Script Tip: Emotional Action

EMOTIONAL ACTION
I saw a film a while ago that was chock full of big action scenes... and boring. You would think that car chases and explosions would be exciting, but they are meaningless if there's no emotional content to the scene.
How to remedy boring action: just add conflict. Some difficult decision that the protagonist needs to make. You've seen a million car chases, and you'll see a million more. It's one machine chasing another... how can you possibly make that emotional?
Hero and sidekick are chased on foot by villains. They run to their car. Hero jumps into car, starts it up, kicks open passenger door. Villains get in THEIR car.
Hero sees the sidekick is at passenger door and hits the gas. Causing the passenger door to close in front of the sidekick (as the car zooms away).
Sidekick jumps onto the back of the car, hanging on to that slot between the back window of the car and the trunk. He's hanging on to the outside of the car! Hero sees that sidekick is there... and the villains in their car are closing in on them! Hero floors it. Sidekick hangs on for dear life.
Okay - now we have car chase #57B. You know the one. The villains get so close they slam into the rear bumper of the hero's car (oops - the sidekick's legs are in the way!). The hero takes corners so fast the car "fish-tails" (oops - the sidekick almost loses his grip!). Every cliche from every car chase is now even MORE exciting... and the hero doesn't know what to do. If he drives carefully (so that the sidekick doesn't fall off), the villains catch him. If he drives like a mad man trying to lose the villains, the sidekick could fall off into traffic. There's an EMOTIONAL CONFLICT in the middle of the car chase! It's a more exciting action scene BECAUSE of the emotions.

Do you have an emotional conflict in your action scenes? Something that makes your car chase more than just metal chasing metal?

Cars don't buy movie tickets, humans do, so make sure there is a human conflict in your car chases!
Without emotions what we end up with is one of those boring science movies from high school where the dispassionate narrator drones on and on and on. Those things put me to sleep. You want your action script to have juice, excitement, sparks. Big drama, big emotions... move the audience as much as you can. Action films are all about life or death situations, and those are about the most emotionally charged situations I can think of. When you are writing an action scene, remember to make it emotional as well as physical.In TRUE LIES the theme is trust, and the emotional conflict revolves around Ah-nuld lying to his wife Jamie Lee Curtis about almost everything: his job, his identity, his true self. The only thing that ISN'T a lie is his love for her... But when you spend your entire marriage thinking your husband Harry is one guy, and find out he's the total opposite guy, it's difficult to trust him ever again. So James Cameron came up with an action scene that DEMONSTRATES this emotional conflict...

He puts Jamie Lee Curtis in an out of control limousine on a bridge with a premature end and puts Ah-nuld in a helicopter zooming overhead. For Jamie Lee to survive, she must TRUST Ah-nuld by climbing out of the sun roof of the limo and grabbing hold of his hand as he zooms past in the helicopter. She has to put her life entirely in his hands. Ah-nuld must dangle out of a zooming helicopter, risking HIS life to save his wife. He is SHOWING that he will risk his life for her love.
This creates a strong emotional component at the center of the action scene: This is the woman he loves - the most important person in his life. What if Ah-nuld can't reach her? Or can't grab tight enough to her arm? Or drops her? What if Jamie Lee can't reach his hand? Or can't hold on? There are EMOTIONAL consequences for failure. This is a scene that explores the theme of the script, is filled with emotions, and is also pretty darned exciting.
Most of the action scenes in TRUE LIES explore some aspect of trust - the action scenes are critical to the story!
Remember that action is character. Action scenes EXPOSE character. That is one of the primary purposes of any scene - to expose character. Scenes should also advance the plot, illustrate the theme (if possible) and entertain the audience. Yes, that's a lot of work. But if your action scene isn't telling us anything about the character, isn't emotionally involving, it's just a high school science movie. Our job is to provide emotions, to move the audience.
Once you have your hero's emotional conflict (character arc), come up with a list of action scenes that will force him or her to deal with that conflict. Scenes that force them to solve that inner conflict in order to survive. Remember, we're writing EMOTION pictures!

- Bill
Free Script Tips:
http://www.scriptsecrets.net