Droplets from the Inkwell

Script Immunity at its Worst

Warning: This blog entry contains spoilers for the movie Abduction  . Those who do not wish to have the movie spoiled, even in minor details, should skip this entry.

I suspect that script immunity is an issue most authors -- well those authors who write stories that involve danger at least -- struggle with at some point. A character is put into a seemingly impossible situation where survival is extremely unlikely, and yet the plot demands the character's survival. So the author tries to come up with a plausible resolution to the scenario. A great author may luck out and create an entirely believable course of action for the character. More often, a less-than-perfect scene gets written that stretches (though hopefully doesn't break) the reader's (or watcher's, in the the case of a screen-play or other performance piece) credulity. That's life.

And then you have those cases where the writer just doesn't seem to care and doesn't bother to cover up a blatant case of script immunity. That happened a few times in the movie Abduction  . The biggest example is during Karen's capture on the train.

Bear in mind that by this time, the movie had established a pattern where the bad guys swooped in, caught people off guard, got the information they needed, and immediately killed the people. They did it to Nathan's fake parents and were originally going to do it to Karen when she was found outside the home. (That time, Nathan came in and rescued Karen just as she was about to be shot in the head, thereby making the script immunity almost invisible. Her rescue was plausible and reasonable.)

And yet, when the big bad captures her on the train, he gets her to tell him which Car Nathan is in, and then ties her up and leaves her alone so she can escape. No bullet in the brain this time. Just leaves her to escape. (Obviously, he never watched any James Bond movies.) Something he hasn't done at any time prior to this point in the movie.

This is script immunity at its worst. The girl must live, so she gets tied up rather than shot. There's no attempt to explain it or justify it. It's insulting. And while it's the most blatant case in the movie, it's not the only time something like this happens. Gilly too appears to benefit from severe script immunity as Nathan and Karen call on him for help not once, but twice. Given how connected both the CIA and the bad guys seem to be and how they know the couple's every move in every other case, they must have known they contacted their friend with the fake ID's. And yet, no one approaches the young man. No one tries to manipulate his contact with them to their advantage. No one forces him to tell them what he did to help them and then put a bullet in his brain. LIke Karen (and Nathan, though they cover the hero's script immunity more cleverly), Gilly simply gets a pass.

This ruins the story in two ways. First it makes it clear that these characters cannot die, which takes away from the illusion of danger such a suspenseful story depends on. When the villain leaves people alive for no obvious reason -- and worse, in opposition to the fact that he has every reason to kill them -- it makes it clear that everything will be fine. That takes the excitement out of a thriller.

Secondly, it creates clearly incompetent villains. Suddenly, there is no suspense in the too evenly matched hero and villain, and the hero will clearly win in the end with ease.


JarredH

Our tears remind us that we are alive. Our laughter reminds us why.