the detective story, including all the unique story beats, are found in the Detective, Crime and Thriller Class and the Detective Genre Software.

Proof

Proof is a highly-intelligent play in the tradition of Arcadia and Copenhagen. Writer David Auburn uses math as a foundation for a story about gender expectations, madness and love.

While Michael Freyn in Copenhagen uses the detective form to explore the Uncertainty Principle in personal relationships, Auburn uses the detective form to explore proof of identity and trust.

The structure gives us a first act that sets up a crime, and yet no crime seems to have been committed. The second act solves the crime that may not have been a crime at all.

See or read this play for techniques in bending a genre, in this case, the infinitely-malleable detective story.