An orphaned young woman discovers she’s only half human when an Alien warrior is unleashed on earth to destroy the only weapon capable of stopping the forthcoming invasion, her.
EricaSamurai
An orphaned young woman discovers she’s only half human when an Alien warrior is unleashed on earth to destroy the only weapon capable of stopping the forthcoming invasion, her.
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“An orphaned young woman discovers she?s only half human when an Alien warrior is unleashed on earth to destroy the only weapon capable of stopping the forthcoming invasion, her.”
This still doesn’t describe the plot. You really only describe the inciting incident and nothing else. So, quite simply all you need to add is what her goal becomes after she discovers this, which is of course implied, but still you don’t describe it.
Example:?After?an Alien warrior reveals that his species’s army is coming to capture her, an alien-human hybrid must use her powers to stop the forthcoming invasion.?(~26 words)
I removed the orphan part because the more interesting part is the discovery of her actual heritage and power. My example is still a bit vague, though. What does she need to do in order to stop the invasion?
On another note, since in your last version you mentioned a prequel to this, I am curious about what that story is about.
It’s a bit better but still very muddled, vague and confusing.
I’d try?An alien-human hybrid must choose to save her adopted planet Earth or fight back against her father’s army when they invade Earth.
That’s a hook i’d be interested in, a choice it would be tough to make and either way could make for a good film.
An orphan discovers she is only half human and earth only defence against invasion when she forced into a life and death struggle with an alien assassin.
Could be a bit long. Try to use words that are the function for brevity. A warrior sent to kill her – assassin. That sort of thing.
I hope this helps.
I appreciate the effort to turn the premise into a franchise and I think the premise has franchise potential, but, IMHO, the “origin story” — as a logline — is no where as interesting. ?It’s only a setup for the ‘real story’, the adventures and character arc of the female protagonist. ?To sell a franchise, you gotta 1st havel one durable protagonist, one who can generate a story line over multiple films. ?And the ex-military specialist is not that kind of character. ?The hybrid female is.
So of the two, I think the 2nd is the more marketable, has the better chance of getting made, because it is similar to Star Wars: The New Hope, ?which as we all know booted up off that franchise. ? And how did it boot up the franchise? The story started in media res — with an ongoing conflict. ?The origin story only got told after the franchise had been thoroughly established by the adventures and character arc of Luke Skywalker. “Thoroughly established” meaning it made billions of dollars and 20th Century Fox wanted to make billions more.
So I suggest focusing on the story for this logline. ?If this movie is a box-office hit, the studio will be keenly interested in further episodes (more so in moving the story forward: ?what happens next, more than what happened before, however.)
You’ve described the character as a “young woman” which indicates to me that you still intend to introduce the character as woman in her 20’s. ?Once again, I strongly urge you to consider recasting her as a teenager and so describing her in the logline. ?IMHO, it will work better as a coming of age story AND it will greatly expand the target audience. ? Which means it will make the script more marketable.
Who is your prime target audience besides women? ?The teenage/young adult is a highly desirable and a proven profitable demographic. ?The 20-something demographic, not so much, particularly for women. ?Making movies is commerce ?as well as art. ?The studios aren’t running charities. ?They’re making movies to make money. ? I urge you to study the market for the genre and gender of your story.
fwiw
I appreciate you’ve made a considerable investment — emotion and time — in your current ?version. ?But please put that all aside ?for a moment. ?Let’s role play.
Pretend I’m a producer or head of a studio. ?(I can dream too, can’t I?) ? You’re objective goal is to persuade me to invest ?millions of dollars in your script. ?And ?I don’t care how hard you’ve worked on your current version. ?I care about the bottom line. ?And the bottom line for films of this genre and gender (based on other franchises with female protagonists, “The Hunger Games”, “Divergent”, “Twilight”) tell me that having the protagonist as a teenager/”young adult” is the sweet spot to create a new heroine around whom to build a new, profitable franchise.
What’s your pitch? ?What’s your logical argument that an older character (18-24) is going to sell more tickets than a younger one (say 16)?
I haven’t seen ?”The Big Picture” . ?But I have seen Robert Altman’s “The Player” which has several funny pitching scenes where real writers do cameos in which they revamp their story lines and characters based on the feedback they’re getting from the movie executive. ?All improvised dialogue, btw, ?based on their humiliating experiences in real pitching sessions. ?That’s show biz.
