But, more on that later. For now, let us return to the beginning of the term and start there. After the production debacle that was the Work-Based Learning project, Tommy was put into the unusual production role of a second editor, who would take a copy of our rushes and produce an entirely different cut from them.
The rest of us are taking (mostly) similar roles this time. Paul has stepped down from director to camera op, Nicole is still producer, Sam is still sound recordist and editor, and will also be co-directing, and I will be writer and co-director. Although it wasn't what I expected, the way it turned out was that I took directorial duties in pre-production and during filming, and Sam acted as director during post-production. More on that in another post.
For now, the remainder of the post concerns the analysis of opening sequences, since the opening sequence to a hypothetical movie is the intended outcome of this project. I was asked to evaluate one opening sequence to an existing movie here, so I decided on the 1986 movie The Transformers: The Movie.
Based on the popular show, it continued the plot (what little there was) of the TV series, with the heroic Autobots fighting the rather bluntly named Decepticons for energy or control of the galaxy or something. It acted as a bridge between two seasons, since the new line of toys was coming and an excuse was needed to kill off almost the entire current cast of Autobots and alter the current cast of Decepticons so drastically that they were essentially brand new characters (with new names to boot). As such, it is revered by children of the 80's as a turning point in their lives, seeing all their heroes die graphically on the big screen forming something of a watershed moments in their young lives, despite it being one of the biggest and most jarring shifts in tone in a franchise since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
But enough of the plot and context. The reason I highlight this movie for its opening sequence is how well it sets a tone. While, say, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith opens with a high-adventure, almost slapstick tone before suddenly becoming irredeemably dark and morbid, Transformers sets up the feel and tone of the film perfectly, and does so with almost no dialogue. Although there's alternate versions of the film in which it opens with a very Star Wars-y text crawl and narration that info-dumps the story so far, I will be discussing the (in my opinion) superior cut of the film, which only has opening credits after this scene.
The scene itself opens with a lingering shot of open space, slowly moving towards a distant twin-sun system. We then cut closer to a beautiful shot of the two suns, one blue and one red, with a strange object moving between them...
The colour symbolism of the blue and red (very similar to the colours of the Transformers, red for the Autobots and purple for the Decepticons) overlapping and flowing over each other as if dueling one another isn't lost on me.
We then see the object between the suns in greater detail as it sweeps by the camera and heads towards a planet in the distance.
From inside the object, which is full of strange shapes and objects that move and ebb and flow, seeming alien and technological and yet alive in the way it moves, we see the planet below. We then move, through several shots, from the object's interior to the planet's surface.
We see that the alien inhabitants of this world have similarities to both humans and Transformers alike. They have escalators, children, and as seen later, speak English. They also resemble Transformers, but are different enough in design so that we know that while very similar, they are not Transformers. We observe what we can tell are the scientific elite of this world by the fact that they mix the brightly coloured contents of test tubes. After a few seconds though an earthquake rocks the facility, and one of the creatures looks up into the sky...
"Look! It's Unicron!"
And as if in response, 'Unicron' begins to open a gaping maw in its centre, two massive pincers extending as we finally understand the scale of the thing.
Yes, 'Unicron' is in fact an object so large it makes the Death Star look like a tennis ball. But, as the inhabitants of the planet find themselves lifting off the ground, pieces of machinery and metalwork ripping apart and flying into the air, that unearthly light coming from Unicron reveals itself to have a horrifying purpose...
As the planet's surface is torn away, the pincers move in, piercing the crust of the planet with ease and crushing all in their way. The sky is completely filled by Unicron, everything from the smallest debris to the biggest skyscrapers flying apart as they are sucked into the sky.
"The ships! Get to the ships! It's our only chance!"
It may be too late though, as the space dock crumbles around those lucky enough to be close enough to reach the dock. Although the ships make it away from the surface, they don't make it far, as they are sucked back towards Unicron. Inside, we see what happens to anything caught in the maw, as buildings, spaceships, and all manner of other detritus is crushed in a pair of gigantic jaws.
The mulch then feeds the internal machinery of Unicron, rejuvinating it, before finally the outer shell of Unicron glows, refueled and gorged by the death of the planet and all of its inhabitants.
And... that's it. After a pan away from a long shot of Unicron, the theme music starts up and we go into the opening titles.
This is, in my mind at least, an almost perfect opening to a movie. It had action, mystery, introduced the villain and showed just how powerful it is, stunningly beautiful visuals and great music. In story terms, it did all it needed to do and did it well. Even in musical terms, composer Vince DiCola sets up one of the big recurring motifs of the score ("Unicron's Theme", obviously), a tense, threatening series of notes backed by an intimidating 'breathing' sound effect, and while it is a tad derivative of "Drago's Theme" from DiCola's score to Rocky IV, it still works well and is very memorable.
On the other hand, it isn't perfect. The sequence has three lines of dialogue, the two I reprinted above and another which is incoherent yelling as one of the ships fails to escape. The thing is, the scene would have worked just as well without them, in fact it would have been massively improved since it would have communicated the story entirely through visuals and sound effects, which would have been incredible for a film of this type targeted at the audience it is. It also tests the audience's disbelief that aliens magically speak English. The Transformers are believable since they live on Earth and thus would have good reason to speak it (although they speak it in the first episode of the TV series before they get to Earth but there I go trying to enforce logic on a franchise made to sell toys and do little else), but a random species in deep space? Not so much. Also, and this is getting somewhat nitpicky, but when we get the horrific reveal that Unicron is in fact eating the planet, the jaws make an overly comical chomping sound. I know it's a minor detail, but it detracts from the drama of seeing an entire civilisation being brutally wiped out before your eyes when the monster doing the wiping out is quite literally making loud "OM NOM NOM NOM" noises as it does it.
Were it not for those issues, I'd say the opening of this movie is, while not quite as good, at least in the same ballpark as famously good opening sequences like Star Wars, The Dark Knight, and Back to the Future, and if the movie itself had been more than a loud, rushed and tiring excuse to replace the old toy line with the new, I think it would get more recognition as such. Despite its flaws, apart from the unnecessary dialogue it still tells the audience everything it needs to know entirely through visuals: the fact that Unicron is a living being unto itself and not a giant space station operated by smaller beings as you'd first assume, the entire culture of the doomed species,
Alas, though, that's just my opinion. Others may disagree, but for my money, this opening sequence is engaging, exciting, something else that begins with e, and is gorgeous to both look at and listen to. While it certainly isn't some transcendant piece of cinema on par with the openings of Citizen Kane or 2001: A Space Odyssey, it stands as an example of how to start your movie off right.
All images used in this post are owned by Hasbro and were taken from a legal DVD copy using the snapshot function in VLC Player. No software or hardware breach of DVD copy protection was made. All images are used in a manner believed by the creator to be Fair Use, under the protection of education and criticism. No copyright infringement is intended.
No comments:
Post a Comment