Script Review: The Book of Eli by Gary Whitta and Anthony Peckham
[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]
The Book of Eli tells a pretty straightforward western story: one taciturn man shows up in a town controlled by a power-hungry madman. Captain Taciturn (hereafter known as Eli) has something the madman wants, and the madman is confounded when Eli won’t give it up immediately. He’s not used to a fight, but a fight is exactly what Eli intends to give him. Does any of this sound familiar?
The amazing thing about The Book of Eli is that it uses genre tropes so damn effectively. It paints a startling, “a few years after The Day After” nightmare world, but aside from that, it’s your standard western plot. More than anything, it shows the importance of developing characters. Audiences are much more willing to go along with a plot they’ve seen before (and what plot haven’t they seen before?) if the characters within that well-worn storyline breathe new life into it.
The script opens with a surprisingly subdued sequence that establish the script’s world, tone, and protagonist more effectively than any script I read in 2008. In a decaying California forest, a disgusting feral cat scavenges for food. It finds a corpse. Eli is tracking the cat, himself scavenging for food (the comparison between the man and the animal is much subtler in the script than in my summary). He’s a careful, practical hunter with a small but varied arsenal (bow and arrow, samurai sword, and shotgun). Based on the condition of his clothes, it’s evident that he’s been a nomad in this world for many years.
After successfully catching the cat, Eli moves out onto a two-lane highway. He comes upon an old corpse, checks it for new boots, and is annoyed when he finds none. Later, he finds a woman whose shopping cart has overturned. She offers Eli a can of pet food to keep him from hurting her, but he has no interest in hurting her. When she asks for help fixing the wheel of her cart, Eli senses an ambush — and when he sniffs the air and smells the post-soap stench of a pack of bandits. They want Eli’s rucksack, but he won’t give it up. He explains this to them calmly, but when they get a bit insistent, he kills them all in a blur of sword strikes and blood. Then, he takes their water and moves on, refusing to take the woman with him.
Eli searches the ruins of an abandoned town until he finds a dead man hanging from a rope in his house (whether he was hanged by others or committing suicide is unclear). Eli takes the man’s shoes and spends the night in the house. He builds a fire, cooks up the cat carcass, and shares a bit with a squatting mouse. He reads from a thick, leather-bound book protected by a big, brass lock (Eli wears the key on a St. Christopher necklace around his neck). He plugs an old iPod into a car battery and plays Mozart’s D-minor piano concerto, and it takes Eli away.
That’s Eli: a man who refuses to give up his desire to return to a world that no longer exists. He arrives in Sacramento looking for help recharging his battery. While waiting, he manages to inadvertently piss off a man working for the town’s big cheese, an asshole slave-driver named Hawthorne (this has since changed to Carnegie, apparently). Hawthorne has his men searching the ruins of the city for one particular book, but the illiterates keep coming back with crappy bestsellers and self-help books. Are Eli and Hawtorne on a collision course for wackiness?
Maybe, but first, Eli gets Hawthorne’s attention by killing nearly everyone in the water bar he owns. Hawthorne recognizes Eli’s intellect and skill with a weapon. He tries to offer Eli employment, and to coax him into saying “yes,” he plies Eli with sex with a 16-year-old bar wench, Solara. Eli turns her down. The next day, Solara shocks Hawthorne by saying grace before a meal — as she saw Eli doing the night before. Solara tells Hawthorne she assumed Eli got it from “his book.” That’s right: for those of you who haven’t already figured it out, “The Book of Eli” is the Bible. It’s only a low-level surprise in the script — not portrayed as a mind-blowing shock like several events that occur in the third act and shall remain unknown.
From the point Hawthorne discovers Eli has a Holy Bible, and Eli discovers Hawthorne wants his Bible, the story moves in a pretty straightforward progression. Hawthorne fights to take the Bible, and Eli fights to keep it. Nothing extraordinary, narratively —
— and yet, the vivid descriptions of setting and action by the writers help to elevate the script. Part of this is because they spend a lot of time describing subtle character moments. Eli and Hawthorne are incredible characters, and much of that comes as a result of these descriptions. This script is a great example of using observable actions to develop characters. More than that, the writers do a great job of establishing not so much a “good vs. evil” conflict as a “tricky gray area” conflict. Eli’s intent on getting his Bible to a library that, as the script goes along, might be a figment of his imagination. He realizes the importance of the book, and he’s willing to kill anyone who wants to stop him or take his book. On the other hand, Hawthorne has dim recollections of the time before Armageddon, and he remembers the power religion once wielded — if he can bring it back, he can control more than just Sacramento. Despite the ease with which the writers could slide into hokey religious clichés, the script isn’t purely about religion: it’s about the value of hope, faith, and the power of the written word (all three foreign concepts in this universe, and one might argue in ours, as well). However, as lead characters go, Solara is a bit weaker than the two men. She’s given similarly compelling actions to reveal who she is, but the writers didn’t do nearly as good a job of selling her Big Decision (whether or not to abandon her Hawthorne-fucking mother to follow Eli, whom she starts to see as a father figure) as they do in selling the motives and behavior of the others. It’s a minor complaint in a great script, however.
