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Is Chris Terrio the anti-Midas of screenwriting?

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeell?

  • Yes

    Votes: 83 84.7%

  • No

    Votes: 13 13.3%

  • You haven't seen Heights it's amazing and so wonderfully written and did you know he directed it?

    Votes: 2 2.0%
  • Total voters
    98

Deleted member 7051

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,254
I have nothing against the guy personally but I only just found out today, while musing about how Snyder went from Man of Steel to Batman vs Superman, that Terrio wrote the screenplay for the latter and even has writing credits for Justice League. Of course, most recently, he wrote Rise of Skywalker and we all know how well that has been received.

Three pop culture movies, three basically unmitigated disasters.

I don't deny that Argo was a very successful movie, so maybe it's just that he sucks at science fiction or fantasy. What do you think? Is it merely a coincidence that the three most recent movies he worked on all sucked or does his touch turn movies to shit?
 
subpar spatula

subpar spatula

Refuses to Wash his Ass
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
22,187
Possibly, but big tent pole movies generally get more studio intervention. I don't think anyone could really do well within WB unless you've got prestige like Nolan. Rise of the Skywalker was never going to be good unless they kept Rian Johnson to do the end, or had JJ do the entire thing.
 
chefbags

chefbags

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,315
Absolutely agree. TROS was basically cool scenes fans would love spliced into one movie and that shit was jarring af cause the lack of character development was quite sad after the first 2 movies.

Felt so under baked I can't even bring myself to rewatch any part of it lol.
 
Wogan

Wogan

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,071
I'm honestly not sure. His minute to minute writing isn't that bad and he has written some interesting lines. I think it's down to his overall story structure being ass and his scripts having real tonal whiplash.
 
Hamchan

Hamchan

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,039
Sure. He won an oscar as a relative newcomer and then followed it up with trash 3 times. What a weird career arc so far.
 
jett

jett

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,687
It's hard to judge him based on these movies. BvS is a rewrite of what was originally a Goyer script. Justice League is all kinds of a mess, who knows how much of his work is even in there. And TROS is a last-minute hack job.

I'd say Argo is a solid movie and BVS has some good lines.
 
Tukarrs

Tukarrs

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,841
An Anti-Midas theoretically turns Gold into non-gold (not necessarily bad.)

Movies are a director's medium and the writers do not have as much input to the final product than say the editors, so it's not really known who should be assigned blame. I think people often underestimate how hard it is to make something good even on a good day.
 

Raccoon

Member
May 31, 2019
15,896
chefbags said:
Absolutely agree. TROS was basically cool scenes fans would love spliced into one movie and that shit was jarring af cause the lack of character development was quite sad after the first 2 movies.

Felt so under baked I can't even bring myself to rewatch any part of it lol.
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I haven't participated in Star Wars threads much at all but one thing I always wanted to say is that I think it's fucking insane that a massive budget three film Disney project didn't have a story arc planned ahead of time. I'm just some Joe Schmo but that seems like such amateur hour shit to me

so, on topic, I dunno if he can be blamed wholly for all of these disasters
 
Transistor

Transistor

Outer Wilds Ventures Test Pilot
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
37,332
Washington, D.C.
This just made me realize something. If people successfully memed the stupid ass Snyder Cut into existence, can we meme Duel of the Fates into existence?
 
Enduin

Enduin

You look 40
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,524
New York
Either he's not that good a writer, at least for these types of big budget blockbuster action types, or he's got really bad luck signing onto three of the worst blockbusters in recent years. His instincts for these types of stories might be poor, but as a writer he's probably got some of the least amount of control within the creative process and what the final product looks like so I can't malign him too much. What was written for all three films may never have been great, but the direction they were taken by the studios, producers and directors may have also been the worst renditions of those scripts. But I can't say I'll be holding out much hope for whatever projects he's attached to next.
 
WillyFive

WillyFive

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
6,988
JJ Abrams and Zack Snyder have done good things, but conveniently the stuff Chris Terrio had a part in were not.

Coincidence?

Well, probably not.
 

Deleted member 56306

User-requested account closure
Banned
Apr 26, 2019
2,383
Raccoon said:
I haven't participated in Star Wars threads much at all but one thing I always wanted to say is that I think it's fucking insane that a massive budget three film Disney project didn't have a story arc planned ahead of time. I'm just some Joe Schmo but that seems like such amateur hour shit to me

so, on topic, I dunno if he can be blamed wholly for all of these disasters
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The problem isn't the lack of planning, the problem, for me at least, was his and others not landing the plane.
 
Gundam

Gundam

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
12,801
Transistor said:
This just made me realize something. If people successfully memed the stupid ass Snyder Cut into existence, can we meme Duel of the Fates into existence?
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The Snyder Cut already existed - Which is to say footage was shot and some amount of VFX were done or being worked on.

Duel of the Fates made it as far as concept art.
 
