The Devil Wears Prada has been memorable for 20 years. But quietly hiding underneath those great performances is a sneaky framework for testing a character's worldview. It begins with a flash forward that frames the entire journey. Then a world that is presented through the behavior of others instead of mundane exposition. An Interview that is about proving you understand the game that is being played, not just getting the job. And finally, a deceptively simple object that marks the moment a character begins to compromise who they are. 

The Ending Comes First

From the opening lines of the script we can see that the script is actually vastly different from the finished film. In the finished film, we see a montage of our main character, Andy, getting ready in the morning juxtaposed with how other girls get ready in the fashion world. The imagery is showing how different Andy is from the fashion world.

But in the script, our first scene is actually a flash forward of our main character at an elite Paris fashion dinner. Notice how we also get the introduction of two essential characters to our story, Miranda and Nigel. Nigel introduces Miranda Priestly as a legendary and untouchable figure and we read "Some of MIRANDA'S light spills onto ANDY". Until we flash back six months earlier to a bumbling Andy lost with paper directions and dressed the opposite of someone at an exclusive fashion week dinner. 

When a writer begins with a flash forward and eliminates the mystery of a character's final destination, they instead want you to focus on how they get their. By removing the wonder of the end, it creates a stark contrast for the reader to wonder: How is this bumbling idiot gonna turn into that? What sacrifices must she make to fit into that world if this is where she starts? What is she getting herself into?

The World Is Defined Before the Protagonist Understands It

When Miranda arrives unexpectedly, Emily panics and triggers a rapid, office-wide scramble. Nigel calls everyone to prepare:

Before Andy even interviews, the script shows us how power works here. When Miranda arrives, it triggers an entire system. Assistants begin to panic. Editors scramble away. People physically move out of Miranda's way. The entire behavior pattern of the world shifts in an instant. By the time Andy meets Miranda, the reader learns that the world doesn't adapt to you, you adapt to the world. Which makes Andy's initial confidence feel very, very naive. 

The Interview Scene Is a Value Clash, Not a Job Interview

During the interview, Miranda dismisses the formality of an interview by ignoring Andy's resume. She cuts straight to the core question: Why are you here? Andy, unsettled, drops her prepared answers and answers truthfully. This exposes the power imbalance and the real test of the scene.  

This scene is built on misalignment. Andy values journalism, truth and substance. Miranda values taste and honesty. She doesn't even bother with Andy's resume. Instead, she challenges Andy's character. Andy doesn't read the magazine, she doesn't have style, and she doesn't fit in. But the test isn't about Andy's qualifications. Miranda is testing whether she understands the rules of the game she is entering. 

Andy doesn't understand. But she's willing to try anyway. Miranda, like the structure of this scene, isn't trying to test Andy's skills. Miranda wants to test her worldview. That's why she gets hired. 

The First Compromise Happens Immediately (And Quietly)

Nigel sizes up Andy's outdated shoes and jokes about them. Shortly after, he returns with a pair of Jimmy Choo heels. Andy refuses the call and downplays the need to change her look but the shoes remain on her desk. They act as an invite to step into the world she is resisting. 

Emily holds up the shoes, begging Andy to enter the new world before her. Andy gives one last refusal and enters the world without them. Miranda eyes Andy up and down, landing on her shoes. Miranda's smile actually shows disapproval so intensely intimidating that Andy rushes out of the office, puts on the designer heels and thus finally answers the call. Emily, a gatekeeper of the new world throws Andy's symbol of the old world in the literal trash.

The incredible efficiency of the writing here to give one last example as the refusal of the call before stepping into the new world is so good. And to do it through something as simple as a pair of designer shoes but still perfectly symbolic of the new fashion world Andy is entering is a masterclass. Let's all take note. 

And that's all just the first 20 pages. From here, Andy is repeatedly challenges at the act turns and throughout the second act with choices again and again. Will she hold her morals and the world she once knew or will she let the system of the high stakes fashion world slowly erode them until she is a shell of who she one was? In the end, will she continue on and complete the transformation or break free? It's a theme that rings true in all forms of daily life, not just the fashion world. 

