Premise: In the near future, a new scientific procedure
allows people to shrink themselves to four inches tall, which reduces their
carbon imprint on the planet, putting less stress on the environment. But this shrinking leads to a whole new set
of problems.
About: Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants,
Election) was getting ready to make this a couple of years back but, at the
last second, moved away from it and made The Descendants instead. Although no one’s stated exactly WHY the
project was ditched, I have a pretty good idea after reading the script.
Writers: Alexander Payne
Details: 157 pages – undated
Errr…
Umm….
Am I in the Twilight Zone?
This has to be one of the strangest scripts I’ve ever read
by a professional screenwriter. Even
Charlie Kaufman is going, “Dude, you went off the reservation with this one,
buddy.”
Now going off the reservation can be a good thing. Most writers write stories smack dab in the
middle of the reservation. Which is why
they’re so predictable and boring. This
is anything but predictable. However,
there’s a point when you have to say, “Maybe I’ve gone too far.” And, actually, it appears that this Academy
Award Winning writer realized that, which is why he made The Descendants
instead.
So what is Downsizing?
Maybe I’ll find out during this review.
A Norweigen scientist named Dr. Jorgen Asbjornsen
accidentally discovers how to shrink living matter down to 1/6000th
of its original size. The implications
of this are extraordinary. In a world
where we’re destroying our resources on an hourly basis, the idea of shrinking
someone down to the point where they leave 1/6000th of a carbon
footprint on the planet could be the difference between losing our world and
saving it.
Four years later, “downsizing” is becoming a niche
trend. It’s not just about saving the
environment, either. Because you consume
so little as a little guy, downsizing makes you RICH beyond your wildest
dreams. A couple hundred thousand bucks
translates to the equivalent of 20 million bucks in the downsized world. Think about it. A normal big mac could feed 4000 downsized
people. A downsized mansion only needs eight
feet of space.
The central hub for most downsized peeps is a place called
Leisureland Estates – the first full-time city dedicated to downsized
folks. It’s here where our hero, the underachieving
painfully unambitious Paul, is thinking of spending his future. Paul doesn’t have a lot of money. He’s one of many Americans feeling the pinch
of that day to day grind. Miniaturizing
himself would change all that. He’d be
rich. He’d never have to worry about
money again. It seems like a win-win.
After speaking to his wishy-washy wife, Audrey, she agrees
to go through the process with him. So
after all the prep and legalese, the two are split up, shaved, oiled, and
thrown into the gamma-ray shrinking whatchumacalit. But when Paul comes out, he notices that his
wife isn’t around.
Uh-oh.
Yup, turns out his wife chickened out. She doesn’t want to be miniaturized. Paul is furious, but in that way that some
ladies are known to do, ahem, she turns it around and blames it on him. Either way, it’s over. Miniaturizing is irreversible and it’s kind
of hard to have a relationship with someone 20 times your size.
But this is where Downsizing gets really freaky. We switch gears to a group of downsized
Chinese immigrants who try to sneak into America via a TV box. All of them die except for one, a woman named
Gong Jiang, who’s just barely survived, even though she lost her foot in the
process.
Apparently China was illegally miniaturizing people to put
less strain on the country and these test subjects had escaped. So we’re going to get a feel-good story about
this miniaturized woman overcoming adversity, right?
Errr, no.
Gong is the most annoying person you can imagine. And not in a subjective way. She’s written to be REALLY ANNOYING. She barely speaks English and spends the majority
of her time chastising everyone for not doing enough to help the world. She’s baffled by how much the Americans
waste, going so far as to recycle their trash, since much of it could still be
used in China.
What this has to do with the story, I have no idea.
Eventually, some international businessman named Javier
enters Paul’s life and tries to get him back on track. But Paul is still devastated by the loss of
Audrey, even though it happened over a year ago. Move on buddy. It’s over.
Nope. Instead, Paul is inactive
and boring and whiney. Is there ANY
character we want to root for here??
