The necessity of exposition hangs over the head of a scriptwriter like Damolcles’ sword – it’s something you can’t escape, something that will strike sooner or later. Not everyone stands up well under that pressure. Eiben Scrood, who wrote the script for this movie, already suffers from anxiety attacks even without such threatening clouds on the horizon, so he went down the route that promised the quickest relief for his tortured nerves: GET IT OVER WITH!
The first scene has two people in it? GREAT! They can talk about EVERYTHING that needs to be said! Why wouldn’t they? Don’t you sometimes feel the need to recapitulate your station in life and the state of the world around you to the people you hang out with? I bet everyone does that, every now and then. Particularly shortly before something exciting and unexpected happens. You know, like cows leaving a sinking ship ahead of an earthquake? People are like cows, too, they can unconsciously sense when they are at the beginning of a movie, and thereby feel compelled to verbalize a lot of things that might need to be set up in such a situation for the benefit of hypothetical others one could imagine observing oneself under circumstances like that. So you see, it’s not highly unrealistic, cheap exposition, it’s an acutely observed psychological portrait of the human condition.
With Damocles’ sword removed, or at the very least severely blunted, I think we can now look forward to a script that has been written in a relaxed and balanced mood.
Aside from recapitulating the whole main cast, and reintroducing Mopey and her newest hairdo, this script also features Gregory Elminster, Mopey vitality-challenged boyfriend. He hasn’t really changed a lot in the meantime, but a generous assessment would count the fact that he’s dead in his favour in that regard. It’s hard to develop as a person when you’re only an animated corpse, basically. He got better for a while at the end of the second chapter, but soon redeceased. That’s why many people claim that resurrection isn’t a solution – the recidivism rate is practically 100%.
More on Monday.