Today, I want to take a look at my favorite episode of Euphoria: Trouble Don't Always Last (2020). It was one of the two pandemic episodes that Euphoria released in 2020.

In March of 2020, Euphoria Season 2 was about to begin filming when the world shutdown. In response to the unknown elements of pandemic at the time, Sam Levinson began writing with strict constraints to limit the cast and crew needed to pull off two episodes of Euphoria and his other Zendaya project, Malcom & Marie. I personally think Sam Levinson should just write great dialogue driven two-handers for eternity, but that's just me. 

In Trouble Don't Always Last, Levinson constructs a 40-page diner conversation that dissects Rue's state of mind as she struggles with addiction. Rue spends the conversation not expressing what she wants, but what she is trying to avoid. The result of Levinson's inworld experiment is a slow, controlled stripping away of defense mechanisms until her truth becomes unavoidable. Rue begins the episode managing the perception of her sobriety to her AA sponsor Ali. But by the end, she admits that she isn't just struggling with her sobriety but with her desire to take her own life. 

Line by line, the dialogue moves through four phases: denial, honesty, confrontation, and emotional break. Each one increases the pressure of the conversation until the only thing left is the truth. 

Rue Builds a Version of Herself That Isn't Real

The episode begins with Rue waking up in New York with Jules as they share affection and Rue supports her before a big presentation. She sends Jules off then grabs some pills, and snorts them to get high. It feels as if she is balancing life, love, and her drug habit. But it's not real. It's a fantasy of what Rue imagines her life could look like if she went with Jules. In reality, she's alone in a diner bathroom, getting high before meeting her sponsor. 

Rue opens the scene trying to control the narrative. She's talking about how good she's doing and how great life is but she's just talking in circles. She's saying the same things over and over again to try to justify, reframe, minimize, and then repeat. But Ali, an ex-crack head that is 12 years sober can see the tells from a mile away. He undercuts her sunshine and rainbows. Denial in our characters doesn't have to simply be them saying no over and over again. It's much more interesting to show a character's denial by revealing the truth they are trying to make a reality. It allows the reader to question why the character might do something like that. It asks where decision coming from.

The Truth Finally Slips Out

It takes some warming up in the conversation. But eventually Rue stops trying to sound okay. She admits she's just trying to survive. 

Ali doesn't let her move past it and makes her say the thing she's avoiding. Honesty is what he has been trying to direct this conversation to from the beginning. She goes from denial, to insisting that she's okay, to confessing that she needs drugs to survive, to admission that she doesn't plan to survive. As a writer, it can feel unmotivated for a character to break from telling lies to suddenly telling the truth. But here, we got to watch honesty be treated like a process. By arriving at it slowly, when Rue has no other options, it makes it feel earned.

She Turns Outward and Fights Everything

After revealing her honest feelings, she becomes pedantic. She blames anything but herself. It's a reaction to the honesty. Ali tries to help Rue process her belief that "drugs are probably the only reason I haven't killed myself" by connecting it to a higher power. Rue isn't buying it.

Rue's confrontations aren't to solve anything. She believes that people leave, promises are lies, there's no such thing as purpose, and pain is arbitrary. She hates the worldview Ali is presenting. Since she can't hold the pain herself, she tries to put it on Jules. 

Of course, Ali isn't having any of that. He calls her out when she blames Jules for her failed sobriety. Again, he tries to move aside her confrontation and hold a mirror to Rue. But Rue is just trying to delay the emotional break that is coming. As long as she is arguing and blaming and rejecting, she doesn't have to face herself or her truth. 

The Cost of the Truth Hits

The break happens only after denial, honesty, and confrontation fail. In the emotional break, it becomes clear that each was a attempt to buy herself time. Suddenly, the episode reframes itself. She isn't entertaining the idea of trying because she's given up on the idea of wanting to be here at all.

As a writer, I love the contradiction here. She says she loves talking to Ali but that she doesn't plan to be here that long. It's heartbreaking because if she isn't here for long, then she wont be able to talk to Ali. Rue understands the right things. She just no longer believes she can be the person who continues to live it. 

