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THE FOUR FEATHERS by Tom McCurrie
Let's flashback to the 70s. You are more popular than Burt Reynolds. Why? Because you wear the bell-bottoms to end all bell-bottoms. These things aren't pants. They're sails, man. Not surprisingly, you are the hippest guy of the decade.
Now cut to 2002. You are still wearing the bell-bottoms to end all bell-bottoms. But instead of being Mr. Popular, people laugh and throw small pointy rocks at you. Soon you are sedated and bundled off to a mental hospital to spend the rest of your days hooked up to a Thorazine drip.
How could this happen? Well, what was hip in the 70s isn't so today. Anyone who wears bell-bottoms better be going to a costume ball, otherwise he'll be seen as dated, i.e. hopelessly out of touch with today's culture.
The same can be said for scripts. If your characters, plots and themes are dated, an audience won't be able to relate to them. And if your audience can't relate to your script, you are in big, big trouble. That, unfortunately, is the case with THE FOUR FEATHERS.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
Written by Michael Schiffer and Hossein Amini, and based on the novel by A.E.W. Mason, THE FOUR FEATHERS tells the story of Harry, a cowardly Englishman who decides to prove his mettle fighting the Mahdi in 19th century Sudan. On the surface, this sounds pretty cool.
But then you see the movie, and experience in living color the stilted acting, obvious dialogue and choppy, incoherent action scenes (neutered to get that commercially desirable PG-13 rating). Not cool.
Of course, bad acting, dialogue and direction are not something you can call dated nowadays. In fact, they are so universal in contemporary cinema that their mere presence doesn't necessarily interfere with a movie's success (unfortunately).
But that doesn't go for the heart of your script -- the premise. Just like those bell-bottom jeans, the premise is the first thing an audience sees. And if that premise is dated, as it is in THE FOUR FEATHERS, you're dead right out of the gate.
So what's so dated about the premise? Basically, everything. Our hero Harry has to prove his bravery fighting the Mahdi and his rebel armies in the Sudan. The problem is the English are the invaders, subjugating the Sudanese (with the help of the Egyptians) for the glory of the British Empire. And, as a modern-day popcorn-chewer, that's something I simply can't relate to. Ergo, the premise is dated, hopelessly out of touch with my times.
After all, why should I care whether the British hold on to the Sudan? Was it theirs in the first place (I don't think so)? Why should I give a hoot about their Empire, especially if it means colonizing someone else? Since I have no rooting interest in Harry and his comrades winning, since I'm not swept away by the colonial impulse of the late 19th Century, I cease to care about the characters' fight. And if I don't care about the characters' desires and goals, how can I sympathize with them? Not very well, believe me.
Now 100 years ago, at the height of the British Empire, this colonizing instinct, this attempt to educate the "savages," was widely recognized (at least in Western culture) as a positive attribute. If Paramount were to time-travel the flick back to 1885, I'm sure it would find a receptive audience. But times have changed; the preservation of a "noble" Empire is no longer a frame of reference most people believe in, and are even less willing to die for.
The writers try to avoid this problem by excising the political context altogether -- the way the script is constructed, we have only the vaguest idea why the British are in the Sudan in the first place (maybe they like traipsing around the desert in their bright red uniforms). Unfortunately, this black narrative hole only makes matters worse, since the conflict in the Sudan is so confusing and underwritten you don't care what happens anyway.
Now that doesn't mean all period films are dated. Look at BRAVEHEART. You can't be any more dated than castles and broadswords. But BRAVEHEART had a universal theme of revenge, of doing the right thing in the face of tyranny, that audiences across the ages could relate to. By making the protagonists colonizers, THE FOUR FEATHERS doesn't have that universal appeal, so the whole plot comes off as airless and insular, uninteresting to anyone who doesn't wear the Victoria Cross.
So even if you set your script 1,000 years ago, make sure its characters, plots and themes are universal enough to appeal to today's audiences. After all, you wouldn't want to find yourself on a Thorazine drip, would you?
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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