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September 30, 2004
When the ending comes first
I hearby announce my absolute hatred of almost any film that begins with the ending first. The only film of the sort I can think of at the moment is Swordfish, which starts with the big explosion which it then works its way up to again.
The reason I declare war on this is because I see a ton of newbie screenwriters use it as a simple device to make up for lack of story or plot events. For example, about 50% of my last screenwriting class all began their movie with some sort of explosive or crazy ending, then settled in for a shitload of exposition and boringness leading up to that ending. Such writers are often under the delusion that the audience will be so intrigued by the beginning that they will want to keep watching, but I think this feeling lasts about 10 minutes max. I mean, you can start a story with ANYTHING you want. A planet exploding, a building falling down, a woman getting raped and murdered, whatever - then say, this is how what you just saw happened. But it's tedious. And as we don't know any of the characters or plot yet, it's just an unneccessary tease. The ending should not be shown at the beginning, because honestly, why the hell are we sitting through the movie?
Now, there are a few possible exceptions. For example, if you start by showing an ending that is conceived initially as being one way, but after the entire movie, we realize that it is the other way, that is clever. As Tyler Durdan once remarked, see how far cleverness gets you. But at least it's interesting on first viewing (and tedious on just about every subsequent viewing). You can also begin with ending that's not really the ending at all - Pulp Fiction, for example.
But on the whole, people begin with an ending because either they consciously or unconsciously don't believe their story has the strength to stand up on its own, and thus begin with what should be the crowning moment of their story. The worst is when you finally get back to that moment after an hour and a half, and its lost all power.
Posted by nick at September 30, 2004 11:26 AM