She doesn't believe she's someone worth saving.

Building Pressure Until the Truth Breaks Through

An emotional break isn't when a character has the biggest feelings.  It comes when a character finally stops being able to hide what they believe about themselves. 

Writing a dialogue heavy episode like this can be a real challenge. Where this episode excels is the design of pressure. Each of the phases we discussed served a function:

1. The denial established a false version of the character. We see the mask of the character and the story they are trying to tell. 
2. The honesty cracks that version open. The truth slips on but it's incomplete. 
3. The confrontation is the character's attempt to reject that truth. They get angry and blame anything else to avoid owning it. 
4. The emotional break is what's left when all defenses fail to move the focus away from themselves.

As writer's, its easy to try to build each scene around what happens. Two characters talk about addiction at a diner. But what propels this scene is a truth a character is trying to avoid at all costs. Rue spends all forty pages trying to convince Ali that she's okay. It ends with her admitting that she's not, and in the worse way. 

Force your characters to say the only thing that matters to them.

On the surface, the Clark Kent and Lois Lane interview scene is a conversation about geopolitics around the world and Superman's role in it. But underneath the journalism, it's a scene that exposes the cracks in Lois and Clarks relationship. At face value, that seems like two impossible subjects to balance in a single scene. But Gunn solves that choice by building the entire scene around one object that dictates the power int he scene and how it moves between Lois and Clark. 

A digital recorder. 

Setting the Terms of the Interview

In the moment before, Clark enters the Daily Planet newsroom where there is a news story on the television involving a mysterious attacker tied to Boravia. Lois is skeptical about the situation and begins questioning the narrative. Clark claims he has insider knowledge from an "interview" with Superman. She doesn't buy it. 

That brings us to the incredible interview scene in Lois' apartment. 

After Clark jokes about how funny their argument in the Daily Planet earlier was, Lois scolds him the unethical ramifications of interviewing himself as Superman. Clark confidently offers Lois to interview him on the record then and she jumps on it. 

What follows in the scene is a discussion on geopolitics and the role Superman has in it as the tension in their personal relationship begins to seep through.  A complex balancing act that Gunn navigates using the interview as the framing device and a digital recorder as the power lever. 

Lois starts by asking about the events on the television at the Daily Planet earlier and Superman's interactions with the President of Boravia. Clark almost immediately breaks characters and speaks to Lois as Clark. Lois stops the tape. 

Clark breaks character to call foul on the role play they were doing in the Superman interview. But Lois holds him accountable saying she would be asking Superman that questions whether Clark had told her or not. Lois presses the button again and Clark jumps back into super character. 

Shortly after, the interview heats up again. Clark grows frustrated by the questioning of Lois because he knows she shares his same opinion. But Lois is keeping opinions out. This time, Clark shuts off the recorder to call timeout. After a beat, Lois turns the recorder back on. 

Trying to prove her point about the unethical integrity of interviewing himself as Superman, Lois asks if he thinks it is going well. Clark insinuates he thinks Lois is doing a poor job. She turns the recorder back on and the interview continues. 

It isn't long before Lois brings up the public opinion online #Superspy #Supershit and Clark breaks character. Louis turns of the recorder and the interview ends for good. 

What I love about the power lever of the digital recorder is that it is used differently three different times throughout the conversation. 

The first time, Lois stops it and then starts it again. 

The second time, Clark stops it and then Lois starts it again. 

The last time, Lois stops it. 

The interview format creates a built-in escalation with each question. Lois controls the rhythm of the scene by asking the questions as Clark tries to deflect and reframe. But every time the recorder stops, the scene shifts from being about Superman to being about Clark. He can hide behind the Superman persona. But when he's with Lois, there's nowhere else to go. So he leaves. 

The Recorder Controls the Truth

The geopolitics of the scene and the tension in Lois and Clark’s relationship are feeding into the same underlying questions: Should power act unilaterally? Is intention enough to justify action? Who holds power accountable? It forces our characters to argue both sides. Clark defends his actions not as justified, but as necessary. Lois isn't arguing the outcome, but questioning the cost. 

