A serial killer taxi driver takes revenge on behalf of victimised passengers while trying to avoid detection.
CraigDGriffithsUberwriter
A serial killer taxi driver takes revenge on behalf of victimised passengers while trying to avoid detection.
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Goes without saying mentally ill. ?Believes the archangel Ragaul (revenge) is working through him. I want to story to focus on a person doing bad things for a good reason and a cop that will be doing a good thing, catching him which will result in bad things going unpunished.
thanks in advance.
Anyone reading the logline will automatically think of “Taxi Driver”, a tough act to follow.? And I’m not sure the concept as presented in the logline sufficiently differentiates it from that movie.? For example, that he? is driven by audio/visual delusions.
Could the story be refocused to focus on the cop as the protagonist pursuing a serial killer taxi driver? Maybe?update it to?a good-guy cop pursuing a serial killer?Uber driver?? No doubt, you’ll ?have to use a fictional name for the ride sharing service.? But it would have a more contemporary hook.
fwiw
Agreed with DPG I actually thought this was a logline for Taxi Driver until I realised it wasn’t in the classics section.
“…a person doing bad things for good reasons…” describes most antagonists throughout time, you basically want to tell the story of an anti hero. Stories about anti heroes will always have an audience, but best to research the genres and types of characters that have been done already – Taxi Driver, Dexter, Psycho (half of…), The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc…
Secondly in regards to the logline it self, it doesn’t describe a plot rather a situation.
What ever direction you choose to develop the concept in, best to focus on specific events and actions i.e inciting incident and goal.
Thanks.
Here are the beats.
Believes he is getting revenge for people that cannot like Archangel Ragaul.
Confesses to Priest constantly (a reliable narrator – exposition tool).
The cops kill him. Ending his rein of justifiable murders.
Narative arc, he is doing what people think they would do if they wouldn’t get caught. The “better hope the cops get you before I do” mentality in all of us. ?His mental illness gives the audience a chance to see him as a victim as well. ?The priest is a voice of reason. ?When the cops kill him, the audience will know it was the right thing. ?But also know so much wrong will go unpunished.
Dexter potential parallels, but not cute or charming. ?This is real mental illness not TV mental illness.
Taxi Driver, just the car. ?Taxi Driver wanted to fix the world. ?This guy wants to punish the wicked, he sees the world as a good place where predators have to be culled. ?May be tricky to escape the comparison in a logline.
I’ll post a new version once I have one. Any attempts would be appreciated.
Still prefer the story told w/ the cop or detective as the protagonist?or at least as a co-protagonist.?Because a complicating moral factor for him could be that he knows, from their prior arrests, that it’s “street justice”, all the victims have it coming to them. ?The serial killer is not killing innocent people. ?But it’s his job to find and stop him because the killer is acting outside the law, as a vigilante.
And then there’s the priest. ?Surely he would do more than just listen to the confessions; he would/should ?want to do something proactive outside the confessional (without violating his vows of confidentiality although that vow should be pushed to the limit) ?to get the serial killer to stop, to turn himself in.
IOW: ?I see several angles of moral complexity, a triangulation of 3 story threads that could make for a very interesting story: ?the serial killer, the cop, the priest.
You haven’t described story beats rather the bare bones of a premise (not to be confused with character arc by the way), is there a particular bad guy in his sights? Is there one definitive thing he wants to do above all? In other words, what is the serial killer’s story goal? This could help structure a plot and shape the logline.
Secondly at what point does he realise the error of his ways? When does he overcome his flaw?
No, many bad guys. ?He sees a passenger that needs avenging and carries out revenge. ?He doesn’t have to change, think of?rorschach in Watchmen. ?He never changes and is willing to die rather than change.
The main question is “can we endorse bad things done for a good reason”. ?Can we resolve a bad outcome from a good act, just because it is a good act. ?I’ll post a new version soon. Still thinking it through.
How does the taxi driver know his passengers have been victimized and by whom?
Hello, I suggest you to start with the standard logline formula that helps you to detect story problems.
for exemple:
“When a delusional taxi driver convince himself he’s the exterminator angel, he must avenge his customer’s wrongs to save his own soul”.
I don’t know if this is true to your story but when you put things in this way it’s a lot easier to understand the concept and test its potential.
A character that doesn’t change will be 2 dimensional and likely make for a boring journey. Your philosophical question aside, why would the audience care about a person doing a “bad” thing and not whom doesn’t evolve during the story?
FFF the simple is always the best. ?His motivation is to do gods work. ?But thinks on your version. His sin that he is atoning for could be the trigger of his own insanity.
nice work…. Thank you.