10 Screenwriting Lessons You Can Learn

from The Avengers!

Posted on February 26, 2013 | by admin

Almost all of my 10 Lessons You Can Learn From posts have dealt with classic, or
at the very least, well-respected films. Im not sure Id put The Avengers on that list.
It was a fun movie. But like a lot of summer movies, it was meant to be viewed once
on a Saturday night with a theater full of teenagers. I dont believe its meant to go
toe-to-toe with any respected film. Having said that, Im always breaking down films
that are critically loved, with the films commercial success being secondary. As a
commenter brought up the other day, Why are you always knocking Transformers?
It made a billion dollars worldwide. People saw it and enjoyed it. Its hard for me to
quantify that statement. Yeah, people are going to see the movie, but theyre all 14
years old. I dont know anyone over the age of 23 who actually enjoyed
Transformers. But the commenter was right about one thing. SOMEONE is going to

see these movies and enjoying them. So almost as a challenge, I thought it would be
fun to look at the highest grossing movie of 2012 (by almost 200 million dollars) and
see if we couldnt extract 10 screenwriting tips from it maybe figure out some
screenwriting tips for the summer blockbuster writer. Here we go!
1) Whats your problem? In most big budget movies, you want to introduce the
problem in your story right away. Once you have a problem, you can begin
introducing characters who are going to solve that problem. So here, that problem is
the Tesseract. It opens up. Loki (the villain) comes through it. Now we got a problem.
2) Set-pieces are driven by URGENCY Whenever you write a big action setpiece, you have to incorporate urgency in some way preferably via a ticking time
bomb. So here, after Loki arrives, the Tesseracts lack of stability causes the building
to start imploding, giving them only 2 minutes to get out. This makes the impending
chase of Loki even more intense, as they must also escape the area before theyre
destroyed along with it.
3) Refocus your script after set-pieces Set pieces are fun and wild and crazy.
But a mistake I find a lot of amateur writers making is that AFTER their set-piece,
they dont re-orient the reader. Remember, we were just in action mode. Enjoying
explosions. Enjoying super-heroes fighting. Now that thats over, we need to be rebriefed on our character goals. So immediately after that first set-piece in Avengers,
Nick Fury gets on the phone and says, The Tesseracts been stolen by a hostile
force. Everybody we know, I want them after it. The goal has been established. We
now know what were doing. This may SEEM obvious, but rarely do I see the new
writer do it. They often assume you know what the goal is or, in drastic cases, dont
establish a goal at all.
4) Dont get bogged down in exposition You should always try to limit your
exposition. Thats because exposition is boring. No matter how you dress it up, well
be bored by it. If theres one major fault in The Avengers, its that once we get to the
airship, we get about six or seven scenes of exposition and discussion. The film
slows to a crawl as a result. Remember that your primary focus in any screenplay is
to keep the story moving. Dont get bogged down in exposition. One or in drastic
cases a maximum of two scenes is enough.
5) Capture your villain Its hard to maintain a single unchanged plotline for an
entire screenplay. If somethings unchanged for that long, theres a good chance
well get bored with it. To keep things fresh, you want to interrupt that plotline with
something unexpected. A perfect example is here with Loki. The plot COULD HAVE

HAD the Avengers trying to find and destroy Loki the entire time. But Whedon
switches things up by having us actually CAPTURE Loki, which adds a fresh new
dynamic to the story. In general, youre always looking to keep things fresh in your
scripts, so you want to make unexpected choices whenever possible.
6) Once again, the best dialogue often results from conflict Some of the best
dialogue in Avengers is when Stark is battling it out with Captain America. Why?
Because theyre on completely opposite ends of the personality spectrum. Stark is
carefree and does whatever he wants. Captain America is uptight and follows
orders. If you put any characters like that in a room together, the dialogues probably
going to be good, so its not surprising it works here. Contrast this with the dialogue
between Banner and Stark, who both respect each other. Its not bad, but its not
nearly as alive and fun as when Stark and Captain America talk.
7) If two characters dont get along or dont like each other, put them around
each other a lot! This is an extension of the last tip, and an important one. If you
have two characters who dont like each other, keep them around each other as
much as possible. Make them work together! Note that when the airship loses an
engine, Whedon doesnt have Stark and Banner work on it together (they like each
other!). He has Stark and Captain America work on it together.
8) Fights and battles must have high stakes or we wont care A lot of people
complained that the Thor Iron Man fight in the forest was pointless, just an excuse to
have Iron Man fight Thor. To a certain extent this was true. I mean, Thor did want to
take Loki back to be tried on his planet and Iron Man refused to allow that unless
Loki gave them the Tesseract. So there was SOME motivation to the fight. But lets
face it. It was weak. We didnt really feel the stakes of the fight. So it was nice eye
candy, but left us feeling empty. To fix this, always keep the stakes high in every
fight/battle. In The Matrix, when Neo fights Smith in the subway, we know that if
Smith kills him, the world is doomed. Neo is THE ONE, the only hope mankind has.
So the impact of that fight hits us much harder and were therefore way more
invested.
9) Set-pieces are about BUILDING You dont want to throw the kitchen sink at
your characters right away during a set-piece. You want to slowly build it up. The set
piece should feel like things are getting worse and worse for your heroes at every
turn. So in that final battle in Avengers, where the portal opens up and the aliens
arrive, first the small guys on speeders show up. When theyre handled, the big
worm thing shows up. When they defeat that, MULTIPLE worms show up. Theres

something about struggling to defeat something only to see it get much worse that
really pulls an audience in.
10) Yup, even big summer movies (minus Transformers) have character arcs
Not everyone has to arc, but a couple of your characters should. Here, Stark needs
to learn to buy into the team as opposed to only care about himself. Bruce Banner
must learn to embrace his dark side instead of focusing his entire life on avoiding it.
When these characters learn to overcome these issues, thats how the Avengers win
in the end.