Neither is clearly right or wrong. Yet, the ambiguity creates a complexity in our characters and their relationship moving forward. What begins as an interview about Superman ends as a defining moment between two people who don't see the word the same way but still need to find a way to still see each other. 

Below you can find a script to screen version of the scene:

Anyone else watch Project Hail Mary (2026) this weekend? It's a big blockbuster of a good time with a charming lead and one of my favorite creative teams, Drew Goddard, Andy Weir, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, behind the camera. I had not read the book and tried to avoid as any spoiler-filled trailers as possible, so I was surprised the story quietly hinged on nonlinear storytelling. 

Nonlinear storytelling is when a screenplay presents the events of the story in a way other than chronological order. So instead of:

A → B → C

You might get:

C → B → A

or

A → B → A

or any of the other infinite ways that a story's scenes may go together. 

The key is that the audience is receiving the information out of order. Having a story presented out of order can be confusing for the audience unless it lends itself to the basis of the story or plot so it's a screenwriting tool that is frequently deployed within the science fiction genre. At its core, nonlinear storytelling is withholding context from the audience to show effect before cause. It's most commonly used as a flashback or the classic: 

*record scratch* I bet you're wondering how I got here.

But it's best used to reflect how characters experience time, whether it’s fragmented, simultaneous or already determined. Instead of asking what happens next, it engages the audience to ask: what actually happened? Lets look at three examples that show how nonlinear storytelling is used to control perspective, tension and payoff in the criminally under read Arrival (2016).

The Flashback That Isn’t a Flashback

Louise Banks is a linguist recruited to communicate with an alien species to determine their intentions. As she learns their complex language, she begins to experience visions of her daughter. In the first three pages of the script, Louise reflects on memory and time while at her lake house. 

She recalls moments of her daughter's life from birth to teenage conflict. The sequence culminates in the death of her daughter from an illness, which destroys Louise. Her voice over ends with her hinting that her experience of time does not work the way she once believed. 

This is where the script starts fooling you. As a reader, you're led by the writer Eric Heisserer to believe that Louise's experience of time is altered from the trauma of losing her child. It's structured as a sequence of events in flashback but you'll notice that there is no (FLASHBACK) in the script slug. Heisserer isn't lying but the reader mislabels it because of familiar storytelling language. In the end, the events of the film actually give a totally different and surprising context to the scenes of Louise's life with her daughter. 

Time Starts Leaking Into the Present

As Louise learns the heptapod language, she experiences the increasing flashes of Hannah. Exhausted and shaken, Louise sits alone after the confrontation, mirroring a familiar gesture as she runs her fingers through her hair. That action triggers a shift in time, cutting to a moment with her daughter Hannah at age twelve standing in the doorway of Louise’s study.

The transition visually links past and present through an identical behavior. It blends timelines without signaling a clear boundary. Notice how these flashes are triggered by a cognitive change. It isn't presented as a memory with Louise staring off, "remembering". These flashes are an example of the nonlinear storytelling being tied to a character's perspective.

Each flash is triggered by Louise's mental state and often bridged by overlapping voiceover. The repetition trains the reader to accept the pattern so that the twist hides in plain site. So the script successfully communicates the events unfolding while hiding the twist behind common screenwriting conventions.

The Choice That Was Always Coming

In the climax of the film, Louise calls General Shang and uses his wife’s dying words, words she hasn’t learned yet, to convince him to stand down from launching an attack. The line reframes the conflict, emphasizing that war only creates loss not victory. In doing so, the scene becomes both a turning point in the story and the clearest example of nonlinear storytelling where knowledge from the future drives action in the present. Information from the future drives action in the present. 

Check it out on page 113 of the script if you would like to read it yourself. But the thing I want to shine a light on for this is the final three pages and how nonlinear storytelling is used to advance character. 

