Tag: save the cat beat sheet

Love it or hate it, Blake Snyder’s beat sheet is a well-known tool that screenwriters (and novelists) can use to understand and plan out a three-act plot structure. These posts summarize movies (and novels) using the beat sheet described in Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat.

Speed Racer (2008)

The colorful fantasy car racing scenes are magical, but they’re also emotional, because the underdog main character’s victory is a victory for Justice itself. Speed Racer demonstrates that integrity matters, that you can win by being honest (though not by being naive), that cheaters, in fact, never prosper in the long run. It’s not subtle. It’s not realistic. But it has an awesome kind of purity. There’s nothing quite like it.

It scrambles the timeline in the sequence at the beginning, which seems like genius to me now that I know who all the characters are and where the plot is going, having seen the movie several times. It probably didn’t make nearly as much sense the first time through.

See below for a detailed plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

BTW, this story perfectly fits the Save the Cat genre called “institutionalized,” in which the main character encounters a group or a system and has to join, escape, or destroy it.

Continue reading Speed Racer (2008)

F1: The Movie (2025)

You might think car racing films are all the same. The main character is a driver with a tragic backstory or an attitude problem (or both), and he needs to move on or grow up (or both). But, just like no two murder mysteries are really the same, the details make each car racing story different.

For example, what makes The Love Bug special is that the eponymous Volkswagen beetle is sentient and can drive by itself.

What makes Speed Racer special is that it’s about an honest underdog fighting a dishonest system.

What makes Death Race special is the stakes: prisoners enter car races to win their freedom—or die trying.

Cardboard Brad Pitt at our local mall’s movie theater.

What makes F1: The Movie special is that the main character, driver Sonny Hayes, “the best that never was,” doesn’t care about being in the spotlight. Eventually the story reveals why that is, and transforms this detachment from a weakness into a strength. Meanwhile, the audacious stuff he does is absolutely hilarious, albeit unrealistic.

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading F1: The Movie (2025)

IMAX How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

After watching the 2025 remake of How to Train Your Dragon and reading people’s reactions on Reddit, I conceived a desire to see the movie on an IMAX screen. Siqi humored me, and we bought tickets and went and watched the movie again, at a slightly-father-away theater.

IMAX HTTYD 2025 Chinese movie poster.

See below for a detailed save-the-cat beat sheet plot summary of How to Train Your Dragon (2025). Beware SPOILERS.

Continue reading IMAX How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

Barbie (2023)

If you think Barbie was well done, you and I have a different idea about what a well done movie does.

My reaction in this case was not “Well done, thanks, I hate it.” That’s more or less how I felt about Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012), which I wouldn’t have watched if I had known it was horror sci-fi and not sci-fi. That’s on me.

Nor am I objecting to the fantasy premise, which is that someone in the real world is adversely influencing a Barbie in Barbieland, thus that Barbie has to go to the real world and do something to fix the situation.

Nor is my negative reaction rooted in culture politics. By all means, be overtly didactic and feminist or whatever, but for the love of cheesecake, have a coherent, positive message.

Much like Frozen, Barbie was immensely entertaining, but the longer I thought (and thought and thought) about it, the less the characters, plot, and theme made sense.

Spoilers below.

Continue reading Barbie (2023)

Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Amazing movie. Sure, it’s basically just “get the MacGuffin, save the world,” but it’s done so well! Tension, excitement, scenery! (Sand dunes, Rome, Venice, Norway pretending to be Austria!) I can’t believe the movie was 2 hours and 45 minutes. Felt a lot shorter.

It’s timely too, talking about AI, and I’m so glad there wasn’t a lot of fear-mongering anthropomorphic villainous moustache-twirling; and anyway, no one could equal Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith in The Matrix. Unlike the machines in The Matrix, the AI in Dead Reckoning is not, I would argue, actually central to the plot, nor is it a character. It’s just the setting, part of the premise. The story isn’t about AI any more than it is about a key. The story, to the extent that any story holds the action sequences together, is about people.

Why did they make this Part One? I have a theory about that.

Beware spoilers, there’s a whole plot summary below! It’s time to save the cat.

Continue reading Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Need for Speed (2014)

Currently the Rotten Tomatoes rating for Need for Speed is 23% (57% audience score). I can understand why it wasn’t a critical success, but I’m definitely on the side of the audience here.

Watch this movie if…

  • …you like car racing movies.
  • …you like practical special effects (rather than CGI).
  • …you don’t mind a ridiculous premise.
  • …you like happy endings and don’t mind a predictable plot.

Do NOT watch this movie if…

  • …you are tired of The Fast and the Furious franchise.
  • …you hate tropes and are hoping for some literary merit.
  • …your attention span is less than 130 minutes.
  • …you are a pedantic gearhead.

Personally, I don’t mind stories whose plots I can predict. After all, I’ve been trying to become an expert on plot by watching and summarizing movies. What bugs me is when I can predict the dialogue, and this movie didn’t have that problem. A commercially successful movie plot has to have certain elements, but there’s no excuse for stale dialogue. If the characters are going to say something obvious, they may as well say nothing at all.

