Can't You See by Jack Maxfield - Short, Drama - Los Angeles has fallen to alien invaders. The prison cell is a penthouse on Wilshire Boulevard. - pdf, format

Well, this was a very interesting take on the material. Unfortunately, that’s about it. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but this script does not make sense at all.

The biggest problem I had with it is the characters. Not only do they not appear to have a personality, but none of them seem to have any reaction to the alien invasion at all. I mean, the entire world has been taken over by aliens from outer space and none of the characters are scared, confused, amazed, frustrated or anything. None of them really react at all. They seem to be having a good time, laughing and joking while God knows how many hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. The whole world is falling apart, and they’re bitching about second hand smoke and soap operas? It just didn’t seem realistic.

Technically, the script leaves a lot to be desired as well. There is way too much detail in the descriptions. There’s a huge paragraph describing how the alien machine walks down the hallway, but to what end? What does it add to the story? That scene is one of the only times we see a machine walking around, but there’s so much time spent describing it.

And what’s with the ending? They aliens take the Russian guy, chop off his head and then send him back to smother the woman who never talks? Is that what happened? And why did it happen? There’s no set up for it, it doesn’t make sense in the context of everything that’s come before it, and it answers nothing.

Sorry to keep rambling, but the script needs a lot of work. Cut back on the descriptions, spend some time developing the characters and show the aliens instead of just showing their robots and I think you’ll have a much better script. There’s potential here, but the script itself doesn’t follow through on the interesting premise. Still, it was an imaginative take on the theme/genre. It was a good effort, but it definitely needs improvement.


Matt.

Is there a “?” missing from the title? The use of captions (with a sense of humor) at the start does not really work. Why not have Harlan explain all this? Bring the people in early  and show them seeing the destruction and just surviving it.

The long unbroken blocks of text do not add much.

In the later pages it gets more interesting if still quite odd. The end has some shock value but I have no idea what it all meant. My suspicion is that none of it means anything so I’m not so much intrigued as I am bemused.

Philip

A couple of typos.  "Tin" should be "tint" I think.  God damn is capitalized.  

Okay, the story.  Alien invasions are always so much fun.  What will happen to all the good people of earth and all that.  Unfortunately, I think the concept is a little ambitious for a short.  Few too many characters, sets, and agendas.  

I took a look at this and I wasn't going to read it because of the humongous descriptions, but I was feeling nice and decided to read it.

Your dialogue is really weird, and makes it sound like the people are on mind-control sort of, except the aliens have half mind-control, while the other have are controlled by the person. Like Chism mentioned before: who would be complaining about stuff like they did when there were aliens doing God knows what?

Sean

  Disjointed.
  The overall impression I'm left with is the characters are insane and inmates of an asylum. The reference to the TV being "normal" does much to reinforce this.
  The implant like the one at the base of Golda's Skull being used to replace Piotr's head is also a cause for concern as it's the size of a fridge magnet one moment and bigger than I associate with "fridge magnet size" the next.
  A difficult read.