Action!

Okay, so the first X-Men 3 trailer is online. And it looks good. Fears have been raised that because Brett Ratner is directing X3, it will, well, suck. A friend of a friend informed me that Ratner's directing MO is to plant cameras everywhere and let the editor make the movie. Which is oddly similar to George Lucas's methodology... only Ratner presumably knows better than to try and write his own scripts.

Yes, I'll say it: Brett Ratner is a better director than George Lucas. I know it's a stretch, a risky thing to say, but I'll be bold and put it out there. *snerk*

Anyway.

I'm going through a sticky section of the current script. No, no bodily fluids are involved, except a little spilt blood. The main problem is that the big action setpiece scene I'm writing has very little interaction with any of the character subplots. They're here to stop the bad guys from doing something bad, and their personal character and development have little to do with it. It's action and reaction.

As a result, I have little in the way of external forces shaping the scene. I know where it has to end up, to fit into the structural framework of the story; but the details of how it goes down are unformed. There is, of course, the Old Version, from the previous incarnation of this script, but it feels random and amateurish. So I'm rebuilding the scene from scratch.

It'll probably help to examine action scenes in other movies that have major character moments and see how those moments interact with the non-character story beats in those scenes. I can think of several off the top of my head; anyone got any particular recommendations?