Exposition Dump! Your favourites! - Page 2

Thanks for your thoughts on my post, Dan.

And yeah, that's a great scene in NIMH. Derek Jacobi brings such a sad weary tone to things as the voice of Nicodemus there.

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Originally Posted by Art Decade 

Yikes, I just remembered the nightmare inducing origin sequence/exposition dump from The Secret Of NIHM.

Holy shit yes, and if we're doing that it's a short rabbit hop to...

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies. And whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you, digger, listener, runner. Prince with a swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.

I'm seeing a lot more narration than exposition here. The other thread had the same problem.

"It's an old Prospect County police car. They were practically giving them away. It's got a cop motor, 450 cubic-inch plant. Cop suspension, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic convertors so it'll run good on regular gas."

The Bluesmobile, EXPOSED.

Exposition can be narrated...

True, maybe it's a subjective distinction. But I think there's a definite gap between "Three hundred years ago, the buffalo covered these lands" and "You can't cross that bridge barefoot! It's electrified and it's too far to jump!"

I agree, one's good exposition, the others clunky as all hell.

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Originally Posted by Justin Clark 

Also, major shoutouts to the team responsible for the animated Golden Army/Tale of the Three Brothers stories in Hellboy II and Deathly Hallows Pt 1 (I think I remember reading those were done by the same people?). Huge chunks of information that slow neither film down, and are just beautiful pieces of storytelling in their own right.

The "Tale of the Three Brothers" scene is my favorite part of the entire HP film series, minus Lord Magoo (the blind dragon in the last movie). I really wish they would've done more of that kind of thing.

I fucking LOVE Secret of NIMH. After I saw that, it pretty much ruined my ability to enjoy animated Disney flicks that didn't have James Earl Jones in them. Still does, actually. That particular sequence didn't bother me though, it was this motherfucker:

It was this point in the movie that I realized I was watching something special. Something I would likely never see the likes of again. I was utterly in awe of this terrifying creature during the whole scene, I actually had to stop the movie because I just couldn't concentrate. All I could think of was that fucking owl.

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Originally Posted by The Rain Dog 

I agree, one's good exposition, the others clunky as all hell.

That was the joke. You OK?

Moving on:

"You know, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?"

I sure as hell think those count.

Also, I happen to like the description of the CIA database computer in "Mission Impossible"; it just goes on and on piling up security measures.

Most of my faves have been mentioned (RAIDERS, JP, Yoda, BTILC, NIMH, etc).

Not sure if this qualifies as exposition or just extended dialogue, but Gandalf delivers so much info here.

Between fond memories of playing D&D, admiring Sir Ian's voice and delivery, and adoring Gandalf's character, I could sit around listening to this wizard tell me stories for hours, whether it in front of a cozy fire or in a dank underground dungeon. Even if it's a foreboding lecture.

The POTC series is a mixed bag, depending on the scene/movie/character delivering. Some of the exposition is funny, some is mysterious and atmospheric, and some is just plain clunky and confusing (which I suppose could also be said about the series as a whole).

Oddly enough, two of my favorite info dumps are from Reloaded and Vanilla Sky. In the former, it's the sheer 'status quo fuckery' that really gets me, plus the way the Architect delivers the obtuse, high-intellectual speak is coldly, terrifying. I love his, "This is the sixth time we have destroyed it. And we have become exceedingly efficient at it." He's daring Neo to bring it because he has all the cards (for now, at least). In VS, it's all about the visuals and the music on top of the roof, and it works within the context of the mystery because Tom Cruise didn't know what the hell was going on either. Cameron Crowe handles it in his usual emotional fashion and it still gets me, sends a shiver down my back when hearing it.

Bad exposition: The Village. And I kind of dig the ending to The Village, too, but there was little need for it. Have whatsherface stumble out onto the road, get picked up by a police car, end of story. No need for M. Night McSavior to come in and explain shit we should've figured out from the first trailer.

"If I may, sir, I've seen things in this house I've never spoken of."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

I'll never forget being slack-jawed with shock at the poorness of the writing when Harry's 107-year-old butler suddenly told him everything he needed to know in Spider-Man 3.