This is where the script stops being clever and starts being devastating. The Louise voiceover reveals that the story isn't just about the struggle to communicate with first contact. It's a personal story being told from a mother to her daughter. The events become the way Louise explains how she came to understand time, choice and what their life together would be. 

We then see the same scenes from the opening. We see the writing on the glass "Do you want to make a baby?". We see flashes of Hannah as a newborn, a four year old and twelve year old. Each of these are told from a slightly different perspective sometimes lingering longer than in the first three pages. 

And then the writer Eric Heisserer shows us that Hannah still dies. That, for Louise, the knowledge of the future didn't change the future. What's really happening is Louise choosing to bring Hannah into the world knowing exactly how her story ends. That's what linear storytelling unlocks at its best. It's not just a different way to structure time in your script, but a deeper way to reveal character. 

If you’re writing something nonlinear, ask yourself:

Are you just rearranging scenes? Or are you changing how your character experiences time?

Let's break down how Ryan Coogler establishes the moral, spiritual, and social circumstances for his horror elements to thrive.

The Structure

The first half of the script is all setup, carefully establishing each character’s moral framework long before the supernatural arrives. Each character enters the story with moral baggage—beliefs about faith, violence, survival, and redemption—that define how they see the world. It sets up the choices that will ultimately reveal who these characters really are. Then, in the second half, the script turns that groundwork into action. The horror presents each of them with a distinct moral choice, forcing them to prove what they believe under pressure. By the time the supernatural arrives, the audience understands the real battle isn’t for survival, it’s for their souls.

Temptation Is a Choice - Sammie

Sammie visits his father in church and finds his guitar placed beside the Bible. Jedidiah wants him to use it for a traditional church performance, but when Sammie plays a blues version of a hymn, his father shuts it down. The moment reveals their conflict: Sammie wants to bring music and individuality into the church, while Jedidiah insists on tradition and control, reinforcing the tension between blues and religion.

He reads a verse about temptation and the promise that God will provide a way out. Then closes the book, picks up his guitar and chooses temptation. He tells himself that he can return in the morning unchanged. The script makes the choice clear: the church offers salvation and the blues offers freedom. But Sammie believes he can have both.

His father’s warning—“You keep dancing with the devil… one day he gon’ follow you home”—warns that this belief as dangerous. Sammie's decision will become a spiritual test that will ultimately cost him.

Violence Is Survival — Smoke

Smoke catches two men stealing from his car outside a grocery store and immediately escalates the situation by shooting one of them. After realizing one of the thieves knows him, Smoke pauses but then deliberately shoots the second man in the kneecap.

The scene shows that Smoke isn’t acting out of impulse, but making a calculated decision to enforce his reputation through violence. To Smoke, violence isn’t cruelty but survival. It’s a worldview shaped by his time in Chicago, where power is maintained through fear and mercy is a liability. The script establishes this early so that the audience understands what he's capable of. But later, that belief won't protect him. It will force him to make an impossible choice. And when survival requires him to turn that violence on someone he loves, the thing that has kept him alive may become the thing that costs him the most. 

The Blues Is Sacred — Delta Slim

The juke joint is fully set up and ready for opening. As Smoke surveys the room, Slim tunes the piano with Sammie. As Sammie watches Slim closely, we see his growing pull toward the music.

To Slim, the blues isn’t temptation. It’s sacred. It’s a spiritual truth that predates the church, something carried from home. Slim's defining belief is that the blues are the truth. He offers a alternative worldview to Sammie than what his father says. But later, that belief will be tested. Because if the blues is sacred, then what happens when it draws something evil in?

This moment deepens the theme. Religion says the blues is temptation, but Slim says that the blues is truth and that means Sammie must decide what to believe. The horror  in the story then becomes tied to a deeper question: Is music sinful or sacred? 

The Horror Forces Characters to Prove Their Beliefs

In the first half of Sinners, the script speaks in metaphor. Characters talk about temptation, faith and the devil as ideas about the kind of life they're choosing to live. But in the second half, the script removes that distance. What characters once debated, they now have to confront. The language of sin, temptation, and salvation stops being symbolic and starts driving action.

