A Date With A SuperHero
“A Date With a Superhero” is a fun story that revolves around a man obsessing on taking this female superhero, Sky Queen, out to dinner for having saved his life at one point in time. He becomes so desperate, he puts himself in these dangerous positions hoping that he will hopefully be saved by Sky Queen herself so he can ask her the simple question.
The way the script introduces us to the character of Jake and his friend Paul was done nicely. Although the screen direction can definitely be reworked, their conversation is what pulled me in as a reader. Jake is dressed as a shabby superhero just in case Sky Queen actually saves him from these thugs he’s going to “try” and take on. With Jake and Paul’s dialogue, I felt like I knew what their friendship was really like. The dialogue throughout the piece actually really set this script up to be a fun “Kick-Ass” kind of vibe, which I personally dug. There’s a lot of moments where I could see it actually being really funny on the screen given the circumstances they are in.
However, some of the characters actions seemed a little odd and felt rushed. I know it’s only 20 pages and the writer has stated that this will be a mini-series which will allow those underwhelming character actions become more fleshed out in the long run. That’s what TV series are known for doing, taking the audience on a journey through time… If this is the pilot, I think with a little rewrites, the writer can really make the characters unique and stand out on their own. The more complex they are, the more interesting they will be. So far a lot of their actions are on the nose or seem rather flat and out of line. I wasn’t convinced, as a reader, that Sky Queen really sees Jake as a different person. It felt forced that she would go and chase after him. All I kept asking myself was, why? Why would she feel any different about this guy who obsessively manipulated his way into meeting her? That almost seems like the climax of episode 2.
The formatting was a bit jarring. And where there should have been screen direction, parentheses were used instead and really slowed down the experience of reading the script. Pacing is what keeps a reader active (assuming the story is interesting; which this definitely is) and if the pacing is off, it’s going to take the reader out of the story to try and piece what is actually really going on with the story and the characters. When there’s too much spacing between dialogue, not only does that add more pages to the script (so it might be shorter than what we’re seeing), it also makes the dialogue feel like a drag. Although the lines were pretty funny, it felt so slow because of how skewed the format was. Also, this script tells more than it shows… I often look for the “show, don’t tell” philosophy in screen direction because that often times helps the flow of the script itself. If the writer were to fix those two things up, I’m sure this read would have been even more fun.
My overall thoughts on this are: things felt too rushed with Jake and Sky Queen. The opening scene was fascinating because he was going to put himself into a sticky situation. As an audience, we have to wonder what if she never comes? Then what? Would he try something even more outrageous? So I bring up the question: what if the first episode only explores how desperate this man really is to meet her? We have a thug scenario where he’s about to get shanked; perhaps she never shows up. As a writer, how would one top that? What other, absurd, fun scenarios could a writer put this character through to really emphasize his desires? If Sky Queen never came or if she was late and he got seriously injured – those moments could possibly open doors for character development on her part. Why was she late? Why didn’t she show up?
Is this doable on a short budget? Definitely. I think it would be even more doable if the screen direction and some of the scenes were changed around to help the pacing so it doesn’t feel so rushed, forced, and sudden. If done correctly, this would be a funny short mini-series.
