how i would change “do revenge” to make it a better movie:
(spoilers for “do revenge”. obviously.)
-fashion is too try-hard and also too homogeneous across the whole movie. i feel like if the movie wanted to better hit the clueless/mean girls mark they were clearly going for, the fashion needs to stand out on who matters. if every character, every student at the school, has “good” clothes and looks like they were styled to be an instagram model, it doesnt really tell us much about the main characters when they also dress like that. re: clueless and mean girls, cher and dionne’s fashion is very unique to them in the movie, and the plastic’s fashion firmly establishes them as the Mean Girls they are.
-the film wastes too much time on gabbi and russ as eleanor and drea’s love interests, when that time would have been better spent developing the friendship between eleanor and drea themselves. sure, we see them Plan Revenge and Do Revenge, but it could have been worthwhile to see them in other settings. do they hang out when they’re not plotting revenge? what do they talk about when they’re not talking about revenge? and so this would have added weight to the scene when drea forgets eleanor’s birthday or when eleanor “realizes she’s changed”.
-there are so many gaps in the passage of time that its so boring. like the title cards of “summer” and “fall” and “spring” dont actually. move you thru the story, mostly they feel lazy. throughout the movie we move through an entire year but all of it feels stagnant.
-movie immediately goes soooo downhill as soon as its ~revealed~ (w little to no foreshadowing as far as i saw) that eleanor is like. actually on her own team and is doing this whole revenge plot against drea. like so downhill its such a weird and obnoxious “twist” and she also garners so sympathy from it. like she.... convinced drea to get not One but Two people in legal trouble for drug possession and ruin their lives? and then she actually does leak max’s personal texts, lies to literally everyone (including love interest gabbi), threatens to frame drea’s MOM for drug possession, and literally hits drea w he car. so its just. like there is no rooting for eleanor. and tbh its just such a shallow turn of events and diverges from a well-structured bad teen movie in order to basically starve itself of any salvageable good parts.
-and then somehow, with no real apology or redemption arc, DREA is apologizing to ELEANOR? telling her she’s maybe the best friend she’s ever had, and moments w her were the happiest of her last year?
-also how does MAX find out the whole story via eleanor’s phone at the admissions party? drea and eleanor were committing literally crimes just texting abt it on iphone? AND eleanor doesnt have a password-protected phone? and somehow, after eleanor and drea’s friendship falls apart, their text messages also tell the story of eleanor’s Ultimate Revenge Plan, the one that was told out loud and in person? that whole part just felt like “how can we make this more convoluted and add no substance to this story at all”.
-tbh if the movie wanted to do like “psycho lesbian goes on a revenge spree” thing they could have like. actually gone for it and made it a very action-packed, eleanor-thinks-she-has-no-consequences-coming-for-her, high-emotion movie but they....dont? eleanor says she feels things but doesnt seems to feel much at all? it doesnt help the maya hawke is like supremely bad at selling me on the character. and if they wanted to do “fucked up soulmates”, again, they could get better actors, and also they could have written a story in which drea and elenaor are actually on equal terms when it comes to being “fucked up”, cus rn we have “actually a horrific person” eleanor and “was just a childhood bully and high school mean girl” drea.
-everyone in this movie could stand to, like, become better actors
-here is my better plot idea: keep the “two very different high school girls were fucked over by people they cared about, and they team up to get revenge on those who wronged them”. they develop a real and genuine friendship despite coming from ~different worlds~, but as the school year progresses drea becomes too entrenched in getting revenge; eleanor’s revenge has been completed, but drea’s is harder and she cant move on from what happened to her. in the same vein, eleanor becomes a bit unrecognizable as she blends in more and more with drea’s former friends, the popular kids (in a very cady heron/mean girls way). the scene at eleanor’s bday part remains pretty much the same: drea forgets her bestie’s bday bc she’s too caught up in her revenge fantasy, but eleanor also gets a call out for becoming too buddy-buddy with the people who destroyed HER bestie’s life. after this fight, they spend time apart which makes them realize that the friendship they developed together was more valuable than revenge the whole time. so they reunite, make amends, etc and get back on track on completely drea’s revenge. once drea’s revenge is completed, they swear to give up on any further revenge aspirations (to show “growth”) and then the end scene where they skip their graduation and drive away singing also remains unchanged; it is symbolic of them letting go of their pasts and letting go of high school.
