To be honest it gets worse when first we 'discover' one guy needs his shots and that Nic Cage just gotta get home in time for his little girls birthday. But really, in hokum like this, I don't think it really matters. It's a bit like being read the rules to a game before you play it. We all know where we are, what everyone's role is and pretty much how it's going to turn out.

This is pretty rough, yeah. But in this case I take the blame off the writer, who was probably just taking orders. Scott Rosenberg is WAY too talented for Con Air. Beautiful Girls... Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead... etc.

Yesterday in the Avatar discussion a couple of commenters pointed out that plot dumps like these are okay so we can move on to the good stuff quicker. I guess that's exactly it in this case too. I called it Plot Vomit, but maybe we should call it The Bruckheimer Maneuver.

I'd say the first two sentences kill it right away. Recited statistics are boring and following up with "as you know" (if we know then why are you telling us??) is the death blow.

I second. Nice analysis.

Rosenberg is a terrific writer (I've even seen his Showtime series "Going to California") and Jack, I'm guessing you're right. In my experience, studios tend to emphasize exposition, worried that the audience needs to have certain facts in order to understand the story. In fact, I suspect this is one of the more typical issues that comes up in notes meetings: Studio pushing exposition, writer wanting to omit in order to give the audience credit for being able to put 2 + 2 together.

He also wrote and exec. produced the American version of Life on Mars. It only lasted one season but it was really good.

YES, the stats and "As you know" are what really do it for me, takes it into so bad it's good territory

Studios AND directors I find will sometimes go for the easy exposition in Act 1 and just say f**k it, we need to lay out certain elements of the story so we can move ahead with the meat of the movie. (I don't always like it, but it can have its value). If you think about Raiders of the Lost Ark for example, that scene in the lecture hall lays out the entire history of the ark, Indy's mission, his conflict with Abner, all of it. But the difference is that it's perfectly executed. We learn about Indy's character just by watching his enthusiasm in explaining it (the teacher in him). The Willaims score is haunting. The setting is period, draws us in. If you have some of these elements, it makes the exposition more bearable. But you have to get it over with quickly -- no amount of visual wonderworks will keep us from getting itchy at too much exposition (i.e., Inception)

The first three INDYs have this scene. The fourth one doesn't. And ends up much more like INCEPTION -- where it's still trying to dole out exposition 60 minutes into the film. What you could call the equivalent scene occurs 45 mins into the movie where he is having lunch with Mutt. Compare that the the previous films which have a 15 min prologue followed by this scene. The exposition is all wrapped up 25 mins into the film. The irony is -- of the four films, INDY 4 also introduces the MacGuffin earlier than the other 3. That only compounds the problem, as it means it takes even longer to get through the exposition because there is no 15 minute prologue. If you believe screenplay is structure as Goldman asserts, that means there are points of no return. Points where, like it or not, the story needs to be on its way by. We inherently know the rhythm of movie stories because we know their length. Stories tend to drag if we, as the audience, don't know where we are being taken by these certain signposts.