Pick one

Hoo boy, I’m going to regret using a meme template for this image, but it’s a meta template! Plus, in ten years I’m going to warmly wax about the 2019s, and in twenty there won’t be electricity, so enjoy it, shut up and be grateful!

Anyway, I’m getting an increasing awareness of the simplicity necessary to make a good movie, that you have to pick one theme and go with it. Mr. Stephen King suggests asking a what if question at the beginning of a story, and that’s a good idea. Mine is simpler, ask a yes or no question and have the ending answer it. From Mr. Tony Gilroy, re: his rescuing Star Wars: Rogue One:

Things require a purity. (Rogue One is) a movie about sacrifice…and (you) need to motivate (the characters) with a purity throughout the way…every scene in the movie has to be about the movie (emphasis mine).

Often movies have a multiplicities of ideas and directions and feelings. No matter how good the scene, you pick one (usually around the lead), and have the scenes and other characters reflect and challenge that. Better to have a series of good scenes around one idea than a bunch of great scenes around a bunch of great ideas. And your scenes? They’re not that great anyway.