The florid writing also gives detail to the third act’s extensive action sequences. Many scripts lack this vividness, and I can never figure out if it’s terrible writing or a result of just writing “placeholder” actions that the director and/or stunt coordinators and/or special effects artists can flesh out. I’m always a bigger fan of writing like this, though. It might step on toes in other aspects of the production, but it allows for immersion that the majority of scripts I read lack. Personally, I always want to be immersed in the story, even if it’s a schlocky romantic comedy. It’s especially important in a script like this, though. The writers are developing a post-Apocalyptic vision from the ground up. The more they describe, the easier it is to see a place that feels real, with a consistent set of rules governing its characters. More than that, when the script descends into an orgy of violence and explosions, my eyes don’t roll quite as hard when the sequences have visceral, suspenseful descriptions. Take this random example plucked from the middle of the script:
INT. WRECKED 747 - CONTINUOUS ACTION
The aisles are full of debris, human and otherwise. Slow going.
Solara climbs onto a seat, works her way towards the back of the plane, using the seat backs as stepping stones and the forest of downed oxygen masks as hand holds. A ray of sunlight indicates a hole in the fuselage. She heads for that.
The Hijacker Leader pursues her, churning through the debris like a bulldozer, blood pouring from his nose.
Solara reaches the ray of sunlight, looks up at the hole. It is small and jagged and high. Bad idea. She looks around wildly — sees something.
Solara leaps for the EMERGENCY EXIT DOOR at the back of the 747, takes a quick, intelligent look at the diagram.
Breaks the glass. Rips the handle down. Pushes.
Nothing happens. The Hijacker Leader closes in.
Desperate, Solara kicks the emergency door. Then slams her entire body against it. Once. Twice. The Hijacker Leader’s hands are actually on her when she charges the door a third time.
The EMERGENCY DOOR GIVES WAY suddenly, bright light shafts into this aluminum mausoleum —
— and Solara plummets out.
EXT. WRECKED 747 - CONTINUOUS ACTION
Solara lands hard next to the emergency door, drags herself to her hands and knees, winded, looks left and right.
Sees one of the other hijackers (with a rifle) coming at her over the wing of the 747.
Still winded, she levers herself to her feet, takes one step away —
— when the HIJACKER LEADER LANDS ON HER BACK, having jumped from the emergency exit.
Solara goes down hard, stays down.
Compare that to a “fight sequence” from next week’s review selection, Warrior: The bell rings and White Lightning comes out possessed, rocking Thunder back on his heels with an arsenal of punches and kicks. I guarantee you that sentence will play better than it reads, but that’s kind of the issue for green screenwriters. I’m sure the guys who wrote Warrior didn’t give a fuck about impressing some hotshot reader, but most of you reading this are not in their position. You need to impress the reader or assistant so he or she passes your script along to his or her boss, right? Well, the excerpt from The Book of Eli may not change the way you think about the world, but it’s much more absorbing than Warriors.
More than anything, the attention to detail makes the script feel fresher and more unique than it really is. I don’t mean that to sound insulting — part of the reason I flat-out loved this script is because it manages the a sizable feat. Especially in the third act, the story goes in the expected direction in very unexpected ways. As a random example, Eli pissing off Hawthorne’s toady is a scene that appears in countless westerns. However, it doesn’t generally tend to happen because said toady is insulted by a perceived slight against his mangy pet cat. The bizarre details of this world and the characters in it elevate what could have been a pedestrian script.
(Incidentally, for those of you crybabying that this is just a big knockoff of The Road, you’re wrong: it’s actually a knockoff of Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney, only with the Bible instead of a creepy astronaut DJ trapped in a satellite orbiting the post-Apocalyptic hellscape. I think the Bible was a better choice.)
So what’s up? I loved the script, and I still love it after giving it a second glance. It stars Denzel Washington and was directed by the not-untalented Hughes brothers. Why did they bury it with a January release? Why did they cut a trailer and TV spots that make it look like a shitty movie that’s already been made five times in the past year? Is Hollywood still afraid of the Bible, or did the Hughes brothers botch it? I’ll find out this weekend — that’s right, this is the rare script I liked enough to actually see the movie in a timely fashion. Even Whip It is languishing in my Netflix queue.
Posted by Stan on January 12, 2010 1:54 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Reviews | Digg It
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