The Story Makes the Metaphor Literal

As we saw above, Sammie's father frames the entire story in spiritual terms. “You keep dancing with the devil… one day he gon’ follow you home.” At the time, it plays like a metaphor. A warning about temptation. About music. About the dangers of stepping outside the moral boundaries of the church. Sammie doesn't reject the warning outright because he believes that he can navigate both worlds. But the second half of the script takes the abstract idea and makes it an undeniable choice for Sammie to make. 

For the first time, Sammie names what's happening. The devil has followed him home. The metaphor is gone. The devil is no longer symbolic. He's standing before Sammie and making an offer. The moral framework established at the beginning of the film is now a life-or-death decision. Delta Slim even steps in to defend Sammie and what he stands for in the next generation.

Later in the pivotal scene, the conversation has escalated. Smoke takes aim at Remmick. But vampire Stack steps in front of him. So, Smoke lowers his gun. And suddenly, the situation isn't about survival. It's now about family. 

Vampire Stack essentially reframes the choice from life or death to unity and freedom. He presents turning as a way to finally live the life they've always wanted and the freedom it would bring. And Smoke hesitates. The beliefs that define him are to protect his brother and do whatever it takes to survive. And now, those things are in conflict. He can't do both. And that's the trap Ryan Coogler has presented here in the writing. The same instinct that drove him to kill their father to save Stack is now pushing him to join his brother. 

Smoke stares at his brother who approaches him smiling. 

And just when you think Stack's about to join his brother, Annie see's this moment happening and understands the decision that hangs in the balance. She yell's for Sammie to slam the door. Sammie closes the door and thus, choosing music even when it means facing the devil that followed him home. 

Let's take a look at the great writing and fresh direction that brought it back.

Predator's New Champion 🎬

The brand has gone through a bit of a revamp thanks to Dan Trachtenberg. If you haven’t seen some of Trachtenberg’s earliest short films, you should. His early short film work on Portal: No Escape and More Than You Can Chew shows a knack for blending sci-fi, horror, and tightly wound suspense.

Prey (2022) was widely credited with revitalizing the Predator franchise after years of disappointing sequels. The film was praised for successfully resetting the franchise by returning to its back-to-basics survival horror roots. I remember watching Prey on Hulu and thinking how they messed up not giving this film a theatrical release. (A mistake they rightly learned from to put Alien: Romulus in theaters).

Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) was an animated installment released this past summer, with many calling it one of the best films in the franchise thanks to its creative animation, brutal action, and expansions to the lore. A great piece of supplemental material for fans but not a prerequisite for this weeks upcoming release.

Surprisingly, Predator: Badlands (2025) is the first PG-13 installment since 2004's Alien vs. Predator. Funnily enough, they got that rating because no human's are hurt in the film. Surely, there will be plenty of blood spilled in the film, it just wont be red.

According to IGN, Ben Rosenblatt shared, “We don't have any humans in the movie and so we don't have any human red blood. So we're hoping that's gonna play to our advantage. We're going to go as hard as we possibly can within those constraints, and we think we'll be able to do some pretty awesomely gruesome stuff. But in colours other than red.”

“We'll see where it ends up, but our hope for it is that it can be a PG-13 that feels like an R,” Rosenblatt said. “That's kind of our hope. And really, what that's about is just being able to broaden out the audience for a movie like this.”

Trachtenberg and company have proven that legacy franchises don’t need to rely on nostalgia to feel relevant. They just need a clear point of view. By grounding sci-fi spectacle in suspense, survival, and character, Predator feels dangerous again.

Scene Study - Prey (2022) 

For today's Scene Study, I want to dissect how Prey employs the art of suspense.

Leading up to this sequence, our lead character, Naru, has seen large footprints unlike anything she's seen before. When sharing her findings with her tribe, they argue that they must be a bear's footprints. Unconvinced, Naru begins to track the prints and does come across a bear who then begins to chase her. After putting an arrow firmly in the bear's side to no reaction, she flees to a nearby beaver dam for cover. 

