Minion (Accidental Hero)
RichievSingularity
-TAKE #2- After being fired for accidentally killing the Hero, a disgraced 'minion of the warlord' is conscripted by the local village to become their champion and face his former evil boss.
Share
Have an account? Sign In Now
It was apparent from the responses, ‘Minion’ was too vague so I added ‘Minion of the Warlord’ to be more specific.
Hi Richie
I didn’t see this new chat before, so I gave you some proposals on the previous.
Due to my broken english, it seems to me that words like “fired”, “boss” don’t match very well with a martial arts China’s middle-age story.
JM
Gotta agree with Jean-Marie. Kind of a mismatch.
Also, trying to read it as if for the first time, as if I know nothing about the story or previous iterations, my eyeballs — Occidental (and myopic) eyeballs — stumble over “the Hero”.
What Hero? Whose Hero? Reading on I deduce it’s the hero of a village. I deduce because it’s not explicitly stated.
And then my Occidental eyeballs stumble again over ‘minion of the Warlord’. Well, I expressed my concern about that in the other thread. Enough said.
You have a challenge explaining and hooking Occidental minds on a story set in the Orient with Oriental cultural concepts and relationships.
Although, come to think about it, this is a movie that whose natural target is a Chinese production company and audience. So who do you conceive as the target for the money and production of your script?
Hi you two,
IMO (I just understood today what it means!), This is a movie for both occidental and oriental targets:
– Martial arts movies are successful in occident (Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, the seven samourais,…) and we like epic stories.
– Asians like them too, even more if it is related to their own History.
I see two difficulties to make it in China:
– A lot of martial arts movies are already made in China and chinese are most protectionist than Hollywood. However, the entry gate for chinese cinema is Honk Kong.
– Chinese culture construction is complex, with a lot of codes and paradigms harder to understand than three-acts-construction, protagonist VS antagonist or Hero’s Journey. If you want to do it, I think that you must deeply explore the Chinese culture and History, espacially the “Wuxia” phenomenon. Great lines as similar to ours as it match with the Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, but the differences are in every details of everything in life.
Your chinese audience may find your story like you find my english sometimes!
Maybe they will enjoy better a good occidental movie about their cultural heritage than a strange Chinese movie.
Below some links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youxia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia
http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.fr/2013/03/guest-post-writing-wuxia-as-chinese.html (don’t know if is good)
And recent movie made in Honk-Kong with surprising special effects (In accordance with my taste, this is not the best of the genre, but maybe it is what chinese like?):
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnloiu_wu-xia-vostfr-partie-1_shortfilms#.UbSv0vnwaSo
An other link (better I think) on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ancientseries
I hope this will be helpful.
All the best.
Hey guys thanks for the great comments.
This movie takes place in a slightly surreal version of ancient China. There are some comedic elements to it.
I may have to find a way to get that across in the logline.
Jean-Marie. I agree with your comments, in fact I am not sure where to send it. Hollywood doesn’t like all non-white casts and Asia probably wouldn’t the like ‘American’ Sense of humor in the movie.
I saw on the map of visitors that there is several members of Logline.it in China. Maybe you could ask them some feeback (you can put something like “chinese feedback wanted” next to your logline).
The Chinese movie market is too big for Hollywood to ignore. BUT China restricts the number of non-native (read: Hollywood) films that can be shown in its domestic market in favor of home-grown productions. BUT there is serious money coming to Hollywood from China looking for movies to invest it.
It’s a complicated economic/cross-cultural situation. But a potentially lucrative one for the right scripts.
Richiev:
Another thought, a Plan “B” if you encounter too much resistance to your story because of it’s exotic setting (in time and geography):
Convert the premise of your plot to a sci-fi or western genre story.
Precendents:
The Seven Samurai —> The Magnificent Seven
Yojimbo —> A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing
Hidden Fortress —> Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
The conversion worked for those films and (imho) will work for yours because at the core of the stories is an archetypal character and/or situation. And archetypes work independent of cultures or genres.
In the case of your story, the archetype I see is the transformational arc of a loser nobody into winning somebody. The story of a minion, picador, second fiddle, bit player who by chance and fate is given one last chance to overcome his circumstances, his own doubts and weaknesses to become a paladin for the downtrodden, a valiant hero.
That core conceit of your story is a universal that can be translated into other contexts, other genres. (And frankly, more than the location or time period, is the hook of the story for me. It’s what stirs my imagination, my emotions.)
fwiw
‘…That core conceit of your story is a universal that can be translated into other contexts, other genres…’ — hear, hear. You could set it present day… again, If you end up going plan ‘B’ down the track…
You do make a good point Tony. Part of the fun is the surreal version of ancient China but if it’s too far fetched, changing it to modern times could be a solution.
Hi Richiev; I got the idea on the first reading. (I made a short film years ago with a similar premise, where the sidekick of a hero on an epic quest is thrust into the limelight, after “The Hero” dies in the first act, and the characters of the film’s world are self aware enough to know that they don’t know how the story is meant to progress with the hero dead).
I just think the language needs a bit of a tidy up.
“After defeating a legendary hero in a minor skirmish, a disgraced henchman agrees to become the champion of a local village in order to overthrow the tyranny of his former master.”
It’s a tricky one to get down, but I see what you’re getting at. Good luck nailing this one down.
Hello to all of you.
I think that nicholasandrewhalls is on the right way. His logline is better than all whe wrote up to now
Nicholas, I like what you wrote, (even though your summery isn’t quite what the script is about) you seemed to catch the essence.
Nice job
How about this: (An offshoot of what Nick wrote)
After accidentally killing a noble hero, a disgraced henchman is forced become the champion of a local village in order to overthrow the tyranny of his former master.?