What!?!? aka Missing Exposition

SPOILER ALERT FOR "Underworld" (2003)

So, the movie "Underworld" has vampires fighting werewolves. Two huge plot points hinge on understanding the following bits of the films mythology.

• Werewolves, like vampires, are immortal.
• Vampires generally don't kill people.

Neither of these points are explained in the movie, except after the fact when a big revelation occurs. Something like this:

"You know that rule where vampires aren't allowed to kill people? Well I don't follow it and I killed your family!"

and

"You know that one werewolf that supposedly died a thousand years ago? Well, not only did he not die, he's actually this guy here,  because werewolfs in this movie are immortal! But we characters all already knew that."

It's not a brilliant movie in the first place, but I find this sloppy storytelling to really knock it into pure schlock territory.

So it just got me thinking, what other movies just seem to forget to tell you, the audience, any important info?

Any David Lynch movie.

I'm assuming, based on his reputation and the only one of his movies I've seen, Mullholand Drive. 

And I don't even care if it's the point of his movies.  Screw you, Lynch!

xhonzi said:

The first thing that comes to mind is Harry Potter 3, which probably isn't quite what you're looking for.

Any fan of the book (or someone who's read it recently, at least) can tell you that the film is missing a few bits of info that make the ending all make sense.

It's been awhile for me. What's the film missing? (the films and the books all blur together for me)

ray_afraid said:

TV's Frink said:

 

Screw you, Lynch!

Best post eva! /Internets!

I'm not even slightly kidding.  I hate that movie with Gump-like passion.  I think it's a pile of carp, and I don't care about the explanations of what it all means (I've heard plenty of those).  It's still carp!

My favorite thing about Eraserhead is this.

There are a few problems with Underworld but exposition isn't one of them.

I thought the point with the vampires wasn't that they didn't kill people but they rarely killed other vampires, unless they really stepped out of line.

And seeing as it was highly telegraphed that vampires diddling werewolves was their highest taboo there was no surprise there.

Personally I find excessive exposition to be the bane of films like this specifically and films pretty much in general.

It's worse on television shows where the assumption is made that new viewers are so stupid that people will either not figure out enough of what has happened before in the 'previously on' bit at the beginning (which is usually unnecessary anyway) or seek out previously shown storylines using modern technology.

So every episode we have to have a good quarter of the show taken up by characters unrealistically recapping every pertinent event like they are recovering head trauma victims (an often used plot device to squeeze this sort of expositional dialogue by coincidence).

The worst form of info dump is when you have a nice atmospheric movie that has a great big exposition explosion right at the very end blowing all enigma and mystery out of the water.

Silent Hill the movie I'm looking right at you with my eyes.

It may be a very inappropriate example.
But The Matrix Online suffered immensely from both problems.

Basically, there were three human player organizations, Zion, Machines, and Merovingian, and you only got to play inside the Matrix.
Important things like where their respective real world bases were, weren't included in the exposition, but then some character in some quest or live event dropped some "as you know" line about how something worked, and, well, it was lame.

It remained a rather obscure game and all that's left of it in terms of documentation, are various collections of fansite material, and I don't remember it quite well myself.
So I'm not gonna beat this for any longer, but it was just something that came to mind.

Can't think of any movies right now...

I can't see the rabbit...

Probably because you're in a different country. :-/

I'm just relieved the rabbit wasn't in drag...have I mentioned I'm middle aged?

There was a rabbit-shaped black whole of nothing flipping around :D

Ha, what you gonna say now??

twooffour said:

There was a rabbit-shaped black whole of nothing flipping around :D

Ha, what you gonna say now??

Oh well, maybe I can shine it up and use it as an ashtray.

^This. Fact is without skimming through the novel, it's 100.99% impossible to figure out what the hell the movie's about.

captainsolo said:

People must like Lynch's work for simply being weird or uneasy to understand.

David Lynch made the worst Naomi Watts lesbian movie possible.  Amazing.