It was like, "Oh, by the way, here's the secret to all of your pain and rage of the last few years, and it's been tearing me apart watching you spiral into a self-destructive madness that could have been avoided had I told you with exacting detail the nature, angle, and source of the blade wounds that killed your father. People and I really love you, Harry." 

Yeah, SPIDEY 3's butler- bungling there is nigh unforgivable.

Although rather text-booky and matter-of-fact, I love Roddy McD's history lesson about Mr. Belasco in LEGEND OF HELLHOUSE.

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/236048/Legend-of-Hell-House-The-Movie-Clip-Mr-Belasco.html

There's a certain unease and annoyance under the surfaceof his delivery that adds to the flick's great atmosphere.

Part death-bed-confession, part proud gushing, part philosophizing, and almost an apology... I love Ash's decapitated exposition (his last) about the xenomorph.

http://movieclips.com/9NJr-alien-movie-a-perfect-organism/

My examples have been Sir Ian McC, Sir Ian Holm, and Roddy McD. Something about classically trained UK thesps gives much gravitas to lengthy bits of info. Must be all that Shakespeare practice.

Speaking of Brits and Exposition...

How about one of the great table-setters of all time?

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Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

How about one of the great table-setters of all time?

 

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Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

 

Epic. The new Blu-ray for Conan the Barbarian is a travesty -- picture quality is awesome and the audio is awesome ... except for the fact that the choral elements are missing from portions of the soundtrack. Though they later appear, they're entirely missing from the first section of music where the Battle of the Mounds begins in earnest. Universal said in August that they'd investigate it but never made another comment. Tragic.

And since I was reminded of UK thesps and storytelling, John Hurt's titular role in the Jim Henson series is and always will be one of my favorites. A combo of exposition/narration, depending on the scene and need.

Dune is one big...

.

"Expo...

..sition...

...kitchen".

And I love every bloody minute of it.

I've spoken about this before, but buried in a character revealing moment for Anton Chigurgh, is a masterful piece of exposition revealing the year in which the film takes place:

Gas Station Proprietor: I didn't put nothin' up.
Anton Chigurh: Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?
Gas Station Proprietor: No.
Anton Chigurh: 1958. It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say. Call it.

Brilliant.

On the toal opposite end of the spectrum, is this absurdly assumptive line from It! The Terror from Beyond Space, positing the origins of the creature aboard the spaceship:

"Perhaps there was once a civilization on Mars. It ended. Disease, war, something terrible. The Martians went back to barbarism. What was left of them, savage murderers. Maybe that's what we have on board".

All of that based on nothing more than a scaly humanoid sort of casually wrecking shit on a rocketship.

One of my favorite bits that helps explain to the characters what the viewers have known for several films:

The fact that it exists in the film universe makes me giggle.

Serenity has both good and bad expo. The 'used-up' Universal logo goes in the 'good' column; Young River Takes a History Class goes in the 'bad', and then we're back in the 'good' with the continuous-take cast introduction sequence.

Jury's out on "He killed me, Mal. With a sword!" just because it's so weird.

"With a ring like that I could... dare I say it?"

"Go on, dare!"

"...RULE THE WORLD."

The Descendants had a pretty terrible exposition filled opening. It nearly sunk the movie. Clooney straight up telling us the plot via voice-over for ten minutes. For the rest of the film, no narration whatsoever. Luckily the rest of the flick was damn good, but Jesus what a massive, stinking exposition dump that was. 

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Originally Posted by JacknifeJohnny 

On the toal opposite end of the spectrum, is this absurdly assumptive line from It! The Terror from Beyond Space, positing the origins of the creature aboard the spaceship:

 

"Perhaps there was once a civilization on Mars. It ended. Disease, war, something terrible. The Martians went back to barbarism. What was left of them, savage murderers. Maybe that's what we have on board".

 

All of that based on nothing more than a scaly humanoid sort of casually wrecking shit on a rocketship.

