The Dark Knight (2008): 
Summary:
The film starts with a group of five masked men who go to rob a bank. Two of the men zip line from a building to the roof of the bank while the other three men arrive by car on the ground. The two men on the roof work to deactivate a silent alarm system while the other three men begin to cause chaos at the front entrance of the bank where they start to hold customers and employees hostage with various weapons. As soon as the alarm gets deactivated, one of the masked men on the roof gets shot by the other masked man in an unusual turn of events. Later on, someone on the ground begins to break the vault door open while a man working for the bank inside an office cubicle begins to grab a shotgun and shoot one of the men on the ground dead. He then gets into a brief shootout with the other two masked men on the ground where he later gets shot but does not die immediately. At this point, the vault door gets opened but then, the same man who shot the first man on the roof starts to talk about how he shot that man and then shortly shoots the man who broke into the vault. One of the masked men then starts to collect money from the vault and stores it in duffel bags at the main area of the bank. The man who has shot two other masked men at this point then points his gun at another masked man, but as they are speaking about where the money is gonna go, a school bus crashes into the man with the gun while the other man moves aside before the bus crashed through the wall. That man then begins loading the duffel bags into the bus where he then shoots and kills the last masked man remaining aside from himself. As he is about to leave, the man who was in the shootout with the masked men speaks about how criminals are dumb these days and used to believe in respect and honor and then asks what does the man believe in. The masked man then removes his mask and then says that he believes that whatever does not make you die, makes you stranger before putting an explosive in the other mans mouth. The removal of the mask reveals that the man is The Joker from the DC franchise.
Analysis:
The opening scene of the film is portrayed as a self contained mini story complete with a beginning, escalation and twists throughout it. As this is revealed to be DC film, The Joker (antagonist) being introduced before Batman (protagonist), positions chaos as a central threat rather than isolated. The editing and pacing of the opening is clean which allows for every action being legible and purposeful. Sounds used at first are ambient sounds of the environment and dialogue but then as the story goes by, music starts to creep in which overall, creates tension. The Joker can be observed as manipulative as he manipulates other members of the group into doing all the work while he kills them as time passes.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991): 
Summary:
The film opens with a scene that shows the modern day world (at the time) and the normal day to day activity of a city. Shortly after that, the scene cuts to a post apocalyptic, far future environment where everything and everyone is destroyed and is quiet overall. The location of the post apocalyptic world is soon revealed to be Los Angles in the year 2029A.D. As the post apocalyptic world is shown through a camera pan, a voiceover starts to describe what happened. The voiceover describes how billions of lives were ended due to a nuclear war but that the war would then continue on through a battle between machines and human survivors. The scene then cuts to an ongoing war between machines and humans and for a while, machines were destroyed and humans were killed at the same time. The voiceover later describes how the first terminator sent to the voiceover's speaker failed its job and how a second terminator was now being sent after her young son who would go on to be the leader of the human resistance movement. The scene then cuts to the beginning credits and then later back to the present day world.
Analysis:
The opening is a visual prologue that shows both the present day and the post apocalyptic future and the war between the humans and machines. This allows for an establishing of stakes of what is going to happen before the main story begins. Imagery such as skulls, fires, and machines further adds to the post apocalyptic setting and sets the tone for a scary, tense environment along with it. The skulls symbolize and foreshadow how fragile humanity becomes in the future.
Casino Royale (2006): 
Summary:
The film begins with a completely black and white opening which shows a man entering a building where he then takes an elevator to his office where James Bond is waiting for him. He speaks very suddenly as the opening is considerably silent up until now. Bond and what is later shown as his boss start to talk about how Bond has not earned double O status as an agent which requires two kills. This leads to a cutaway that shows Bond and another guy fighting in a bathroom which soon gets interrupted by the main scene and then cuts back to the boss pointing a gun directly at Bond while saying they didn't get to meet each other. However, when the boss pulls the trigger, the gun does not fire as it is unloaded. Bond then pulls a loaded gun and says that he knows where he puts his gun. Soon after, the cutaway between Bond and the man in the bathroom continues where Bond ends up drowning the guy in a sink. The cutaway then gets interrupted again where Bond describes how he already killed one person and that the second person is going to be the boss. Bond then shoots and kills the boss. The cutaway then continues one last time showing Bond and the drowned man. The drowned man then gets up one last time to pick up a gun nearby him but Bond is quick enough to shoot him first with his own gun. The shot then transforms the cutaway into the credit sequences.
Analysis:
The opening consists of two main parts, the confrontational dialogue and the brutal bathroom fight flashback. The scenes show how Bond earns his double O status by killing two people which are the man in the bathroom and the boss. The black and white scene highlights the difference between the moral clarity and the brutality between the two scenes. The editing is what breaks the long dialogue scenes through the periodic violent fight scenes. Overall, the fight scenes that interrupt the dialogue are what define Bond as a raw killer who is physical and rough rather than the typical spy like nature he is known for.
No comments:
Post a Comment