Cannot. Wait.

I've always had a problem understanding how much a writer can "expose" with exposition. My first example I can think of is in "Blade Runner". During Deckard's conversation with the police captain Bryant, the status of the replicants is basically "exposed". Granted the following scenes show us that the replicants are in fact back on Earth and fair game for the police and Blade Runner Unit. The distinction I can see here which adds to the dramatic tension is that, unlike the police, the audience is seeing how more HUMAN-Like the replicants really are!!! They become the de-facto protagonists of the film and the REAL protag, Deckard, is learning, through Rachel and seeing how cold the Blade Runner Unit really is, that by hunting the replicants, he is really hunting the death of what it means to be HUMAN. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but every time I watch the death of Roy Batty, I feel sorrow for him and all humans who lose the ability to feel empathy. Batty did, and he saved Deckard's life BECAUSE he really was a superior human, not by killing Deckard, but by letting him continue to live. I guess if a writer can throw out false info which the characters believe and then SHOW this is false and therefore allowing the audience see that it is false, this is another way to form "dramatic tension". Kind of off the wall but what do you think?

JH, that's an interesting take. And yes, certainly exposition as false information can be a way of making it compelling stuff, but only in retrospect. And that's tricky because we experience exposition primarily when we first hear / see it. So even though information may change meaning in the end a la The Sixth Sense [i.e., Malcolm Crowe is actually dead] or The Usual Suspects [i.e., Verbal is actually Keyser Soze], what a character says within the context of a scene has to be as entertaining as possible of its own perceived merit. Re Blade Runner: A case where a non-human [Batty] turns out to be more human than the human [Deckard who is trying to eradicate Batty]. And that seemingly influences Deckard in his decision to go away with Rachael.