Screenwriting: Need Help

[afroakuma]

I've seen similar threads posted here before, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I'm trying to build a concept for a drama series around a group of soldiers left for dead in the Middle East, who soon get targeted by their own side for termination.

It's an easy conspiracy plot, except for one thing:

Why?

Why do these men need to be killed?

I'm trying to stay as far away from sci-fi as possible, although cutting-edge science would be reasonable. Currently veering towards suspicion that they may have acquired information on a controversial or covert military program that the government doesn't want in the public eye, but again; the nature of that is still hazy.

[valadil]

The only good answer I can come up with is political. I will preface the idea by saying that it is meant to be used in a work of fiction, not that it is necessarily true.

Maybe the soldiers found out that there were no WMDs in Iraq (or had been asked to plant WMDs). They tried to come home with this news and end the war, but certain political leaders didn't want that to happen and tried to silence the soldiers.

[charl]

Maybe they saw something they shouldn't have. They could for example have witnessed a military strike against an unarmed village, or a missile hitting a school or something like that, and the government not wanting to take responsibility for another PR nightmare wants to cover it up but the protagonists are deemed to be too unreliable to buy.

Or perhaps the protagonists know of a plot by Americans to use their allies (pick a country, the UK perhaps) as decoys, then carpet bomb them to get rid of the enemy, labeling the dead allies as friendly fire. How do they know this? Why, they accidentally got their hands on the wrong mission statements due to a bureaucratic F-up. The army does stuff like that all the time, though this one would be a bit bigger than they usually are.

Those two could work.

[DomaDoma]

We are talking about the U.S. government, right? Letting us know what country is perpetrating the sinister conspiracy could prove helpful.

[afroakuma]

US government, yes.

The men are deployed; they are left behind during a troop withdrawl in hostile territory, and returning American troops have orders to kill them.

The thing is, I'd prefer if they themselves didn't know why, not from the outset at least. Which means either one of them does know something he shouldn't, or the government expects that he will.

I don't intend this to be an indictment of an entire government, though. I'd prefer if it was a strictly military conspiracy, maybe with only a few political connections.

[Seraph]

perhaps they witnessed the deployment of some highly illegal weapon, like a low-yield nuke or biological weapons? or, possibly, happened to uncover evidence of a false-flag operation, like killing an insurgent force as a target of opportunity to find out they were actually disguised US special forces soldiers.

[Grail]

In my opinion, the reason why should have been developed first because then the writing will flow better.

But there are plenty of conspiracies that can be used in this situation.


The enemy is not as dangerous as the Government thinks, therefore they are behind a number of the attacks to propegate the myth and further their goals by forcing to keep troops in the field.
The troops have discovered alien tech or something similar to alien tech underneath the sands of Iraq
The troops were experimented on with a new drug, the Government is trying to clean up a mess
It's a case of mistaken identity, one of the guys names is Osama

[afroakuma]

In my opinion, the reason why should have been developed first because then the writing will flow better.

I did start with one, but I felt it was a bit too sci-fi for my taste.


The enemy is not as dangerous as the Government thinks, therefore they are behind a number of the attacks to propegate the myth and further their goals by forcing to keep troops in the field.

Then why the withdrawl?


The troops have discovered alien tech or something similar to alien tech underneath the sands of Iraq

Sci-fi.


The troops were experimented on with a new drug, the Government is trying to clean up a mess

That's close to what I was going with.

[Oregano]

There's been some good ideas but I don't think it should be about the USA doing evil or immoral things really. Here's my idea...

One of the other squads are responsible for a massacre of a village but command think the heroes squad did it. Command ended up sending the bad guy squad to bring the good guys in for court marshal/martial(sp?), but when they encountered each other bad guy squad opened fire and haave told command that good guy squad are hostile, now more soldiers are being sent after them and they're wanted dead or alive.

or even better, their CO told them to rob a bank to help end the war, but when they returned to base they found it burnt down and their CO murdered, there's no evidence that they were acting under orders now either.:smallwink:

[Decoy Lockbox]

What if you turned this into some sort of abstract political/religious allegory in which the soldiers are Jesus and his apostles wandering in the desert of human misery, as represented by the Iraq?.

[Brewdude]

Soldiers in the Middle East? Get with the times. Clearly you mean CONTRACTORS in the middle east.

Then it's easy. They were tasked with protecting a certain diplomat for a mobile security mission that went bad, and they got blamed for the death. Normally just a bad publicity for the company they worked for, they think, only....

Antagonists range from competing contracting companies trying to drum up the bad publicity, their own company bigwigs trying to cover up who actually leaked the security information which caused the f-up, the government officials for them running away from the deteriorating official explanations which blame them (and note that there's a gazillion different government bodies which may be involved...starting with the military's cheif local security guys, who are different from the state department people, who are different from any oversease fbi, or ncis, or cia, or dia, or heck marshal service and highway patrol...)

They can blamed for anything from outright betraying of the security to killing innocent non-combatant civilians (you know, the ones who dropped their weapons after getting shot) to just being incompetent.

Positive resolution should have them working for a competing company after everything gets resolved, because the people tend to follow the jobs, not which company won the contract for 'em.

Note that all these companies recruit from former special ops guys (marine recon, navy seals, army rangers, air force paratroopers, etc.) so these guys tend to have the abilities necessary for this sort of plot.

[Revlid]

I've seen similar threads posted here before, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I'm trying to build a concept for a drama series around a group of soldiers left for dead in the Middle East, who soon get targeted by their own side for termination.

It's an easy conspiracy plot, except for one thing:

Why?

Why do these men need to be killed?

