Learn From Mediocre Movies
When you watch a classic like “Casablanca,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” or “It’s Wonderful Life,” it’s easy to feel intimidated by how well written the story might be. While you can learn much from watching great movies, you can learn just as much by watching mediocre movies so you can see what they did wrong. That way you can avoid repeating their mistakes.
Two of my latest favorite mediocre movies are the 2023 “Haunted Mansion” movie and “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” The 2023 “Haunted Mansion” movie bills itself as a supernatural horror comedy, but there’s almost no horror or suspense associated with horror movies, and also almost no comedy either. When you have a horror comedy lacking both horror and comedy, you basically have nothing at all.
“Haunted Mansion” tries to generate humor through jokes and outside references such as mentioning items sold by Amazon or purchased from a CVS pharmacy. Depending on outside references from your story for humor is a sure fire way to failure. True humor stems from the interaction of the character’s personalities and their relationship with each other that’s integral to the story.
Just watch the original “Ghostbusters” movie, which is a horror comedy, and compare it to the much weaker 20203 “Haunted Mansion.” In “Ghostbusters,” the characters have distinct personalities that clash in humorous ways. In “Haunted Mansion,” the characters exist with no sense of a goal of their own or personalities that are memorable in any way.
“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” suffers from the same lack of goals for the major characters. Instead of learning who these people are and what they want, we get caricatures of people who wade into danger, find a way out, and stroll away with no sense that they were ever really in trouble at all. We see lots of these characters killing Nazis but what we don’t see is how this action helps any of the characters change in any meaningful way because none of the characters have any personalities or goals. They’re simply puppets to parade across the screen, using various weapons to kill Nazis without any sense for what all this action means to any of the characters.
Imagine watching “Star Wars” where Luke and Han Solo simply run around the Death Star, shooting storm troopers with no sense of tension or suspense because they have no emotional goal. That would be boring, and that’s exactly what “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” gives us, lifeless, bloodless characters who have no emotional goals whatsoever. As a result, all the action in the world means nothing.
In “Star Wars,” Luke gradually learns to trust himself so all his fighting against storm troopers and TIE fighters shows us his growing maturity and trust in himself. Watching Han Solo single-handedly chase a bunch of storm troopers away shows us how he’s changed from only thinking of himself to thinking about protecting others.
You won’t see any emotional change in any of the characters in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” because the characters have no emotional goals. Therefore all action is simply repetitive and meaningless.
The lesson from “Haunted Mansion” is that if you’re going to write a horror comedy, make sure every scene has horror (suspense) and/or comedy. If every scene lacks both horror and comedy, you’re not writing a horror comedy. You’re writing a dull, boring story that pretends to be a horror comedy but without the horror or the comedy.
The lesson from “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is that stories are only interesting if the characters have an emotional goal so they change over time into a better person. The action forces them to change. That doesn’t happen in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” because the characters begin the same as they end – confident, arrogant, and sure of themselves. With no emotional change, there’s nothing of interest beyond more and more action.
So if you ever doubt your ability to write a great screenplay, watch and learn from watching mediocre movies like “Haunted Mansion” or “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” and question how no one could see the glaring flaws in both movies just by reading the script ahead of time. When you see numerous mediocre movies made (and lose money), it should inspire you to do much better, but only if you’re willing to learn the lessons from the mistakes of others.
Sign up to take a FREE course about how to write scenes in a screenplay.