What’s brilliant about this sequence is how it weaponizes dramatic irony. We already know the Predator exists. Naru doesn’t. The footprints set up her uncertainty, the bear seems to resolve it and then the film uses the beaver-dam hideout to lock us into her limited POV. The chase suspense flips into surveillance suspense. We’re stuck in the dark with Naru, catching only sounds, splashes, and jagged glimpses of a fight she can’t quite see. Then the reversal lands. 

The apex threat we’ve been tracking, the bear, suddenly becomes prey. Its corpse lifted and the blood painting over empty air outlines the Predator. It’s not a twist for the audience. But the visual reveal is recognition for the protagonist. Suspense becomes information. That new information is the scene’s pay off. Naru doesn’t just survive. She learns. She sees the Predator’s strength, stealth, and limitations In this case, invisibility can be betrayed by the environment and that knowledge reroutes her arc. From here, the story shifts from “run” to “study, adapt, hunt.”

Did Hollywood's obsession with running it back cost us our icons?

Reboot Culture and the Vanishing Icon 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It seems like just yesterday we were getting an onslaught of Arnold Schwarzenegger remakes. In the early 2010s, we got Conan the Barbarian, Total Recall, and Terminator remakes with varying degrees of success. What made the original 80s action movies so durable was their mythic simplicity. They were primal and direct, making them easy to reboot on paper but hard to modernize in spirit. The failed remakes of the 2010s mimicked the surface without reinterpreting what those conflicts meant. Audience expectations are always changing and evolving. That’s why the new wave of artist-led reimaginings, Trachtenberg’s Predator films and now Wright’s Running Man, succeed where those didn’t. The old fight remains but the meaning shifts. These filmmakers aren’t reliving raw 80s masculinity but are using those frameworks to explore what control, heroism and rebellion look like in 2025.

I've been thinking a lot about how with the rise of the remake came the fall of the Hollywood superstar. Where are the Leonardo DiCaprios, Tom Cruises, and Julia Roberts of the next generation? Once upon a time, a name on a poster could sell an original idea. Audiences showed up for the person, not the property. But as that era faded, studios leaned harder on recognizable IP to try to guarantee returns. It is easier to reboot a brand than to build a star.

I've been thinking a lot about how with the rise of the remake and the dominance of the internet came the fall of the enduring Hollywood superstar. Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, and Julia Roberts were long-term investments that drew audiences for decades. With the internet, interests shift quickly and studios chase virality. Internet zaddy Pedro Pascal might star in five movies this year, but next year we'll have a new fixation. Remakes are a nostalgic flash-in-the-pan, no longer centered around a superstar.

The one exception might be the modern action experiment happening right now. Glenn Powell as the heir apparent to Tom Cruise. First he taught him how to play volleyball in Top Gun: Maverick, then how to properly hold a popcorn bucket for marketing photos.  If you look at Tom Cruise's Instagram, there are only pictures of him, creative collaborator Christopher McQuarry, and Glenn Powell. There's not even any primary photos of Tom Cruise with Edgar Wright friend Simon Pegg. And they've starred in six movies together in the last 20 years! Sorry Simon!

Scene Study - Baby Driver (2017) 

Which brings us to this week’s Scene Study. Before Running Man, Wright mastered the art of fusing music and story. Let’s break down one of the many ways Wright uses music in Baby Driver (2017).

Before a word of dialogue, Baby Driver defines both its protagonist and its rhythm. Instead of using a song as a soundtrack to convey tone, Wright uses it to structure the scene. Each guitar stab introduces a new member of the crew: Baby, Griff, Buddy, and Darling. The pressing play on the iPod Classic and the silence from Baby's guitar stab to Griff's guitar stab introduce the lead character and his important relationship to music. All before a high strings crescendo rips us into the first sequence. 

This isn’t just clever writing. It’s characterization through rhythm.  Before he moves or speaks, we understand that Baby is detached and observant. The film has just begun but the infusion of music tells the reader that he is in sync with the song in his ears, not with the chaos of the world around him. 

