Zendaya | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

The new movie “The Drama” starring Robert Pattinson as Charlie and Zendaya as Emma starts out as a typical relationship, engagement, and eventual marriage, but soon degrades into an uncomfortable, strange and very risky direction, where, during a “Truth or Dare” Emma tells her husband and two friends about a thought she had at age 15, where she was considering killing her fellow students in a school sdhooting. Clearly, if there had been any recent school shooting in the United States, this movie would not have been released on April 3, 2026, if ever. I was amazed that a screenplay like this was greenlit and two famous and very bankable stars like Pattinson and Zendaya agreed to act in this movie, considering the extremely sensitive subject of school shootings. Every time we all think that we have not seen a school shooting in a while, this is when another one or several more happen again.

The rest of this story is about the problems that Emma and Charlie understandably have in their relationship after this horrendous revelation about Emma is known. Another way of looking at this story is, why would Emma ever admit to anyone that she had sick thoughts of shooting many school children when she was 15 years old?

There is a major climax during Charlie and Emma’s wedding, and I remember wondering why they got married, considering Charlie’s many episodes of huge doubt about Emma’s mental health.

The Rotten Tomatoes are a way too high 79%, with my rating at 50%, mainly for the very bad premise of this movie, which does not give respect to the many victims of school shootings in this country. This film is another one to miss.

The new movie “Challengers” is a movie about 3 tennis players, Tashi Donaldson, a top woman tennis player played by Zendaya, Patrick Zweig played by Josh O’Connor and Art Donaldson played by Mike Faist, who are up and coming and in the case of Zweig a struggling-living-in-his car tennis pro.

The story is about a bi-sexual love triangle about the 3 tennis players, with Tashi, after a major leg injury helping to train at different times, both Donaldson and Zweig. The most obvious big problem with this film is the constant and insane flashbacks. From 9 months earlier to 13 years earlier, to the present day, to ahead 3 months, way too many times There was never a thought just to tell this story sequentially. This many flashbacks are just annoying and frustrating to watch.

There is also no measurable and contiguous story, just a series of disconnected scenes that lead to one of the worst endings I have ever seen. For this movie, the relatively high ratings make no sense, but we have all seen that before, “Poor Things”, and the horrendous, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” are just two insane examples of horrible movies that the critics graded highly. Within the first hour, I was already into “watch-looking” mode, waiting for this all to be over. There is some good acting, mostly wasted by a very bad screenplay.

The Rotten Tomatoes 88% rating is way too high, with the audience rating a more understandable 75% and my rating only 60% only for some of the acting, with this one a major miss.