Adventures in movie exposition – the good, the bad and the verbal.

The splendid screenwriting blog Mystery Man on Film is hosting a study of movie exposition – or “the plot dump” as he delightfully calls it – all this month. That “dump”, of course, is the part of the movie in which characters have to tell us exactly what’s going on and thereby set up the goals and obstacles for the movie’s protagonist. Some movies handle conveying the information really well, and some not so much.

So Mystery Man has issued a challenge to his readers to submit examples from movies of 1) bad exposition, 2) good non-verbal exposition and 3) good verbal exposition. He’s already had some very good examples sent to him, and I thought I’d chime in today.

And tomorrow. As it turns out, I can sometimes run off at the keyboard, so I’ll be breaking this up into two parts.

First, BAD exposition:
Somehow the other day we came across Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which we anticipated to be a fun coming-of-age movie about young women and friendship and life and Big Truths and all of that stuff. But then the movie starts and the heavy-handed expository narration clues you in that you’re not in for a fun time at all. The first words you hear are:

I’d like to think that fate had a hand in what happened that summer.

I really do try to have an open mind about movie genres that might not be my personal first choice, and it’s not a requirement that stuff has to blow up in order to keep my interest. But when a movie starts like that, something in my brain says “uh-oh”. Within about 5 minutes, we see the young female friends at a funeral. One of them looks particularly sad, standing next to her father. Filled with portentous sorrow, the minister says this:

And as we mourn the loss of this beloved wife, mother and friend…it only makes her choice that much more unfathomable. What measure of despair compels one to commit such an act?

Wow. Whenever I see something that clunky in a movie, I think, “Thanks, Screenwriter! Thanks for laying that out with such painfully obvious detail for me! I’m gratified to know that you place absolutely no faith in my ability to figure anything out!” We made it about 20 more minutes into the movie and then had to turn it off.

But let’s get to the good exposition – with the support of screengrabs! – after the jump.

GOOD Non-Verbal Exposition:
This is actually pretty hard to do well, and it’s really no surprise that examples of non-verbal exposition don’t usually last that long on the screen. The most adept filmmakers tend to mix up verbal and non-verbal clues, varying the pace and rhythm so that we as an audience don’t necessarily know that we’re getting information dumped on us; we’re simply held captive by what we’re being shown and told.

Here’s a great example from James Cameron’s Aliens, in the mostly dialogue-free scene where Ripley finds Newt for the first time:

After spying a bedraggled little girl hiding underneath the steel grating of the abandoned outposts’ floor panels, Ripley crawls through an air vent and pushes her way into a cramped hideout. From the moment Ripley enters the area, we can see her looking around, taking in what this little girl has gone through and how she’s survived the aliens that have killed all of the other settlers.

Ripley takes special notice of the large, moving fan above Newt’s hideout. I always figured that this was meant to show us why the aliens couldn’t reach her here – because the air duct access was too small and this fan prevented them from attacking from above.

We see in this shot how Newt has been living: dirty plates, a box of wrapped-up food, bedding, flashlight. This screengrab is a bit small, but we can also see here the ripped knees of her pants, torn from excessive crawling. We get not only the sense that she’s been doing this awhile, but also how strong and smart Newt is, setting up the great line later when Ripley tells Hudson, “This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons and no training!”

Newt tries to bolt from the room and Ripley catches her, struggling to calm her down. Here’s where we see the first indications of Ripley’s maternal powers, her sensitivity and warmth that will become such a powerful driving force later in the movie.

Newt calms down and Ripley reaches off-camera to find this picture of the little girl in happier times. What a great, simple shot! We learn the girl’s name – which, amusingly, is virtually never used again – how old she is, what she looked like in happier times, the fact that the settlement once had a structure in place with schools and the like – and we learn that, in the midst of all the destruction and death, Newt made the decision to keep this picture! That’s a lot of information and character to convey in a single shot!

And finally we land on this shot of Newt in Ripley’s arms. From Ripley’s POV, this shows us the weight of what the little girl has been through, the toll taken from the way she’s been living and the survival she’s had to endure. The weariness and resignation on her tired, dirty face sets up all kinds of character and action beats to be found later in the movie – as well as what will be Ripley’s reaction to her and the development of their characters together.

This entire sequence – from Ripley pushing into the hideout to the shot of Newt’s face – takes just about one minute and a half on the screen. But the scene is packed with information and it’s a tribute to Cameron and his story co-creators David Giler and Walter Hill that it plays out as efficiently as it does.

Coming tommorow: a wonderfully exposition-packed sequence filled to the brim with dialogue!