Characters in sci-fi/horror movies jumping wildly (but accurately) to conclusions about the monster(s) is a definite pet peeve. That one is really bad. "We have a cool backstory in mind for the creature but it's too hard and time consuming to work it in organically so we'll just have someone say it." Nevermind that the monster is scarier if we don't know its origin, isn't the idea of a collapsed Martian civilization neato?

THE TWILIGHT ZONE is guilty of this pretty regularly, an unfortunate side effect of only having 30 minutes to tell a science fiction/fantasy story. It happens in the otherwise classic "The Monsters Are Due at Maple Street," where the possibility of aliens as an explanation for what's happening surfaces immediately and  everyone almost immediately accepts it. It sort of works since so much of the show is a metaphor for the Cold War, when the possibility of nuclear war was as real, plausible, and immediate as alien visitation is in the show's stories. It's also playing on fears of the burgeoning Space Age, so I dunno, maybe people then really were more paranoid about or accepting of the idea of alien invaders.

So the one that sticks out in my head as particularly clunky is one that has nothing to do with ETs, it's from the episode "Mirror Image," about a woman at a bus station haunted by her doppleganger. It's an effectively creepy episode with great atmosphere but the main character suddenly and conveniently remembers an article she read about parallel worlds and in much the same "Yeah, and maybe this is happening, and this means that, I bet that's it!" conclusion-jumping, info-dumping manner as that line from IT she explains to the audience exactly what's going on in one convenient monologue halfway through.

Titanic takes a lot of crap, but the early scene where we watch a computer simulation of the sinking is a terrifically efficient way of giving the audience a basic 'map' for the climax of the film, saving Cameron the bother of cutting away from the characters in order to depict the mechanics of the event.

Always thought so too.

Cameron gets a lot of flak for his screenplay dialogue, but he's one of the best at pure story telling, including cleverly disguising exposition dumps and having fantastic 3rd act finales.

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Originally Posted by Rockley 

Exposition dumps I like:

- Mr DNA in Jurassic Park - effective and entertaining, while being a nice parody of cutesy educational videos

- Doc Brown's  'crude models' and blackboard scrawlings in the Back to the Future movies. They visually convey plot complexities and time continuum paradoxes in a fun way.

 

An exposition dump that I dislike:

 

l

 

 

Morpheus in the first Matrix still does the best exposition

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Originally Posted by Hammerhead 

Titanic takes a lot of crap, but the early scene where we watch a computer simulation of the sinking is a terrifically efficient way of giving the audience a basic 'map' for the climax of the film, saving Cameron the bother of cutting away from the characters in order to depict the mechanics of the event.

Yeah, this is a cool scene. It raises your expectations, too...what's the sinking of the ship really going to look like when we're onboard?

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Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 

And since I was reminded of UK thesps and storytelling, John Hurt's titular role in the Jim Henson series is and always will be one of my favorites. A combo of exposition/narration, depending on the scene and need.

 

Man, I loved the storyteller. They should make another series.  Guillermo Del Toro Producing, Henson Company and...the Mill...making the visuals. John Hurt would need slightly less makeup.

Total Recall is full of info-dumps, I always liked this:

Douglas Quaid: All right, let's say you're telling the truth and this is all a dream. I could pull this trigger and it won't matter.
Dr. Edgemar: It won't make the slightest difference to me Doug, but the consequences to you will be devastating. In your mind, I'll be dead, and with no one to guide you out, you'll be stuck here in permanent psychosis. The walls of reality will come crashing down around you. One minute, you're the savior of the rebel cause; next thing you know, you'll be Cohaagen's bosom buddy. You'll even have fantasies about alien civilizations as you requested; but in the end, back on Earth, you'll be lobotomized! So get a grip on yourself, Doug, and put down that gun!

In all the Star Wars back and forth here, has anyone ever compared the opening crawls for quality? I have a feeling that as the series goes, so do they, but I'll have to go back and check.

