A crazed sidekick searching for a new villain sets her sights on a mild-mannered journalist with a powerful secret.
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A crazed sidekick searching for a new villain sets her sights on a mild-mannered journalist with a powerful secret.
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Sidekick to who?? What is her role, her regular job?
Why is she searching for a new villain?? Out of spite, out of malevalence, out of boredom, or….?
Does she know the journalist;s secret?? If not, then what motivates her to target him?
I suggest running the logline through the site logline generator.
(Oh, “and sets her sights” is rather vague, uninformative.? What is her specific objective goal?)
You seem to have a convoluted plot story.? Which isn’t necessarily bad for the script.? But when it comes to the logline, all the twists, turns and reversals have to be stripped down to the essentials.
So what are the essentials? Well, there needs to be
1] A clearly defined, interesting protagonist…
2] Who as a result of an inciting incident…
3] locks into a struggle for specific, clearly defined, objective goal…
3a] A struggle that an audience can get behind, root for her to succeed. (Batman)
or
3b] A struggle that an audience will find fascinating to watch even if it violates their moral sensibilities. (The Joker)
4] The struggle has stakes. Serious stakes: there is something important to be gained with success, lost with failure…
5] But her goal is in serious doubt because she faces a seemingly insurmountable obstacle or foe (antagonist) — the odds are be overhelmingly NOT in her favor.
Finally, the combination of the above ingredients must create the most important logline element: an irresistible hook, aka: the grab, the juice, the je ne sais quoi — that certain something that stimulates curiosity, fires up the imagination, makes the script an irresistible read.
Now then. Supervillain’s are a dime a dozen. So how does your supervillain stand out from the mob of supervillains clamoring for screen time? What is there about her that’s new, different, that’s never been seen on the screen befor?? What is there about her that makes her story hook material? (And also has franchise potential. A super-somebody without franchise possibilities is DOA in development.)
Furtherless:
It seems to me that having her uber-boss get caught and imprisoned is a too easy reversal, a? lucky break.? And nothing should be easy for the protagonist.? The antagonist gets all the lucky breaks in drama, the protagonist gets none.? A protagonist must earn success the old fashioned way, through hard effort, suffering and persistence.
It might make for an entire movie by itself for the sidekick protege to plot, to connive, to struggle to overthrow her boss.? An origin story, perhaps.
fwiw
I haven’t read through the whole thread, so some of this may have been covered – sorry.
Defining the protagonist as “…crazed…” is risky. Most good protagonists are characters people can empathize with, and crazy is not something viewers will easily accept. There are rare exceptions (Joker, American Psycho, A Clock Work Orange, etc…), however, most of these are based on pre-existing IP and usually have a known creative team behind them. It might be best to redefine the protagonist as desperate or aspiring instead.