2017: A Year in Questionable Exposition

Just like any other art form, film is subject to fads and changes in fashion or critical theory. One item in film that swings back and forth in these fads is prologues. In the current fashion, prologues are widely considered unnecessary and critical theory demands that exposition is delivered in other manners.

The film industry seems to be moving against this theory, however, as just between May and July of 2017 three examples of movies that use prologues played in theaters. These movies include Alien: Covenant, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

With at least three examples and in less than three months, they can be viewed as statistically significant, and perhaps an indication of a new trend or fad. In a comparison, similar examples from 2016 such as Star Trek: Beyond, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Doctor Strange did not use prologues. These three movies had a mostly positive reception, but the three from 2017, except for Spider-Man, have received mixed reviews.

A prologue in and of itself is not a bad thing. The prologue in Alien: Covenant could stand on its own feet if it was tightened up a little. The purpose of a prologue is what makes it a form of lazy writing or a great source of revelation for the audience. The main purpose of all three prologues lumps into the category of lazy writing as all they do is dump information for the audience.

Alien's prologue serves a dual purpose, however, and works to give the audience insight into David (Michael Fassbender) before the events that turned him into a villain. A prologue works well in this case, since a character as corrupted as David becomes an unreliable narrator. This prologue, when focused on David, serves as an unbiased view of David's character and reveals the source of his true nature to the audience.

This prologue becomes problematic, however, when it goes on and allows for David's Maker, Weyland (Guy Pierce), to go on about his masterplan, it becomes another information dump. If the prologue was cut down to two minutes and served only as an introduction to David's God-Complex, it would become acceptable in the current critical theory.

Both Spider-Man's and Pirates' prologues and entirely information dumps. They tell the audience a bit of back story for characters that ultimately could have been revealed naturally in dialogue with one or two sentences and in far shorter time than the prologue took.

In Spider-Man, especially, this prologue seems out of place. As the movie continues, the movie reveals a lot of exposition through well-placed and well-worded "throw-away-lines" (a chunk of dialogue that delivers exposition but is small enough to be easily ignorable.) A great example of this is the way the "High Altitude Seal" is mentioned by Vulture's (Michael Keaton) crew.

They don't ramble on about this new piece of technology, they just mention it and an event they call "the big one." Later, the audience sees what it is they're talking about, but the characters don't go out of their way to tell us. Anyone who has taken a creative writing course should see why this works so well, "show don't tell."

Pirates, however, did the exact opposite. The prologue in Dead Men Tell No Tales seems more like an omen of what is to come in the movie, as characters go on massive monologues about what the audience is already seeing happen on screen. For some reason, every time Carina (Kaya Scodelario) brings up her book or Henry (Brenton Thwaites) mentions the Trident of Poseidon, they derail the pacing of the movie by explaining the importance of the object again and again.

The Pirates franchise became successful because of its fast action and quick wit. Jack's (Johnny Depp) and Gibb's (Kevin McNally) back and forth in the first three movies was a great tool for delivering years' worth of exposition in a five-second gag. While Dead Men Tell No Tales finds itself dragging from start to finish.

Alien: Covenant found a good blend of "throw-away-lines" and prolonged exposition after its prologue. While the colony ship was a bit too crowded with characters, they all did a good job of displaying their roles and backstory. When thinking of solutions or responding to questions posed by the lead cast, many of them would offer an off-hand remark about an event in their past or their personality type that felt organic. They talked like normal people.

David was the only character who talked unlike a normal person, but his character is Shakespearian, to begin with, and is entitled to a monologue or two after the writer has earned it. David did use his monologue with a small flashback covering the events that happened immediately after Prometheus. This monologue was placed strategically in-between moments of great tension, allowing the audience to breathe, before ramping the pace back up. Of the three mentioned movies, Alien made the least egregious mistakes with delivering its exposition.

It is possible that these missteps are the result of film being a process of "writing by committee." Someone crafts a wonderful story but after the script gets passed around in a proverbial, sometimes literal, game of telephone, elements lose their meaning to the creative leaders, or someone higher up doesn't trust the audience to be smart enough to get something and demands a quick fix a few weeks before production.

This idea of dumbing a story down for mass appeal, however, could end up costing the studios money. Audiences are smart enough to know when they are being talked down to. The result is a 30% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Hopefully, when the money starts hemorrhaging, studios realize they need to craft exposition as tight and visually appealing as any action set-piece. If not, movies could get a whole lot stupider.