Thoughts on the scipt: Medieval

You know when you read a screenplay or see a movie or something and you want to run out and tell everybody how much you loved it but everybody’s already talking about how terrible it was?

Yeah, well.

Carson Reeves at Script Shadow and Scott Myers from Go Into The Story decided to make today a challenge for readers. We were to read the screenplay for Medieval and post our reviews as a discussion in the comments based on their reviews. Not one to back down from such a challenge, I read the script this morning when I was supposed to be making photocopies and lesson plans, which is why my lesson plan for today is “Hey, fill out this thing and see what you know.”

So I read Medieval. And I fucking loved it. And apparently nobody else did.

Medieval is the story of seven different warriors - a Samurai, a Knight, a Gypsy, a Zulu, an Arab, a Viking (easily the most forgettable and unnecessary of the group), and a Monk - who are rescued from prison supposedly to steal the king’s crown, but soon find they were set up to take the fall for the king’s assassination,. Now the king’s brother, presumably the assassin’s boss, has sent his entire army of comic book warriors after our seven reluctant heroes. Also, there’s a girl.

Here are the problems:

They need to up their character development. A few characters are a tad anemic, but a pass or two will fix that problem, since all they really need is an extra moment here and there, a moment they could fold into the existing narrative.

This script has waaaaaay too many allusions. These guys obviously love movies and action movies in particular, so every couple of minutes they use a line from Star Wars or Cool Hand Luke or whatever, which is annoying because it takes me out of the script and makes me groan. I’d rather they just use their own words, because when they do it’s excellent.

Except that they use their own words just a tad too much. Now I love a good aside as much as anybody, but these guys are trying way too hard.

The story is reminiscent of many others. This is The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen and The Usual Suspects all over the place. I don’t think they were trying to hide it.

All that said, I don’t give a shit. I loved this script.

I loved it because it never stopped moving. This is the kind of momentum movies like Crank strive for, a constant rush from beginning to end, with just enough downtime to let you catch your breath. The action scenes, although at times a bit confusing, are straight up badass. Watching a Monk fight a Sumo wrestler and a Knight go to town on some Teutonics - cool. The set pieces here are amazing, and the writers make full use of their locations and the skills of their characters.

And the twist ending surprised me in a good way. I didn’t see it coming and I loved the way I’d been tricked. It kind of petered out after that, so on a rewrite they definitely need to finish on a stronger note, but all in all I was pleased as hell. It was a fast read and a strong story. There are some historical inaccuracies they need to clear up, but they left themselves a window when they put these characters in this time period and gave them modern language right from minute one - they established that this is a modern world inside an old world.

Anyway, I thought it was fucking fantastic overall. Nobody else did except the people who paid all the money to buy it. I’m not sure what that says about me.