I love you honey bunny everybody be cool this is a rubbery this is the iconic opening scene from Quinton Tarantino's classic film Pulp Fiction unbeknownst to us on first viewing this scene is also the finale of the story The Art of opening a film with the end is a strange and Mercurial one it's a Trope that serves as a defining element of many of Cinema's Hallmark achievements however it takes a true aour to make this narrative device not just feel like a gimmick but a truly exciting storytellin
g state before we get too deep into this episode please be sure to like And subscribe to n stalgic for more videos just like this fight club momento Lawrence of Arabia many of Cinema's most acclaimed films employ The Narrative mechanic of establishing an ending for their characters at the beginning of the viewing experience but why is this device used so frequently simply put this is an inventive way for storytellers to play with expectations of just exactly what will happen to the characters we
've been introduced to it as a magic trick almost it gives the audience an expected ending without giving away what will happen exactly in the final frames of the story realized that all of this the gun the bombs the revolution has got something to do with a girl named Mara singer this approach to storytelling is immediately more interesting and engaging because you're dropping the audience into the most dramatic and heightened scene in the film it gives everything that happened before and after
an immediate hook it also reframes how the the rest of the movie Works you're no longer attempting to second guess or predict how things will transpire you know for a fact what will happen so now you're attempting to reconcile how a movie should work with what is happening on screen it subverts audience expectations and it fundamentally Alters the movie watching experience Tyler Jordan shooting himself the death of TE Lawrence Teddy Shelby getting revenge in a standard film each of these Revela
tions would be saved for the climax of the project and yet because the aour directors and writers and question delivered them immediately they've helped Propel the films in question into being more than just your average movie they become Classics she tell you have you known all along that you're here to steal from me or that we are actually asleep over the first century of film making two truisms arose about how this artistic medium and business venture would operate feature films would be roug
hly an hour and a half long they would feature a story with a beginning a middle and an end these two edicts would ultimately yield the threea structure as the governing body of how to build a story in its simplest form threea structure takes a character and allows an audience to witness them evolve or change in some meaningful way in the First Act we see our protagonist in their daily life they're comfortable and safe then what is called an inciting incident happens some unforeseen circumstance
s arise and our main character is presented with an opportunity or Journey after initially refusing The Call to Adventure they choose to undertake this task Mission or existentially scary line of thought from here we enter the second act our character is presented with trials and problems that they must attempt to overcome inevitably during the second act low point it appears that our character is completely lost they failed to accomplish the task at hand there is no hope but they choose to Sold
ier on nonetheless in the third act they rise above the problems they are faced with and during the third act climax they make some sort of choice which is the opposite of what their character would have done at the beginning of the film this shows that growth and evolution over the course of the story all of these structures are there in order to make a fulfilling experience for the audience the notion of a 3X structure was not fully created for the film industry obviously it's been around for
centuries however its pairing with the film industry codified and evolved these ideas into a near science a fact which might not actually be a good thing due to the industrialization of the movie making process these loose road maps for stories can be taken and applied as Dogma how many times has predictable been levied against a film as its biggest critique this is the Layman's way of expressing the fact that the film's structure did not feel surprising but inevitable that's what a good story s
tructure should yield you a conclusion that feels natural yet is not paint by numbers which brings us back to the idea of opening with an ending many filmmakers have used this technique to enable them to tell stories where the audience inherently is aware of how things are going to end but allow them their own artistic license within that approach a perfect example of this being Orson Wells Citizen Cane which was released in 1941 the film is Loosely based on the life and career of the most wealt
hy man in America at the time William Randolph Hurst the film Citizen Cane which opens with the death of the protagonist Charles Foster Kane gives the audience who at the time was obviously aware of the life and trials of Hurst a way into the story that promised it would be an exciting recontextualization of this man's life the opening tells us that the film is not just going to be a plotting recounting of the true life events that everyone was aware of Kane's script fully exploits a non-chronol
ogical approach to showcasing threea structure despite opening with his death and his muttered Last Words the film has all the central dramatic ups and downs that conform to a typical 3x structure only they are shown out of order the body of the film revolves around a newspaper journalist attempting to uncover the secret meaning of kain's final word this choice of how to Showcase these events as well as numerous Technical Innovations is without a doubt why Citizen Cane is still commonly thought
of as the greatest motion picture ever created it would be almost 50 years later that this same approach to chronology would make yet another one of Hollywood's biggest names into a superstar Tarantino told both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction out of order the films might be genre exercises steeped in tropes but the choices that he's making on how the information is presented to the audience is what made both of these films truly revolutionary Tarantino was originally writing Pulp Fiction with h
is friend and fellow writer Roger Avery their plan was originally to shoot the project as an anthology project where Tarantino and a few other filmmakers would make intertwining short films all based on the tropes of classic Pulp Fiction crime novels however after living in Europe for a while and working on the script he decided he wanted to direct the whole film this is the Genesis point for the various intertwining stories and non-chronological story structure while this obviously makes for an
engaging viewing experience overall thanks to Tarantino's interesting dialogue the fun characters and the fresh take on the existing tropes it truly is Tarantino's choice to open and close the film with two Petty criminals robbing a local coffee shop that sets the film apart Tarantino's success with structuring things this way would lead to an army of imitators who would mimic his fast-paced dialogue love of telling a story out of order and gritty criminal underworld setting thankfully we've mo
ved past these ideas culturally but it really felt like every movie that got made about 15 years after the release of Tarantino's successes was either influenced by or pushing back against his narrative choices and that right there is what separates Great films from bad ones choices movies are the byproduct of creative people making millions of choices and the bigger the choice the bigger the swing artistically so it's no wonder when you look at iconic filmmakers who all make bold artistically a
dventurous choices they're all bucking the trend of telling a story in the conventional chronological way they're making choices about how they're presenting their character their world and even the structure of their film that being said this stylistic Choice doesn't always work there are many films that attempt to employ similar techniques to the ones made in the previously cited examples Lone Survivor The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and crash all use variations of these exact techniques t
o varying degrees which is why these three films have faded in cultural relevance significantly since their release Lone Survivor much like Citizen Kane is a film inspired by real events and it opens with a much publicized conclusion of the story and then attempts to use it as an emotional Anchor Point for the film only it just doesn't have the same scope technical Innovation or narrative ambition and opening with the ending just feels cheap the key to making these big structural choices work is
that they have to be tasteful and classy this is largely because these decisions are coming from a single person's perspective on the story they should feel respectful and honorific you don't want them to feel like a cash grab for a quick dollar starting with the ending like many things in the world of artistic expression seems like it wouldn't work it seems like an idea that would ruin the anticipation of experiencing a story the way it's meant to be told however when the magic of Cinema and t
he Brilliance of a committed creative team combine they make something more something greater than some of the parts they create something that has to be experienced not just observed and well that's all we have for this episode what's your favorite film that opens with an ending let us know in the comments below and as always please please be sure to like And subscribe to nerdstalgic for more videos just like this one
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