I do remember thinking "What? Bankers? Trade Fedawhat?" and the sinking feeling beginning to set in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JacknifeJohnny 
On the toal opposite end of the spectrum, is this absurdly assumptive line from It! The Terror from Beyond Space, positing the origins of the creature aboard the spaceship:

 

"Perhaps there was once a civilization on Mars. It ended. Disease, war, something terrible. The Martians went back to barbarism. What was left of them, savage murderers. Maybe that's what we have on board".

 

All of that based on nothing more than a scaly humanoid sort of casually wrecking shit on a rocketship.

 

Here's the thing, despite being clunky, I always love those goofy jumping-to-conclusions in the schlockier B-monster movies. Cracks me up. Like I can imagine Tom Servo and Crow saying "Of course!" inside my head during those moments. THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA and its sequel have great parodies of these moments. Although.... I have an issue with this in the Harry Potter series. The kids make logic leaps and formulate theories from just mere mentions of a name or artifact (and they're usually right... see Nicolas Flamel and/or the Philosopher's Stone), but when there's some actual physical proof or they witness something, they're being mislead by Rowling and guess incorrectly (Snape's the villain!).

Speaking of LOST SKELETON, they manage to turn any bit of run-on dialogue into exposition...

Ranger Brad: Well again I didn't mean to throw a damper. Believe me that's the last thing I'd like to throw. I don't want to throw anything at all really. But when folks are horribly mutilated, I feel it's my job to tell others. We take our horrible mutilations seriously up in these parts.

The Farmer: Stay on this road here, past Dead Man's Curve, you'll come to an old fence, called The Devil's Fence. From there, go on foot till you come to a valley known as The Cathedral Of Lost Soap. Smack in the center is what they call Forgetful Milkman's Quadrangle. Stay right on The Path Of Staring Skulls and you come to a place called Death Clearing. Cabin's right there, can't miss it.

Everything Alec Baldwin narrates in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is the very definition of "telling not showing", but Goddamn if it isn't wonderful.

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Originally Posted by Lightning Slim 

In all the Star Wars back and forth here, has anyone ever compared the opening crawls for quality? I have a feeling that as the series goes, so do they, but I'll have to go back and check.

 

I do remember thinking "What? Bankers? Trade Fedawhat?" and the sinking feeling beginning to set in.

I'm waiting for the revised "Episode IV" crawl that'll read, "It is twenty years later and it's STILL a period of Civil War..."

Quote:

Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 

Here's the thing, despite being clunky, I always love those goofy jumping-to-conclusions in the schlockier B-monster movies. Cracks me up. Like I can imagine Tom Servo and Crow saying "Of course!" inside my head during those moments. THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA and its sequel have great parodies of these moments. Although.... I have an issue with this in the Harry Potter series. The kids make logic leaps and formulate theories from just mere mentions of a name or artifact (and they're usually right... see Nicolas Flamel and/or the Philosopher's Stone), but when there's some actual physical proof or they witness something, they're being mislead by Rowling and guess incorrectly (Snape's the villain!).

 

 

Speaking of LOST SKELETON, they manage to turn any bit of run-on dialogue into exposition...

 

Ranger Brad: Well again I didn't mean to throw a damper. Believe me that's the last thing I'd like to throw. I don't want to throw anything at all really. But when folks are horribly mutilated, I feel it's my job to tell others. We take our horrible mutilations seriously up in these parts.

 

The Farmer: Stay on this road here, past Dead Man's Curve, you'll come to an old fence, called The Devil's Fence. From there, go on foot till you come to a valley known as The Cathedral Of Lost Soap. Smack in the center is what they call Forgetful Milkman's Quadrangle. Stay right on The Path Of Staring Skulls and you come to a place called Death Clearing. Cabin's right there, can't miss it.

 

 

 

One of the worst examples of this is in Alien vs. Predator, when the archaeologist fellow is able to read an ancient, dead language because it somewhat resembles Egyptian, Mayan and others, and then explains the entire back story of the Predators and Aliens on Earth from a few hieroglyphics. 

By comparison, as someone mentioned Cameron a minute ago, a cut scene from Aliens when Ripley, Bishop, and the marines compare the aliens to insects is a bit clunky, although it foreshadows the Queen nicely. It's unnecessary (like most of the extended cut), however, and I'm glad it was originally left out.