When you say different from “The Hunger Games”, it’s already different, or so it seems to me, so I don’t see what the issue is. ?(BTW, marketing aside, my other argument is that you’re story would benefit by harnessing the full potential of hero’s journey archetype instead of only part of it.)
Not sure if I’m getting any closer yet but I thought I would try this one out:
A high school senior finds herself in a struggle to stop an Alien Warrior unleashed on earth to destroy a weapon capable of stopping the forthcoming invasion, a half-breed human, her
Rather than “high school senior” I suggest teenager. ?Saves 2 words, says essentially the same thing. ?Of course, you’re going to have to commit to a specific age in the script — but “teenager” is good enough for the logline.
I’m more inclined toward “person” than “weapon”. ?I assume you selected “weapon” because you want to convey the sense of her latent powers. ? She may be a hybrid but she’s has emotions, thoughts, hopes and dreams similar to the rest of us, right? ?So she would be the only person who can stop the invasion.
Which got me to thinking: she’s that much of a threat to the alien invasion — and they only send one alien to kill her? ?To insure the success of the mission, wouldn’t they send an entire “death squad”? ? Although there was an alpha-Agent, Smith, pursuing Neo in “The Matrix”, he was leading a team. ?That’s the measure of the threat he posed to the Matrix.
In all this recent feedback, alas, I haven’t presented an alternative logline. ?My mind is still processing one. ?Suffice it to say, this is a story I want to root for.
Best wishes.
“Problem I?m running into is, wouldn?t trying to survive, be the plot?? At least that?s the way I?m thinking of it.”
Well,?is?that the plot? Is the plot surviving or fighting?
As for the age, personally(as a 17 year old male) I have grown a bit tired of the constant coming of age stories(at least definitely in books, I’m not sure about many in film). Perhaps mostly because of 1) The Chosen One shtick, at least when it is used as deus ex machina, and also often leads to 2) The Mighty Whitey trope, where a white male(I don’t ever recall a female being used in this way) has to save the incompetent dark people, using their own weapons and culture better than they do. ?And also 3) The stories often rush the discovery and mastery of the powers.
However, I think Star Wars is pretty good at it. Luke doesn’t even face Vader in the first movie, and then he is defeated still in the second, and in the last he doesn’t defeat the more powerful Emperor, but Vader does. Luke’s ?progression of power is believable, he wouldn’t realistically be able to defeat Vader or Palpatine, after their years of practice.
Since you mention Hunger Games, I actually think you could use an element of that. Rather than have her completely unknowing of her power, which leads to an unbelievably quick mastery of said power, you could have her have some knowledge of it. Katniss is already adept at archery, your character could be adept at least a trick or two, which she has used in her life, but then she discovers more as the story moves along.
Another angle you could think of is she abandoned her powers long ago because of a traumatic experience, and now she has to reluctantly embrace them to save the world, in this case I think 20-something would definitely work. As a teen she used her powers and did something horrible, and then she tried to forget about it.
Then again, that could be an idea for a ?sequel.
As for the actual logline, it should simply include:
Inciting incident, possibly. What specific action pushes her into action, what event shapes her goal? Example being Luke’s family being killed.
What is the goal? What does the climax of the film resolve?
What is the first action she takes in achieving that goal? (In other words, Luke goes with Ben Kenobi to deliver R2 after his family is killed )
Like Dkpough1 I am weary of the “Chosen One-Great White Hope” trope. ? Which this story would seem to avoid given the character is a hybrid species, hence and hopefully won’t be cast with a blue-eyed, bleach-blonde Aryan. (But casting is beyond the control of the writer.)
As to coming of age: I am actually thinking of coming of age/rite of passage plot scenarios explicit and implicit in mythology and the Hero’s Journey paradigm.
>>>The plot is, trying to survive,
Katniss Everdeen is trying to survive in “The Hunger Games”, too. ? The plot is about her particular?process of surviving. ?What is your character’s particular process of surviving? ?What distinguishes your character’s struggle to survive from hers? ?(And through her process of surviving, the plot in “The Hunger Games” becomes about more, a lot more, than merely staying alive. )
fwiw
Actually, from what I’ve seen, this story wouldn’t really fall under the Mighty Whitey trope anyway, but still the type of story usually creates that situation. It’s not really even Chosen One material, she’s just a girl who has powers, it not the “there was an ancient prophecy that you are the one to kill this person” situation. Put even if she is part alien, as you said it does not stop a blonde, blue-eyed person from being cast. Or even from someone casting the character as male.