I'm not familiar with the title and I didn't google, so I have no idea what this will be about other than what you're logline states. I'm also not religious and grew up in a country that sort of frowns on religion, so I don't know much about it. I have never felt any power of religion influencing anything in my life, so a little hard for me to understand. Seems Catholics especially seem to be under this power more than others, IMO. I could be wrong. I'm also not a fan of wars, but here goes.

Right off the bat I was confused about time and place. At the mentioning of the building in the style of 1800s, I wasn't sure if that was when the story took place or if it was just the way the building looked. Always try to be as clear as possible. What readers hate most is having to read something over a few times just to get what the writer is trying to say.

It turns out Maximus is supposed to be our hero, but that doesn't really work when we see slaughter kids right away. Instead of a Save The Cat moment, you give us a Kill The Cat. That's pretty much a no no, unless this was a long story where we can see him change his way. Don't think that works in a short though. I think it's possible this might work better for the story if the audience could see Maximus being the good guy and then we learn that he plays the bad only for public show. That way, you miss the twist of the reveal, but instead we have someone we're rooting for the whole time. We would see how he struggles to torture Benoit, but must do it just to keep up appearances.

There's a lot of expositional dialogue here. Remember the pope in the pool. If you're going to give us an exposition dump, do it while we're distracted by some of the visuals. Like the pope swimming naked in a pool for example. That way, an audience is less likely to realize they've just been spoon fed a bunch of info.

When Maximus goes to see Benoit when he wakes up, was he all healed up already? He didn't seem to have suffered too bad from his experience in the iron maiden. Is he still naked? Since you didn't tell us, I read it as him still having no close on and shuffling around in the buff. Which is almost comedic. Or maybe that's just my sense of humor.

All in all, not bad, but needs some tweaking. Mainly making sure we don't hate Maximus right away. Hard to change readers minds after its set. Much less confusing than some other scripts of yours I've read, so good on you for that.

Maximus kills kids because they’ll grow up to be true followers of a Church which exists only to judge and kill. This guy should be the Pope. As far as I can tell there is no difference between the two sides, despite the rhetoric. But I guess that’s the point of the story.  And an AK rifle in an American bunker?  Does this mean the Russians successfully invaded the US and this is what caused the downfall of civilization?

I had no idea when this was taking place – with the talk of Francis Bacon, I’d assumed it was some time in the 1800s, but when the time period was revealed at the end, it kind of made no sense. Why would they be living an almost medieval lifestyle if mankind has advanced enough to still manufacture machine guns? And how would they not know about them before this point?

I didn’t buy that Maximus would happily lead the slaughter of innocent children if he was part of the revolution. The torture/questioning of Benoit in front of the courtroom I could understand, but surely he wouldn’t allow all of those kids to be beheaded. It would make more sense if the slaughter was the event that tipped Maximus over the edge into fully rebelling against the church.

You have an interesting idea here, but it doesn’t work as is. I think the story is probably too big for a short and would benefit being longer. It also think it would benefit from losing the twist ending - it didn’t make much sense and felt a little surreal.

I think this one may suffer from a lack of advance planning in the plot department. The main character is not at all likeable due to his brutal actions in the first scene, compounded by his torture scene in front of a crowd of people, but then by the end he’s supposed to be our hero. Sort of. I think.

The viewer needs a character or a theme they can latch onto - a trail to carry their interest through the story. Stronger advance planning could fix that.

Also, there’s some clumsy language in there that could be straightened out. That would help make the script more readable. Some action lines are a bit crudely drawn, as noted in other comments. But the dialogue jarred more for me. “Go ahead and have your goons remove my tongue” - I don’t think that’s how I’d express myself if I’m in the middle of being tortured in a public courtroom. Especially if I’m part of some sort of Catholic fundamentalist alternative reality.

There’s a good and original idea in this one. But it would take a few rewrites to distill and clarify, in my humble opinion.

Why did Maximus kill his own soldier?

I hate when nails borrow into my skin. Even worse when they don't return it.

Nice twist.

Uh oh. The USA existing just threw this all away. In a world like this where the church has so much control and power could the 13 colonies ever exist, revolt, form their own nation based on democracy and grow to have old bunkers of AK-47s? (Which are Soviet guns which just asks a whole slew on other questions)

The guns being "awesome" is very out of place dialogue. lol

Well, that was, a rushed ending. For some reason it seems for this story to make any sense the event that changes history would have to happen in the future which breaks the rules on the content. Like say in the year 2039 there is an apocalypse where the Catholic Church regain power, and technology goes back to medieval times since everybody is using swords and iron maidens.

That said I could see the first 10 pages working, but the last two really hurts the story. Would be much easier to just sub out the AK-47's for muskets and keep things clear.

I wanted to thank everyone who read and commented on it.  I appreciated all the feedback.  And i got some great ideas if I ever come back to it.

As some of you surmised, the Reformation never happened.  So there was no separation of church and state, no "enlightened" period etc.  

The church ran over all the countries, eventually capturing all of the East.  War after war led to each country falling, as well as their religion.

Russia was the last to fall in the 1960s.  

Then, they came over to the USA.  With little technology to use, we fell by 1990.  

The story takes place in the year 2018, and not that I could show it, but, each country is called by a Catholic name, which is why they didn't know what the USA was.  

Anything that didn't show how amazing the Church was ended up being destroyed.  Other religions were outlawed.  

The Vatican rules everything.  

I wanted to show a run down 1800's circa world set in 2018.  But, I didn't really know how to do it.  

I'm a huge fan of the ending of the first Planet of the Apes (you did it this time, you really did it) as he looks at the destroyed head of the Statue of Liberty meaning that this wasn't some distant or alternate timeline, but, the future of mankind.

So, I wanted the bunkers to be there as the "aha" moment.  Funny thing is, I had Russian influences in the fall of the USA, but, didn't realize that AK-47s were russian.

Perhaps I'm good enough to do a sneaky thing like that and not realize it.  

Yeah, I got lucky in my time line.  I'm not a gun person.  My only experience with guns is from Fallout.

Again, thanks all.  I had a blast writing it.

Dan

This was actually one of my favs. And I really really don't like much having to do with religious subject matter so good job there. It was just the out of left field ending, which I don't mind but there has to be at least some vague setup for it to make sense.  I like the twist. But the crate of guns raised more questions than answers. Good job though!