This is a copy of a DVD extra off of Hot Fuzz (2007) where Edgar Wright and co-writer Simon Pegg review their flip chart they made of all the brainstorming they referenced while writing the film. 

That movie musical will be just fine without me. Instead, I want to tell you about why the biggest box office bomb of the year is also my favorite movie musical of 2025.

Robbie Williams Deserved Better (Man) 

When I tell people about this movie, the first thing they say is "Was that the monkey movie?" Yeah it is. It's called Better Man (2024)*. Now shut up and give me a shot at convincing you to watch this film.

Better Man is a musical biopic about Robbie Williams. Now, maybe you were like me and your first thought is "Who?" If so, congrats, you can just watch it as an original musical with new original songs you've never heard before. Watch it through that lens and you might discover a hidden gem of a film that was "way better than it should have been." Otherwise, here's some Robbie Williams accolades if that sort of thing sways you:  

He is one of the best-selling British solo artists ever, with over 75 million records sold.

He holds the Guinness World Record for the most concert tickets sold in a single day, with 1.6 million tickets in 24 hours.

He has won more BRIT Awards (Britain’s equivalent of the Grammys) than any other artist in history, with 18.

Better Man is a wild and surprisingly emotional music biopic where Williams is portrayed as a CGI chimpanzee because that's literally how fame made him feel. Like a performing monkey. I know that sounds insane. But it works. The movie uses that metaphor to show the pressure, self loathing, addictions and monumental highs of being one of the biggest pop stars in the world. It's not some bland "rise and fall" musician story with too many unmotivated cuts in a scene. It's a surreal and shockingly moving film where the musical numbers really go for it. But instead of being glossy and sanitized (like director Michael Gracey's previous musical The Greatest Showman) it digs into Williams insecurities, panic attacks and the ways he blew up his own life at times. 

Here is why it works: since he's portrayed as a CGI monkey, Robbie Williams was able to voice himself. All the showmanship, charisma, and cheeky British humor exudes from his vocal performance. This isn't a posthumous musical biopic where you have to suspend belief. It's a performance where the artist is able to relive the heartbreak throughout his career and come out on the other side as a changed monkey. And the audience feels it. That combination of CGI monkey and musical artist voicing himself creates some real genuine magic. 

And yet none of you watched it. How do I know? Because the film made $2.2 million domestically in the U.S. for its entire theatrical run. According to Box office Mojo, the 2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action block made more money earlier this year. And Better Man had a production budget of $110 million dollars. In its 2nd weekend of release, the film dropped an insane -76% with just $255k in US revenue. 

The issue? It's on Paramount Plus. The streamer your parents have to watch Yellowstone and maybe some new Star Trek if that isn't too woke for them. But please, ask to borrow someone's password and watch this film. And do me one favor: play it as loud as humanly possible. Because when you do, I'd bet you'll wish you saw it in a packed theater. 

Scene Study - Better Man (2024) 

The following scene is one of many moments that gave me goosebumps throughout the film. The scene takes place right after he walks out on the boy-band Take That. An exit that should’ve been liberating but instead sends him spiraling.

The following is from the Better Man screenplay, pages 53 and 54:

This scene captures Robbie’s complete emotional collapse, blending realism and surrealism until his inner breakdown becomes indistinguishable from the world around him. The more unhinged Robbie feels, the more the world blurs to reflect it. Fog blocks out the sun. Headlights multiply. The road stops following all logic.

The moment the speeding bus appears in reverse and filled with Manchester United fans as his father conducts them, the scene fully crosses into psychological fantasy. It collapses time. It's not just Robbie fleeing a boy-band but it’s also him outrunning every unresolved wound that fame only made louder.

And then comes the wall of water.

Driving through it becomes the perfect visual metaphor for hitting rock bottom. It all dissolves. There’s no more runway. Just the weight of everything he’s been carrying finally pulling him under until he quite literally “comes undone.”

*I know Better Man technically had a limited release on December 25, 2024. But it didn’t go wide until January 10, 2025 so I’m officially claiming it as my favorite musical of 2025.