© Gil Williamson 1999 and 2005 Last Update 9 Feb 2005

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Ice Bridge - The Movie Concept - Plot

So, returning to the classic plot I outlined in the previous page, I proffer the following plot:

• Initial action to establish the hero;
  • A young woman - NOT an adolescent - is using the Internet in the way of research, and not enjoying it much;
  • She observes a girl friend engrossed in a game - basically a team ARG game like the one I've outlined. She helps her friend with a problem;
  • Our heroine is established as someone who is wary of personal relationships, by rejecting the friend's invitation to join in;
  • The friend explains that you never have to meet your fellow players, just work with them on the Net.
• The reluctant hero and his companions;
  • The concept appeals to our heroine, who subscribes to the game and is allocated two companions;
  • She is amused and pleased by her companions, both of whom hide behind aliases;
  • One purports to be a teenage girl living in America, the other a male student in Germany;
  • She herself tells the truth about her sex and age, but lies about her location.
• The mission revealed;
  • They agree on a scenario, and start to play;
  • The activity shows in an enthusiasm she has not hitherto shown for anything, and she begins to flirt with the student;
  • We (the audience) see that the teenage girl is actually a rather unattractive youth, and the German student is actually an old man;
• Early complications to the mission, and reverses of fortune;
  • They make some progress, but after a short time the student makes a fatal mistake in the game, and is taken out;
  • She tries to re-establish contact with the "student", and thus finds out who he really is.
• Build up of tension as the hero's plan develops while the villains also gain in power;
  • She almost resigns from the game herself, but the "teenage girl" persuades her to stay, and they are allocated a new companion, whose rather stilted delivery is puzzling;
  • On questioning, the third companion professes himself to be a computer running a sort of Eliza program (a mid-sixties psycho-therapy program which could hold a sort of conversation with the user, building on the replies and echoing the user's sentiments, as well as having a store of motherhood statements to spout from time to time);
  • They continue to play, with some success;
  • We now see that the player representing himself as the "computer" is actually a rather unpleasant person who is stalking our heroine, using clues from what she says to find her location. We see him moving from place to place, using a notebook computer to make his contacts;
  • We can also see him tracking down the "teenage girl", whom he kills in anger at the deception. That companion just disappears from the game.
• Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
  • The killer should be seen to approach the heroine's apartment but steps straight into a trap set by the "student" (the old man)- actually a German cop who has been tracking him down for ages.

In the next section, I'd like to suggest some of the ways in which the movie could be convincingly filmed.

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