What about TV shows that put an ExpoDump of the backstory in the opening credits?

The FUGITIVE & FOREVER KNIGHT, I'm looking at you...

To me, this smacks of not trusting the material to be engaging on its own terms. Either that, or the creators knew the show would be pre-sydicated and shown out of sequence.

For the record, I think Forever Knight's opening (like much of the show) is cheesy but handled economically.

The thing about that is TV has traditionally been an episodic medium geared towards viewers being able to drop into a show randomly and pick up what's going on. Audience viewing habits have shifted along with it so you have to keep in mind that the heavily serialized approach is a recent development that didn't really take root until the 00s, at least to the extent we see it now. With a much less cinematic/novelistic style and less prominent/non-existent VCRs, DVRs, streaming services, home video, etc. (hell, at some point not even reruns or syndication existed) people watched TV differently for a lot of its existence. Having said all that, there may still be a degree of audience distrust/hand-holding implicit in the premise-summarizing intros of THE FUGITIVE, INCREDIBLE HULK, etc. Plus it can still be done well or poorly.

I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but I'll be damned if I can get the opening set-up sequence from THUNDARR the BARBARIAN out of my head.

Fond nostalgia, perhaps. Bad guy w/rotating head = awesome.

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Originally Posted by Lightning Slim 

I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but I'll be damned if I can get the opening set-up sequence from THUNDARR the BARBARIAN out of my head.

 

Fond nostalgia, perhaps. Bad guy w/rotating head = awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhAobPugvsk

I still miss Ted Cassidy.
 

If we're expanding talk of this to TV show intros, there isn't any more accurate, precise and memorable as that of Quantum Leap.

In less than 50 seconds, you have a complete understanding of the show's entire premise.

I've brought it up in another thread about World-Buildin', but the first 15 minutes of MONSTERS INC are great in exposition delivery. You know everything you need to know (besides hidden and future plot points) about this world pretty early on, thanks to instructions in the training class, the MI tv commercial, and conversations between Mike and Sully. It's superbly done.

I'm actually looking forward to spending more time in this fleshed out world with the sequel (not that it's necessary).

Not a single particular moment per say but the first half hour or so of Back to the Future may be the best exposition for any genre film. There isn't a single thing in that first act that doesn't pay off.

You can't help but be swept up into Chris Loyd as Doc Brown's enthusiasm. His idiosyncratic energy and delivery forces the audience to pay attention. If only Doc Brown replaced a few of my "Ben Stein-ish" High School teachers.

The 'As You Know' principle:

"Sure, slingshot around the sun. You pick up enough speed you're in time warp-- if you don't, you're fried."

Star Trek often has trouble distributing exposition evenly among the cast. There's no reason for Dr. McCoy to relate this information but Kelley sells it.

A more in-character moment is this necessary exchange from Wrath of Khan:

Kirk: You're about to remind me that logic alone dictates your actions?

Spock: I would not remind you of that which you know so well.

Audience: THANK YOU FOR REMINDING US.

Exposition that starts off with something like, "Gentlemen, as you know..." tends to bug the shit out of me.

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Originally Posted by FilmNerdJamie 

Not a single particular moment per say but the first half hour or so of Back to the Future may be the best exposition for any genre film. There isn't a single thing in that first act that doesn't pay off.

Exposition in Zemeckis films can be ruthlessly mechanical, to the point where nothing that won't pay off is depicted at all (Remember! Marty's hoverboard from the future is bouncing around the floorboards of the Delorean in 1885!), but that precision is a pleasure in the original BTTF.

Too Big to Fail got Emmy nominations for everything right down to Giamatti's beard, but they overlooked Topher Grace. His role is nothing but exposition: in every one of his scenes, his job is to explain/clarify the knotty political and economic questions at stake. Every time, he manages to make it sound as natural and offhand as it needs to be to keep the damn story from grinding to a complete halt. After it's over, you cringe a bit at the artificiality of it, but in any given moment, he carries it off perfectly.