The Lost City: Script Doctor
I had a good time watching The Lost City. I ate lots of popcorn, we paid $10 a ticket to go to a matinee, I thought the whole main cast was good. I loved her jumpsuit. It thoroughly fits this newsletter’s standard - which, if you don’t know, is to be reliably adequate. There were a few things that bothered me about it, though, as both a casual fan of romance novels and someone who has watched Romancing The Stone. So I thought I would share what I would have done differently, if I got hired as a script doctor for The Lost City.
The premise is that Loretta (Sandra Bullock) is a reluctantly popular romance writer with a background in archeology, whose husband passed away five years before the events of the film. Alan (Channing Tatum) is the cover model for all of her books. When Loretta writes a book about a particular lost treasure, the villain (Daniel Radcliffe) kidnaps her so she can help him find the treasure, and Alan goes after them.
Needless to say, there will be lots of spoilers for The Lost City. If you don’t want to read a few hundred words about this movie (totally fair), you should just go watch Romancing The Stone.
Things I Would Have Changed About The Lost City:
Thing One: This is sort of nitpicky, but I actually think the whole premise is a little dated, because Fabio-style covers are not really a thing anymore. Romance novels used to look like this:
But now, they look like this:
They have just as much R-rated material but you would never know by those wholesome, illustrated covers! Anyway. It’s not really a problem, things can be dated. I just think it’s interesting.
Thing Two: Loretta should have kept that ancient parchment piece in its lamination. It killed me when she pulled it out of the plastic to hold it with her fingers! Surely not.
Thing Three: Beth, Loretta’s publisher, should have had her own romantic subplot. It’s not cool that they stuck her with a creepy guy on a cargo plane and a bunch of goats for comedic effect. The guy who helps her should be at least as hot as Channing Tatum, ideally with long, luscious hair, and Beth and the new hot guy should have had their own mini-adventure while attempting to rescue Loretta and Alan. Maybe Beth starts the movie with a cynical, jaded attitude about love and she’s only in the romance industry because it’s a cash cow - and that’s why she and Loretta are friends - because of their shared disdain for the genre that made them both rich. But then you could play with comedic contrast between Beth having an amazing, totally unrealistic romantic fantasy storyline, while meanwhile Loretta and Alan are pulling leeches off each other and struggling to sleep in the same hammock and generally being undignified.
Thing Four: Loretta and Alan should have had sex. In my version, they sleep together during the night at the villa, and the morning after, Loretta is absolutely torn up with guilt because some part of her believes it’s a betrayal to her late husband. Then her darkest hour moment is that she gives into her worst impulses and lashes out at Alan, saying all of the meanest, cruelest things she can think of about his perceived lack of intelligence, belittling his career, his crush on her etc. He leaves, heartbroken. In the aftermath of that moment she realizes she was just saying all the things she secretly believes about herself, and she is deeply ashamed of her own actions.
Thing Five: In my version, Alan is the one who gets kidnapped in the third act by Daniel Radcliffe. Maybe Alan accidentally took the ancient parchment piece with him when he left, and that’s why they took him - or maybe they still think that he’s a super tough special forces guy and so they think they need to neutralize him. In any case, Alan is subdued by the bad guys and Loretta sees them leave - and so this time she’s the one who needs to make a bumbling, awkward attempt at a rescue. This is both a great opportunity for Sandra Bullock’s comedy skills, and a way for Loretta to make up for being so mean to Alan in that darkest hour scene that I made up.
Thing Six: In a quiet moment somewhere near the climax (maybe when they are trapped in the tomb), Loretta specifically articulates what she likes about Alan. In the movie she just says “I wish I had seen you sooner”, but I want her to be more vulnerable and name the specific qualities she thinks are attractive in him. The movie showed us many options to choose from - he’s sweet, funny, loyal, generous to fans and to the romance genre in general, and he has a charming interest in material comforts like face masks and body oils. A huge obstacle to Loretta and Alan getting together is that Loretta thinks Alan isn’t smart, and certainly not as smart as her late husband. So, what’s changed? Why does she like Alan at the end? Right now it just kind of seems like she shrugged and decided to give it a try. I want her to tell us why it has to be him, and no one else.
This is why I feel like The Lost City wasn’t really a romance, ultimately. It was a comedy that used adventure and romance tropes for the purpose of comedy. Which again, is fine! But if it were up to me, they would have leaned into those romance tropes a little more and made it a true romantic adventure that is also a send-up of romantic adventures.