Adventures in Movie Exposition II: The Expositioning.
By Burbanked on Aug 10, 2007 in Movies, Screenwriting | 1,989 views |
Picking up from yesterday, I’m contributing to the movie exposition study currently ongoing over at the fine screenwriting blog Mystery Man on Film all this month. 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. I’ve already weighed in on my bad – Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants – and good non-verbal – Aliens – examples, so today I’d like to share an example of some great exposition handled mostly through dialogue.
And just as a kick in the pants, I thought it’d be fun to use the same writer/director Jim Cameron and his excellent breakthrough film Terminator.
If you know the movie, you’ve probably already guessed the sequence I’m about to share with you. It’s the series of scenes in which human-resistance-fighter-from- the-future Reese has to explain to future-mother-of-humanity’s-savior Sarah Connor who he is, what he’s doing, why that big guy is trying to kill her, who she’ll become and what it all means.
And Reese does this over the course of a 9-minute sequence – and let me say that again, a 9-minute sequence! – in which the two of them are mostly sitting in a car, mostly talking. Mostly.
A look at those 9 minutes, Cameron’s impact on movie cyborg-dom, and yes, the obligatory screengrabs, after the jump.
 The sequence begins right after Reese has rescued Sarah from the Tech Noir club where he and the Terminator have pretty much shot everything to crap and fled the scene. She’s watched the Terminator get filled full of lead and punch his way through a windshield – while on fire – so she’s at least clued in that something peculiar is going on. Reese, ever the efficient soldier/protector, begins the sequence with Are you injured? Are you shot?” and then very thoughtfully introduces himself and tells her that she’s been “targeted for termination”. |
 Part of what’s so terrific about this sequence is that, although Cameron’s giving us a wealth of information throughout, the scenes are edited such that we can barely catch our breath to realize that we’re getting the whole plot dumped on our heads. Throughout this piece of the movie we’re also watching Reese force other cops off the road, the Terminator searching for them, the cars chasing each other through garages and alleyways – but at the same time, we see lots of shots like the one above in which Reese and Sarah are sitting in a car talking. What Reese is telling her, however, is terribly important:
Of course, Reese is really saying that to us as well. |
 The sequence continues with some additional mayhem, and eventually Reese manages to lose the cops that are chasing them and ditch their car. But it’s here that he delivers what I think is one of the best movie character set-ups of all time:
And in that line of 100% expository dialogue, Cameron lobs the ball of cinematic excitement right over the net into our court. For the rest of the movie, the tension is now cranked up to eleven because now we know that something pretty huge has to happen in order to stop this thing. But Cameron has done something even more significant. Prior to 1984, movie cyborgs had pretty much been portrayed as mechanical beings who still displayed emotion-like reactions that were inherently human. Star Wars, Blade Runner, Alien and others all featured cyborg- or android-type characters who were very familiar in their human qualities. While these movies are certainly excellent in their own right and have much to offer in the way that the mechanical characters are portrayed, there’s something a bit false about them. They’ve been created and designed to resemble humans to a large degree, and while that quality absolutely plays into the narratives of those respective movies, Cameron’s goal is something quite different. His Terminator is first and foremost a machine, designed for one purpose. It’s programmed to kill, and Reese is only half-right about it. Not only will the Terminator not stop until Sarah’s dead, it can’t stop until she’s dead. As a programmed machine, it’s physically incapable of not fulfilling its primary purpose – and really, why should such a thing be otherwise? In this one bit of verbally-heavy exposition, Cameron creates an entirely different kind of android character whose cinematic impact will reverberate far into the future. |
 Throughout this sequence, we also get clued in to both Reese’s and the Terminator’s abilities – Reese in the way he attacks his pursuers, makes tactical decisions, hot-wires a car, etc. We see the Terminator mimic a cop’s voice, scan his surroundings, and take special notice when word comes over the radio that Reese and Sarah’s stolen car has been spotted.
And it’s also in this part of the sequence when Sarah drops the question that will spin the story into an entirely new direction:
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 …and so Reese begins to tell her. He tells her about the machines, about the war, about his post-apocalyptic childhood – “…grew up in the ruins, starving, hiding from the HKs…” – and Sarah begins to sympathize with him as you can see here. She listens, and believes him. He shows her the barcode on his arm – which she touches – and as her attitude shifts, we can see the beginnings of the other element of this movie that will become so critical to their survival: the fact that they must fall in love in order for John Connor to be born. In this dialogue, Cameron is setting up not just the machinations of the movie’s plot, but also the extension of these characters’ lives beyond just the scope of this story.
And, of course, Reese tells her the Big One:
I’ll be the first to admit that Cameron’s dialogue tends to be not brilliant, and in fact many times can be ham-handed and even silly. But those last four sentences – as soap opera-y as they are – absolutely drive this sequence home. More than the dialogue on its own, however, it’s a tribute to both Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton that they sell this moment as well as they do. |
 Having imparted piles and piles of information and now having dropped a big old shocker that serves as the sequence’s exclamation point, Cameron’s ready to move on. The moment Reese tells Sarah about her son, her unborn son, a few things happen fast: he starts the car, ominous music begins, and the Terminator finds them. Guns start blazing and we’re off and running again. |
When I loaded my Terminator DVD movie to prepare the screengrabs, I noticed for the first time that this sequence begins with a chapter called “Running Commentary”. Of course it’s a play on words because Reese and Sarah are running for their lives, but it’s also convenient that the DVD’s producer decided to help me support my point here.
This running commentary between Reese and Sarah in which he reveals the entire movie’s backstory, current conflict and future goals and obstacles to her – mostly through dialogue – is a pretty amazing piece of filmmaking. Cameron does such a wonderful job of varying pace and rhythm, of intercutting with car chases and the specter of the Terminator searching for Reese and Sarah, that we never feel bored or restless during what could have been a rather uncomfortably long expository sequence.
And when you get right down to it, those nine minutes of talking pretty much fly right by.
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Adam Ross | Aug 10, 2007 | Reply
Great analysis of a great scene. I haven’t thought about this scene for years, but I can picture almost all of Reese’s lines. This scene was also key because Cameron obviously didn’t have the kind of budget where he could show just how invincible Arnie was.
A good test for how effective this exposition is: have you ever tried to explain to someone the story of Terminator/T2? It ain’t easy.
Mystery Man | Aug 11, 2007 | Reply
Superb analysis, my friend.
Ya know, one of the big points about good verbal exposition is that the audience happily digests it when it’s within the context of something else (another storyline at play, an action sequence, or the exposition puts something we care about at risk). It would’ve been a disaster if he tried to explain all of this stuff before the action started.
Great job, man. As I said, I’ll give you a big shout-out tomorrow.
Thanks again,
-MM
Lukas | Aug 13, 2007 | Reply
Hey, great article.
I thought of an exposition which Im not sure what to think about. Vanilla Sky!!!
I think that it was most welcome, from my part at least, when I saw the movie, since I didnt understand anything of what was going on at that point. But I think in that case, it was meant to be that way…
what do you think?