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Need for Speed (2014)

Onward (2020)

Either Onward wasn’t that great, or I was in a weird mood when I watched it.

Or maybe the previews ruined it. I prefer to watch movies that I know nothing about. Movie trailers that show you jokes from the movie are awful, because a joke is really only funny when it’s a surprise.

Or maybe it’s that I don’t like movies about high school. Onward is about a magical quest, sure, but it is also somewhat about being in high school. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a television or film depiction of “the American high school experience” that bore any resemblance to my own high school experience. Relatability fail. Every time.

Or maybe it’s that the movie can’t be about an epic quest and high school at the same time… too much cognitive dissonance.

Or maybe it’s that Pixar’s charm is fading; too much reliance on a formula? The story did seem to have the odor of plot coupons — not that the brothers had to physically collect things, but they did go through a series of preordained steps to reach a goal. Sure, there was a meaningful ‘inner’ journey, but the outer journey seemed a bit paint-by-numbers.

It’s not that it was a bad movie. It was good. But I couldn’t love it whole-heartedly.

The funniest part of Onward was the scene at the chasm. I laughed so much! But there are some really, really sad moments too… And some cringey ones, which is probably another reason I didn’t like the movie as much as I was hoping to.

Watch on Amazon

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Onward (2020)

Loving Vincent (2017)

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian aptly calls the film “impressive but weirdly exasperating”. I did enjoy the film, but I do wish I’d sat a bit farther back from the screen. I also wish I had watched Loving Vincent on DVD (rather than in a theater) so that I could watch the special features. For one thing, I’m not so familiar with the life and works of Vincent Van Gogh. For another, I would love to know more about the technique that was used to create this strange film. The medium is the message.

Some of the frames are copies of Van Gogh paintings—over a hundred of them. The color parts of the film seemed to have been actually painted (in the style of Van Gogh); the black-and-white parts seemed to consist of live-action film that had been modified with some kind of filter. In any case, the realism of the people and their movements can be explained by rotoscoping: the movie was filmed first; then artists used the film frames as templates for paintings on canvas. What we see was made using images of those paintings. (And I thought stop-motion animation was pains-taking!)

The story of the film is sad, as is the life of many a starving artist; Van Gogh only became famous after his untimely death. The end credits said he sold exactly one painting in his lifetime, but created over 800 in the decade before he died—and he died when he was younger than I am now.

It goes to show that having a skill is not enough; you also need the skill or connections to advertise that skill in the right place at the right time, or you are no more noticed than a tree falling in the forest where no ears can hear it.

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading Loving Vincent (2017)

City of Ember (2008)

Never judge a book by its movie. City of Ember (the movie) is only okay, but City of Ember (the book) is fantastic.

Deep underground, the people of Ember have never seen the sun and don’t even know it exists. The builders of their city planned for them to emerge, but that plan was lost and forgotten, and now Ember is running out of supplies, and its generator, without which there is no light, is breaking down. Will the builders return to save the people of Ember, as some believe? Will the mayor come up with a plan for his people? Or will it be up to Lina and Doon to rediscover the lost exit to the surface?

The premise is great. However, the movie lacks the focus of the book because some added elements don’t quite fit, some of the positive thematic messages are missing, and some of the action shots were created with awkward CGI. Also, personally, I’m not fond of Bill Murray.

I think The City of Ember would be great as a television series, because a TV show could spend a lot more time developing the characters and exploring the unique underground world.

Watch on Amazon

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading City of Ember (2008)

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)

When I started seeing movie posters for The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, I was curious but apprehensive. Watching the movie, I was pleasantly surprised.

Unlike the 1993 film featuring ballet student and Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin, the movie is not merely a recording of a stage performance of the ballet, nor is it a musical, nor does it follow the “story” of the ballet. It’s a through-the-looking glass version, a mirror image, or echo of the story in the ballet. The film includes a bit of ballet and some of the musical themes, but mostly it is a beautiful, original, inspiring fantasy.

The sets, CGI, and costumes are impressive, but the strength of the movie is the theme it expresses: how to deal with the loss of a loved one. There are healthy ways and unhealthy ways, both demonstrated dramatically.

Other solid, admirable themes are family togetherness, friendship and loyalty, creativity and curiosity, bravery, compassion and forgiveness, choice, and belief in one’s self.

With so much for the protagonist to learn on her adventure, I don’t see how detractors can call the movie ‘soulless’. Did we even watch the same movie? Whatever their reasons, critics and audiences don’t seem to like this movie nearly as much as I did, saying it’s as clunky as that ambitious 2018 flop, A Wrinkle in Time. That’s not fair at all. Four Realms is miles better than A Wrinkle in Time.

Maybe the detractors don’t award as many points for theme as they do for how subtly those themes are expressed. Some hoped for more ballet, others hoped for more music. Some wanted it to be scarier, others wanted it less scary. Maybe they all simply had higher expectations. Maybe nobody quite knew what to expect at all. I agree the film could have been better, but I think it was actually pretty decent. This review at Empire Online agrees with me.

See below for a plot summary with SPOILERS in the form of a beat sheet in the style described in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.

Continue reading The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)