Cuburger

Cuburger

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,975
Mariolee said:
Of course not. The Snyder Cut is 70% finished, Duel of the Fates is 1% finished.
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You don't want to open that door. Snyder Cut fans didn't need to be given the power to will a project into existance, and Star Wars fans damn sure shouldn't either. The second you put out there that they are thinking of having a redo, TRoS, TLJ, the Prequels, half the franchise starts having fans rallying behind the movie/movies they hate the most to be remade. It would be a total shit show.
 
Blader

Blader

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,673
Yep, no other way to cut it, he just sucks. You can't even pin TROS on someone else the way you could with BvS or JL because Terrio himself talked up how little control he had on those two films and how involved he was on TROS. Even in the Skywalker Legacy doc you can see he was a closely involved writing partner to JJ and was on set often.

I think these movies also point to how much JJ and Snyder need certain writing partner guardrails to box in their worst impulses, and how much Terrio is not that person lol. You look at the drop off from Man of Steel (which I didn't think was much good to begin with) to BvS, or The Force Awakens to The Rise of Skywalker, and see the common thread between them and, like, it's hard to reach any other conclusion!
 

Deleted member 4260

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,630
Argo's a good movie and I really like The Rise of Skywalker... did not like Batman v Superman though.
 
Mariolee

Mariolee

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,323
The Silver

The Silver

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,748
He's a good salesman, in his interviews for TROS it felt like he knew what he was doing , then in the actual movie it's like.... .WHAT THE FUCK
 
Mariolee

Mariolee

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,323
Cuburger said:
You don't want to open that door. Snyder Cut fans didn't need to be given the power to will a project into existance, and Star Wars fans damn sure shouldn't either. The second you put out there that they are thinking of having a redo, TRoS, TLJ, the Prequels, half the franchise starts having fans rallying behind the movie/movies they hate the most to be remade. It would be a total shit show.
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I mean they can definitely whine about it, but it won't happen.

I really don't think this is starting a new precedent as much as everyone thinks it does.

Snyder has been campaigning for this cut for years on Vero (lol), the fans campaigned themselves and literally bought billboards out, the movie was already 70% finished so it only costs 20 mil -30 mil to do what Snyder wants to finish, plus it's a great selling point for their new HBO Max service that hasn't really had its break out hit yet like The Mandalorian that makes it must-see streaming.

Disney already did this with Clone Wars. They brought back a fan favorite property that fans wanted to see return and only because it was cheaper to produce as most of the groundwork was already finished. The only movie equivalent would be if they brought Lord and Miller back to do their version of Solo for Disney+ since like Justice League most of it is already done.
 
LiquidSolid

LiquidSolid

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,731
jett said:
It's hard to judge him based on these movies. BvS is a rewrite of what was originally a Goyer script. Justice League is all kinds of a mess, who knows how much of his work is even in there. And TROS is a last-minute hack job.

I'd say Argo is a solid movie and BVS has some good lines.
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This. It's stupid and very "shitty internet fan" to go out of your way to shit on a guy for three projects that clearly had a hell of a lot more going on than just "he wrote them."

Tommcatt said:
The problem isn't the lack of planning, the problem, for me at least, was his and others not landing the plane.
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Nah. The plane was flying blind, the best we could've hoped for was a crash landing. Turned out we just got a crash.

Transistor said:
I mean, what I really want is to will a Rian Johnson episode IX into existence. But I'll take what I can get. DotF can't possibly be any worse that TRoS
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JW Fallen Kingdom is even worse than TRoS though, albeit less disappointing because everyone knows to expect trash from Trevorrow's misogynistic ass.
 

Deleted member 5666

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,753
Transistor said:
This just made me realize something. If people successfully memed the stupid ass Snyder Cut into existence, can we meme Duel of the Fates into existence?
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It's important to remember DOTF was scrapped not because Colin was fired. DOTF was scrapped because Carrie Fisher died.

DOTF only gets attention because it is what leaked. But DOTF died when Carrie died. They went back to square one after that under Colin, before he was let go and he had written more IX drafts that were very different from DOTF.
 
Strings

Strings

Member
Oct 27, 2017
31,582
Terrio has a lot of good unproduced work / lots of pretty good rewrite jobs. You really don't see a majority of a screenwriters work. The time pressure / studio mandates probably made these particular jobs nightmarish.
Winny（๑•̀ㅂ•́）و said:
musing about how Snyder went from Man of Steel to Batman vs Superman
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Also this made me laugh, just because I think those are approximately the same level of shitty.
 
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Transistor

Transistor

Outer Wilds Ventures Test Pilot
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
37,332
Washington, D.C.
Cheebo said:
It's important to remember DOTF was scrapped not because Colin was fired. DOTF was scrapped because Carrie Fisher died.

DOTF only gets attention because it is what leaked. But DOTF died when Carrie died. They went back to square one after that under Colin, before he was let go and he had written more IX drafts that were very different from DOTF.
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Look, I have to have some semblance of a belief that The Rise of Skywalker can be undone
 
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