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Family Dinners - dpxdc
"Holy shit, you're Bruce Wayne!" Danny gaped, jabbing a finger at the man sitting at the head of the table.
The bustling dining room goes silent as everyone turns to look at him.
"Danny, who did you think was going to be here?" Tim asks, disbelief plain in his voice and Danny feels his face flush red.
"Sorry, I, uh, I guess I just never put it together. Tim Drake-Wayne. Wayne Manor. It, uh, makes sense now." He laughs sheepishly and scrubs at his neck before slumping back down into his chair.
"Well," Tim says with an indulgent sigh, "at least I know you're not just friends with me for my connections."
"Yeah, I'm really sorry, I just never thought about it, I guess."
Danny sinks lower as everyone around him laughs. Come to dinner, he said, the food is the best, he said, ignore the family, he said. Danny really wishes he'd listened to Tim and just ignored them—almost as much as he's regretting accepting the offer in the first place—but... he's having dinner with Batman.
Ancients, that's so weird!
The last time he saw Batman was in the future and, suffice it to say, it was not going well. There hadn't really been time for family dinners there.
Wait. Family dinners?
He peers around the table, openly gawking at everyone as it all clicks into place.
"Everything alright, Danny? Now realising who everyone else is?" Tim asks with a roll of his eyes.
"Uh... something like that..." Danny mumbles as everyone laughs again.
From further down the table, the smallest Wayne scoffs and clicks his tongue.
"I thought you said he was smart, Drake?"
"So, you all do it, too, then?" he asks, ignoring the jibe. Danny's only a little bit jealous as he thinks of how much easier they must have it, how much easier it'd be if his family had been on his side, too. "You all work together?"
"Nah," Dick says from across the table with a brilliant grin. "Tim's the only one that works with Bruce, we all have different jobs. I'm a police officer in Bludhaven."
"Disgusting." Danny blurts out without thinking—because seriously, what kind of self-respecting vigilante would also be a police officer?—before clapping a hand over his mouth. "Sorry."
The whole table laughs again, the loudest being the blonde girl a few spaces down from Dick. Look, Danny wasn't really paying attention to names when they were all paraded in front of him. Dick only gets remembered because his name is a joke.
Come on, Danny, recover!
"That's, uh, not what I meant, though."
"Oh?" Dick asks, cocking his head slightly to the side. Is it Danny's imagination or does his smile tense slightly?
"Yeah, I mean like, you know, in costume. It must make it so much easier to have everyone together like this."
"Costume? What do you mean?"
Yeah, Danny's not imagining it, everyone tenses up at that. It's really only now that he's realising that this probably isn't how he should bring up that he knows about their... night time activities. In fact, he probably shouldn't be bringing it up at all.
"Uuhhh..." Danny looks wildly around the table as he continues making his stupid noise. Think, think, think! There must be a way out of this!
"Danny?" Tim asks, looking concerned.
"Oh, Ancients, this isn't how I wanted it to go at all," he mutters, slipping even further into his chair. He's almost on the floor now and he so, so wishes it could just swallow him up.
His real first meeting with Batman was meant to be cool! He had planned to be Phantom, maybe save them from a tight spot, prove his worth as a mysterious and powerful ally as thanks for the help Batman gave him in the future.
"Danny, what are you talking about?" Tim starts tugging on his sleeve in an attempt to pull him back up from his pit of despair.
Eventually, Danny relents and sits up straighter, hiding his face in his hands and whining all the while.
"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect him to be here and it threw me off so now I look stupid and it's so embarrassing!" he wails, flailing his arms wide. "Why wouldn't you warn me that Batman was your adopted dad, Tim? Couldn't you have let me know?"
"I'm sorry, what? Danny are you alright? There's no way Bruce can be Batman, look at him!"
"Yeah," the blonde girl laughs from the bottom of the table, "look at him! That's a wet noodle of a man! Batman can actually do things, B is incapable of pretty much everything."
"Thank you, Stephanie," Bruce sighs, massaging his forehead.
It's... Those are the first words Danny's heard Batman say since everything went down and it's enough to knock him out of his embarrassment.
