Movie opens with a shot of a glass of water on a table in a dark theatre. The studio lighting has a pinkish, orangish glow, the water in the glass rippling like the scene in Jurassic Park. The camera zooms out to reveal the rest of the table. There's a candle, a dirty ashtray a wet napkin, and 3 empty budweiser bottles. Next to the table sits a young man, in his mid twenties. He's dressed in business casual attire, the sleeves on his button down shirt rolled up to his elbows, and his tie draped over his shoulder, and his 5o'clock shadow overgrown on his cheeks. He's fidgeting. His name is Ruben. On the stage is a physical comedian, sweating, owning the stage, it's a wonder how he doesn't trip over the cord to his microphone, the way he dances, jumps and spins around on the stage. Ruben is chain smoking his ciggarettes, with mixed moments of laughing, and wheezing. The comedian is mid joke, gripping the audience about being grateful. He has the audience at full attention to his hyperbolic scenario, reminding them how lucky they are to live in a civilized society. No snakes, no bears, no poisonous insects in our daily lives. We just watch tv, eat our cheese burgers, and sleep in our comfy beds.
After the show, the comedian stands by the front of the building to have his picture taken with members of the audience. Ruben waits in line with his arms crossed, the breath you see in front of him isn't smoke this time. It's cold Thursday night in December at New York City. Ruben doesn't have a jacket, he just finishes his beers to keep warm. He's next in line.
"Hey man, I'm a huge fan, you are the best!"
"Thanks brother, I appreciate it!"
"How do you come up with such great material??"
Ruben asks, while he and the comedian pose together for his selfie.
"Listen man, I meet people all around the world, dentists, postal workers, tollbooth operators, and a lot of them ask me that same question. What I know is that these people don't like what they do. But me? I LOOOOOVE my job. When you love what you do, the creativity just flows out of you. Now get out of here dummy, these people want a picture too!"
Ruben is pushed aside, and contemplates what he heard. He walks home at night, in the cold watching his footsteps, finishing the last few drops of his beer. The sign at Times Square says 1:48am
Ruben arrives in his old townhome. It's dark, but the darkness doesn't hide th distress in his home. The screen door creaks, there are holes in the walls where the door knobs touch, the foyer is prepped to be painted but the project isn't finished. The disney channel is on. Ruben sees childrens toys on the floor -- die cast cars, transformers, dinosaurs. At this moment it is revealed that Ruben is a husband and a father. His wife leaning on the arm of their loveseat with the 4 year old son asleep with his head on her lap. She's beautiful but she doesn't look her best. Her hair is all frizzy. She looks exhausted, and she's not pleased. She makes the expression that says "Are you fucking kidding me?" and mouths the words of every couple's least favorite sentence "We need to talk"
Cut to Ruben in the backyard. It's about 10x50 sq ft, there's a soccerball, an old grill, and a single tree. Ruben lights another cigarrette. Wife comes out ready to unleash hell. "It's 2:00am, where have you been? What were you doing all night? why weren't you home? Do you realize Jordan won't sleep in his bed? Do you know why? He's having nightmares. He's terrified. I know you know why. You can't fill the netflix queue with your scary monster movies. This is not a good environment for a 4 year old, Ruben! I can't deal with this every night. I have a meeting with an extremely important client tomorrow and it's not going to go well. I need to be ready for this, and I can't because you can't be here for your own fucking son. You're not taking this seriously Ruben, you're not a child anymore, you need to really step it up because I'm not dealing with this anymore. The insurance company called and said they're cancelling our home insurance coverage. We are fucked, Ruben. I'm serious, Ruben. Do not fucking cross me. I'm not going to be the mom AND the dad here. I need you to give a shit. This is our life and you need to take some initiative. I just can't take it anymore.
"OK OK OK. FINE."
I don't know how the fuck I'm going to do this Ruben, I have to be up in three hours to get ready for this meeting. I can't be late for this. This is really serious.
"It'll be fine."
"..."
On her way back into the house, she steps through the door frame, stops and turns around.
"Did you think to ask me if I wanted to go to that show with you?"
Ruben takes another drag of his ciggarette. His shoulders droop and he continues to stare at the floor. She scoffs and goes back into the house. Ruben later follows her to the bedroom, and crawls under the covers. The tension is strong. Neither of them look like they want to relax right now. After some time his wifes eyelids begin to fall and she drifts asleep, but Ruben is still wide awake. He can't sleep, so he gets up out of bed, goes to the living room and sits on the couch next to his son who's asleep on the loveseat. He turns on the video game console and begins playing a video game. You can see over his shoulder, he's continuing his alien shooter game. His character dies, and during each game loading sequence, he looks over to his sleeping son and reaches to brush his hand through his sons hair.
