Today I paid a visit to the Internet Movie Data Base
(IMDB.com). It was this week’s most painful experience.
On the very front page, on the featured trailers banner, was my
story.
Just kidding. It was Wally Pfister and Jack Paglan’s story,
titled “Transcendence.” As soon as I saw it, I knew what it would be about.
Supercomputers. An anti-technology rebellion. A man uploading his own mind onto
a computer in an attempt to save his life.
If you were to go into my room, dig through my drawer, find
my "Idea-Log," open to page 33, and look at the top margin, you’d see
something along the lines of, “Transcendent Artificial Intelligence – scientist
uploads brain to computer – gains massive power – society fights back against
immorality.”
MY. STORY. I can’t
tell you how heartbreaking that is.
On the bright side, the movie looks good. Not only does it
feature Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman, but the story seems deep enough to give
the sparkly visuals a good flavor. I commend the writer, Mr. Paglan, on his
ability to take an interesting concept and put it in its best light. He was
able to do something that I couldn’t, not after years of writing, rewriting,
and plot-diagramming. He must be a better human being than I am.
But I’m still whining. This needs to be a constructive
experience.
First: What separates his idea from mine?
Well, for starters, the words in my notebook were a skeleton. Not a story. I had a concept that needed setting, characters,
relationships. Emotion. From what I
gather, Paglan’s story involves a wife that is involved in the whole uploading
process. That’s powerful. She’s also his “partner in science” – a nice and
relatable dynamic for anyone who gets high on the pure pursuit of knowledge. She
is caught between the safety of the world and the life of her husband. An
impossible choice.
Duty versus love. Science versus morality. Dichotomies that
are intriguing on so many levels.
Second: What is there to be learned from this difference?
What do mainstream writers / directors do to bring a concept up to story status?
Let’s see if we can trace a path from the skeleton to the story,
starting with, “Transcendent Artificial Intelligence.”
Stories are all about conflict, so we need problems. Problems. What’s wrong with
super-intelligent computers? They might turn against us. They might hack our
bank accounts or steal our private information and hold it at ransom. They
might un-encrypt nuclear launch codes and start a World War III.
Somebody will have to
realize this possibility before it becomes a problem. Someone has to speak up. That person will likely
amass a fair amount of followers, all believing that the safety of their world
is teetering on the edge of a perilous scientific cliff. Because they are
desperate, they will resort to violence. Even terrorism.
Anti-tech group.
Check.
What’s the other side of the coin? What advantages are there to having genius computers? If every device
has access to the internet and its
fellow computers, they will be able to compute solutions to humanities greatest
problems faster than we could ever imagine. Being the creator of such a device
must be exciting. Intoxicating. One
might begin to love the computer like his/her own child. Or more than a child.
Love of technology
interfering with personal, human relationships? Maternal? Fraternal? Marital?
The computers could find the cure for cancer. They could
come up with a perfect system of government. They could unveil the mysteries of
God and the universe. They could solve death itself.
Interesting… now death
is a token in the game. Is it a race against time? Maybe a father tries to save
his son from a terminal illness by creating a super-intelligent computer. But
why not twist it a little more?
Maybe we should introduce a villain. Perhaps the president
of the anti-tech group? Ehh… he’s just a man, a motivational speaker at best.
Leaders are typically not the scary guys. In this case, the leader is probably
a political junkie. The anti-tech group will put tension on our protagonist(s) outside of the main good-guy / bad-guy conflict.
So someone else, then. Someone not trained to be a moral leader. Someone adventurous. Someone predisposed
to obsession over things like power and creation. An engineer.
Our scientist.
But how can the scientist
be the villain? And how can he be intimidating?
What truly makes a villain scary is when they are powerful
and unpredictable. This is where the other part of our concept comes in: “scientist
uploads brain to computer – gains massive power.”
Our former protagonist
now has a mental link to the internet. He can access the whole of human
knowledge just by searching his mind. He can perform billions of calculations
every second. He is drunk with the power, and quickly becomes a villain. Worse,
he is growing too fast to be predictable.
But, then, who’s the protagonist? I heard a quote once that
said something like: “The best villains are the ones who are personally related
to the protagonists.” The most logical choice, in this case, is a coworker. And
then add a little bit of love (emotion-potion) and wallah!
Our protagonist is a
coworker and a spouse to the digital scientist.
What’s left? We know that our spouse/coworker protagonist is
going to have to choose between the world and her husband. Bu how the heck is she
going to be able to do that? That’s a huge choice. In order for our audience to
be satisfied at the end of the story, they need to have closure, but we have
just introduced a new type of problem: that of conscience. Even after she
chooses to shut down the computer, she won’t be able to stop thinking: I just killed my husband. Killed him. Ended
him.
She has to realize that it’s okay to let him go, which can
happen in a couple of ways. Maybe she finds an old journal of his, in which he
proclaims that he would rather die than become evil. Or maybe she discovers that
he was evil all along. He hired the
anti-tech group to shoot him, knowing that they would be forced to upload his
mind to the computer. He planned the whole thing.
Bitter betrayal. And then? Finally. Sweet revenge.
And so there it is, from concept to story. A straight,
continuous line. The latter is certainly a lot deeper and more interesting. Now,
if only I could do that with my other ideas, I would be a very successful
writer!
What are your thoughts?