Zombies.

Or the drugs/super-soldier thing. That's good too.

[afroakuma]

When I get back, I'll post my original concept. You all can pummel it to pieces. :smalltongue:

[Berserk Monk]

A grudge held by a higher ranking officer against on of these men so he tells his platoon these men committed some offense and the penalty is death; not trail or anything like that. Just shoot them on sight. Maybe the officer lied and said they turned traitor and were aiding the enemy. I know it's kind of bad, but it's the best I can come up with.

[The_JJ]

My first question: Do we get screen credits? How about some cut of the profits? :smallamused:

[afroakuma]

Okay, here's what I had:

The US government is withdrawing its forces from a contested area in the Middle East under scrutiny at home.

During the troop evacuation, a sergeant is drugged and left for dead by a longtime friend, who wants the sergeant's wife. His squad, searching for their commander, is reassigned to aid in the evacuation of a special operations unit. Their CO is killed by oncoming hostiles, and much of the equipment and personnel lost in the attack. Air and ground support depart without them.

They fight off the hostiles and discover communications equipment among the spec op remains. They use it to transmit a message. A day later, American jets arrive and begin bombing the area.

So that's the basic setup. The two ideas I was entertaining were:

1) The spec op is a unit from a classified project involving super soldiers and super engineers, using high-dose modafinil and other performance-boosting drugs on select soldiers in a fairly continuous manner. The project is branching out into White Dog and Black Dog; the former is testing a drug that temporarily induces autistic behavior, including increased mental focus and singlemindedness, while the latter joins the first-stage drugs with a PCP derivative to create soldiers who can temporarily ignore pain and injury.

2) The spec op unit had training plans for groups of select soldiers, taken from US protectorate orphanages and prisons illegally and forced into military service.

[Canadian]

The soldiers are translators and are of Muslim background. They are assigned to a platoon run by a racist officer. The racist officer knows the translators don't like him. When they come across a Mosque the officer insists on blowing it up. The translators disagree but go into the Mosque anyway to ask the people to leave before the Mosque is demolished.

While in the Mosque the insurgents open fire on the rest of the unit and wipe them out. The racist officer takes this as an opportunity to frame the translators. They are labeled as traitors by the survivors of their unit. The platoon leader vows to hunt them down and bring them to justice. Meanwhile they are on the run - they go around helping people - kind of like a Muslim A-Team.

[Maerok]

Maybe one of them was secretly carrying a sample of the desert equivalent of Agent Orange.

Mister Sandman: A chemical that is precision sprayed from something like a flamethrower to release and detonate the oxygen portion of silicate (SiO2) in sand. Spray it and it turns a sandstorm into a hellstorm. If it acted as a catalyst to the process it could keep on going. Also, can react with up to 50 times its volume in water to ignite.


Or there's always the possibility of gold being stashed away and their commander is purposefully trying to cover it up for himself.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

The soldiers are translators and are of Muslim background. They are assigned to a platoon run by a racist officer. The racist officer knows the translators don't like him. When they come across a Mosque the officer insists on blowing it up. The translators disagree but go into the Mosque anyway to ask the people to leave before the Mosque is demolished.

While in the Mosque the insurgents open fire on the rest of the unit and wipe them out. The racist officer takes this as an opportunity to frame the translators. They are labeled as traitors by the survivors of their unit. The platoon leader vows to hunt them down and bring them to justice. Meanwhile they are on the run - they go around helping people - kind of like a Muslim A-Team.

I like this one.

[Gaelbert]

or even better, their CO told them to rob a bank to help end the war, but when they returned to base they found it burnt down and their CO murdered, there's no evidence that they were acting under orders now either.:smallwink:

Like that one lawyer movie set in the Boer Wars with the amazing cross examination scene? It's a great movie, too bad I can't remember what it was called.

[Brewdude]

Honestly, I can't think of a thing that would be so terrible that someone would want to insure the death all the men involved to cover it up. Make a single play to get them killed, sure. But the effort involved in an ongoing extermination campaign is far too much for any information I can think of worth hiding....just a cost benefit thing.

So that rules out coverup based reasons (some information, if disclosed, would be bad for the bad guy) of information control.

Now, epidemic based reasons (something contagious or physically dangerous about our heroes) make sense to me, but then your heroes are basically doomed no matter what.

Is this the set up for an ongoing serial or just a one shot movie screenplay? What is the general type of show you are looking to make with the characters once the background is finalized? I mean, right now, Muslim A-team is the best idea I see out there. The officer doesn't even need to be that racist, could just be culturally insensitive.

[Oregano]

Like that one lawyer movie set in the Boer Wars with the amazing cross examination scene? It's a great movie, too bad I can't remember what it was called.

I was thinking of the A-team but that works too.:smalltongue:

[Canadian]

The American government could know about the "Rouge Unit" but the world never finds out because having U.S. soldiers change sides would be bad politically for the U.S.

The government assigns an operative to do an investigation. Some kind of super M.P. lawyer. The closer she gets to the truth the more the racist officer tries to put her out of the picture.

One of the solders in the unit has a relative who works for an Arab news station in the region as a top reporter. She's an American by birth and she's totally hot. Every now and them the solder gets her on a cell phone connection and tries to let her know where they are - without tipping off the U.S. guys listening in on the wire tap - so she can meet them and break the story.

At some point the hot reporter and the M.P. lawyer meet up and secretly join forces to prove the innocence of the Muslim A-Team. In the meantime the A-Team go around doing good deeds while being torn between two missions and two worlds. Maybe in each episode there's a problem that needs to be solved that involves a certain lesson in the Koran?

Who knows...