Cut to the next morning, Rubens face is buried in the pillow on his bed. His wife is shaking him back to conciousness "What the fuck, Ruben, you weren't supposed to let me sleep in, We're both late!!" Ruben doesn't want anything to do with his wifes frantic morning routine. He doesn't change out of his work clothes, he brushes his teeth, kisses his son, and exits the house, gets in his 1993 Chevy Beretts and starts the engine. He's in the same outfit he was in yesterday. Presumably he was wearing the same outfit the day before too. He looks like ass.
He's at his office cubicle. Ruben works for the state in the city planning department. He went to university for engineering. He designs bridges. Papers are scattered and stacked all over his desk. His computer is requesting him to change his email password, and the webpage to do it won't load. Ruben begins sketching alien spaceships on the backs of the invoices on his desk. Cathy from Accounts Receivable is on the phone, attempting to calm down the person on the other end of the call. The person hangs up on her and she slams the handset onto the hook. She looks anxious. She gets up from her desk and hovers over Ruben.
"Have you talked to Helen? She's waiting on the inspection"
"It's coming in 4 weeks."
"Did you tell her that?"
"It's an annual inspection, Cathy. She knows that. It's only been 11 months."
"That's not what she told me. She's livid, Ruben. LIVID. The bridge creaks, she's getting complaints from people that the bridge shakes. People are scared, I don't know why people always come to me about this. I don't know anything about maintenance. I just need to get my work done. I've got like 25 more collection calls to make before lunch, I can't keep dealing with people's complaints. If they have complaints they need to go through you. That's what you do here right? I don't know why I'm always in charge of this kind of stuff. Like who do they think I am? Like I can just wave my stupid wand and all their problems are gone? Like what? I'm not the bridge fairy! ughhh... It's just never enough. They always want someth--
Ruben slams his hands on his desk.
"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, CATHY! DO YOU EVER SHUT THE FUCK UP??"
Cathy is paralyzed. Behind her you can see heads poke up like prairie dogs over the walls of the cubicle farm.
Cut to the boss's office. The supervisor of the HR department sits in the corner with his legs crossed. his head is bald and his thick frame glasses are on the end of the his nose. It's obvious that he's being tickled on the back of his ear by the potted fern he's sitting next to. He has a no. 2 pencil and legal pad in hand. The boss is faithless, his face buried in his hands.
A heated discussion about Ruben's motivation to keep the department afloat takes place. It doesn't go in Ruben's favor. His work ethic is questioned, and his attempts to redirect the conversation to shift the blame towards Cathy are thwarted and met with an early termination.
Ruben leaves the office, slamming the door shut behind him. The contents of Ruben's desk are packed in boxes and stacked in the passenger seat of his car. He's on the road waiting in traffic, visibly desperate. While he's consumed in self doubt, something peculiar happens.
In the opposing lane, a van pulls out if its lane, into the bike lane, over the curb, across the sidewalk and then gasses forward into a crowd of pedestrians at a newstand outside of a hotel. Ruben is stunned, and cannot avert his eyes. Several people lay on the street in agony, two of them are pinned between the vehicle and the newstand. A few brave men open up the car door, and pull out the driver and begin pounding on him before the police arrive. Ruben is stunned.
Cut to the next scene, Ruben is at a coffee shop waiting. Grasping for how he's going to explain himself to his wife. The TV in the coffee shops shows breaking news reports: Vehicular homicide attacks in the U.S. linked to ISIS-like terrorist group are increasing this year.
yada yada yada
The rest of the details haven't really been ironed out yet, but the rest of the story involves Ruben being selected to be the mastermind in a secret government defense program. The program is created by the US President, who promoted himself as an anti-war dove during his campaign before being elected to office. This changes when he gets word that one of the victims in the last terrorist attack (the one Ruben witnessed) was the president's mistress, whom he had to let go before he got into politics. He still had deep feelings for her. The first lady notices that he has 'changed.' The president is more distant, belligerent, and easily disturbed.
Ruben becomes the lead designer for the robotics division of the US defense program. His responsibilities are presented to him in the form of a Real Time Strategy video game. He designs new models for drones to use overseas against the terrorist group. He becomes what he describes as "The Architect of War," being the man behind a new revolution of warfare conducted by unmanned robots. His designs take from animal evolution, (one example is similar to the
DARPA robot) other examples include robotic chimpanzees that climb trees and have mounted machineguns for faces. Others resemble cheetahs and bats, each with different sets of mobility advantages and devastating weapons. The climax of the movie walks the line between being patriotic, while depicting the horrors of what the future of war might entail. Terrorists are mercilessly decimated by these robots
I haven't really thought of a conclusion yet, I thought briefly about the job going to Ruben's head, he becomes a maniac designing more frighteningly garish designs, to which he is eventually butchered by his own creations. Not sure about that yet. Kinda cheesy, i think. I also thought briefly about swapping Ruben out for Ruben's wife as the master designer behind these machines instead, so I could have a female lead.