Even now, I’m not sure what happens at the end. I know they go off to some Mexican version of
Leisureland where everyone’s much poorer.
It’s there where Paul and Javier and Gong all connect. A love story develops between Gong and Paul,
even though she’s annoying and the two have absolutely no chemistry. It’s as if Payne said – “well, they’re the
male and female leads in the film, so they HAVE to get together!”
Paul continues to be depressed. Gong continues to be annoying. And Javier continues to derail the story with
random missions. And that, my friends,
is Downsizing!
There are so many things wrong with this script, I don’t
know where to begin. I’m desperately hoping this is an early draft and Payne was
just trying to get all his thoughts down on paper. I also have to take into consideration that
Payne is such a unique voice that some of the things that don’t make sense on
the page will make sense on the screen.
And finally, all writer-directors tend to overwrite, since they use the
script to remind them what to shoot later on.
But even with all that, this is a mess. First of all, the main character is passive.
This is like Screenwriting 101 – one of the first things you learn. If your main character isn’t after anything,
the whole movie’s going to sit there.
Look at Payne’s last movie, The
Descendents. Clooney had to take care of
all the logistical stuff before pulling the plug on his wife. Not the most heartwarming story but at least
he was ACTIVE. At least he had things to
do.
Paul just sits around feeling sorry for himself 75% of the time. When you do that, it makes the character
boring and by association the story boring.
So the script was pretty much doomed from the start. Even if everything else was perfect, that
component of a story is so important that it’s a bona fide script killer.
Then Payne makes the decision to have about a dozen time
jumps in the movie. Pulling off ONE time
jump in a script is hard enough. And it
usually needs to happen right away, like within 10 pages of the opening after a
flashback sequence or something. But
here we get 4 month jumps, 4 year jumps, six month jumps, 2 year jumps. When you have so many jumps, it sucks all the
urgency out of your story. And as we all know from GSU, you want SOME sense of urgency in your story.
Again, to use The Descendents as an example, the urgency
came via the need to sign the deal with the hotel owners to net himself and his
family members millions of dollars. I think it was something like a two week
deadline. This gave that story a sense
of urgency. Imagine if we would’ve taken
a 2 year jump in the middle of that story.
Then a 2 month jump. Then an 8
month jump. We would’ve been like,
“Huh?”
And I get that Downsizing is a different story with a
trickier setup – one that seemingly requires time to pass so we can push the evolution
of downsizing along. But that’s one of
the challenges you have to figure out as a screenwriter. You have to figure out a way to place us in
the now, not in twelve different “nows.”
I mean sure, Mad Max could’ve had a 50 minute prelude that
took place over several time periods to show us how we got to a point where the
last remaining people on earth were fighting for fuel, but instead they gave us
a 2-minute opening montage/voice over and put us smack dab in the “present” in
order to give the story urgency.
But where this script really went off the rails for me was
Gong. I have no idea why this character
was included or what the hell she had to do with the rest of the story.
I mean, why give her an amputated foot? What did that have to do with ANYTHING? It just felt like the entire movie turned
into something else once she arrived.
And worst of all, that movie could’ve taken place outside the downsized
world. Why create a movie about
downsizing if you’re not going to explore the specific issues of being
downsized?
And who is Javier? I
still don’t know. All I know is that on
page 100, he practically becomes the protagonist.
I am BEYOND BAFFLED by this screenplay. It’s so bizarre. It’s so off.
It’s so all over the place…I’m still not sure what I read. And you know what that means…
[x] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] not for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: For heaven’s sake – OUTLINE! When you outline, you prevent the need to
make it all up as you go along. When you
make stuff up as you go along, you have severed feet and Chinese immigrants
touting Christianity and sending your characters into an underground community
for 7000-8000 years while the world reboots and Spanish businessman that have
nothing to do with anything. Use the
outlining stage to explore ideas on a macro level so you can see what fits
and what doesn’t BEFORE integrating it into your screenplay. Outlining would’ve helped Downsizing
tremendously.