It's really good to hear his voice again. Especially now, when it's strong and healthy and full of personality—even if that personality is little more than a tired father right now—far better than how it had been, at the end.
Danny sits up, back straight, and grins. He's got this. He remembers it perfectly. Some people count sheep to fall asleep, Danny repeats his mantra to be certain that he'll never forget it.
"Gamma alpha upsilon tau iota mu epsilon, 42, 63, 28, 1 colon 65 dash 9."
Once again, the whole table falls into silence.
"Holy shit..." breathes the other D name (Duke? Danny's pretty sure he's Signal) from opposite Stephanie. "Isn't that...?"
"The time travelling code." The littlest Wayne says stiffly. "We have met in the future?"
"That's not just the time travelling code, Dami." Dick says, looking between Danny and Bruce. "That's the family time travelling code."
Danny's grin freezes in place.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"1 colon 65 dash 9." Dick explains, still flicking between him and Bruce. "It means you've been adopted into the family and we should all treat you as such, no questions asked."
"Tell you what, I'm about to ask a question." Danny says, dumbstruck. "You just told me it was a code to identify time travellers, not anything about being adopted! What the hell, B?"
Bruce looks about as shellshocked as Danny feels.
"We must have been close," he says finally, after opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water a few times.
"No! Not that close!" Danny reels back, taking a deep breath ready to refute it all, but... "Well, I mean, you found me when I first got stuck, and you helped me get better despite being... And then we fought together against the, uh, bad guy, before he, um, he... before you couldn't."
An uncomfortable beat passes while they all pick up on what Danny tried so hard not to say.
"So, you're not from the future, then, you travelled there and came back?" Tim asks, breaking the tension and leaning forward with a glint in his eye.
"Yeah, it was a whole end of the world thing, but don't worry about it," Danny says with a hand wave, "It's all kosher now, won't ever happen."
"What did happen?"
"Seriously, don't worry about it, we cool."
"How long in the future was it?"
"About ten years? You were pretty spry for an old man, B," Danny laughs, wishing they'd get off the topic of what happened and get back to the adoption bit.
Everyone shares degrees of a cautious smile as they relax out of the shock, and Dick—whose grin is the biggest—says, "No wonder you got the family code, you're already riffing on him like one of us. How long were you there for?"
"A week, before I managed to get back to my present and stop him then."
"A week? Jeez, B, that has to set some kind of record, seriously."
"Oh!" Danny says, sitting bolt upright and blinking in surprise before pointing at Dick and bouncing in his seat. "You're Nightwing!"
"What?"
"That's exactly what Nightwing said when Batman told me the code! Makes so much more sense now."
Dick laughs and claps his hands, delighted.
"You were not formally adopted?" The grumpy small one—Dami?—asks, his face pinched.
"I didn't even know I was informally adopted."
"And your parents? Are they alive or dead?"
"Damian, stop—"
"They were dead in the future, but they're alive now." Danny says, looking down. He fiddles with the tablecloth, twisting the fabric around his fingers as he fights down the pang of sadness that he always feels when he thinks of them now. He forces a bright smile on his face and hopes it doesn’t look too strained. "I just, uh, can't talk to them much, anymore."
"Damian," Dick warns, "1 colon 65 dash 9. Treat them as family, no questions asked."
"This is Damian treating him as family, the little turd has no manners." Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes, but he gently bumps shoulders with Danny to knock him out of his funk. Danny can't help but send him a watery smile.
"I have the most exemplary manners, Drake, unlike some people." Damian spits, crossing his arms with a pout. "I was merely ascertaining his status to see how he could possibly fit into the family."
"I know this is all a bit sudden, Danny," Bruce smiles, ignoring Damian and reaching out to lay a warm hand on his arm, "for all of us. But if I felt strongly enough to give you that code after spending a week with you in the future, then you are more than welcome in this family, if you so choose it. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we'd like to get to know you a bit more."
"I know a threat when I hear it, Bruce." Danny snorts. "But, yeah, I get it. I'm sorry this is all so weird, it really wasn't how I wanted to find you again, but... I'm glad I did."
"So are we, Danny." Dick says, with a warm smile. "And formally or not, 1 colon 65 dash 9 means you're family. Welcome to the fun house! No take backs or refunds, sorry. You're stuck with us."
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