Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2019 October 9

= October 9 =

Rian Johnson
"the film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, was released on December 15, 2017 to positive reviews from critics and from audiences." This is not true. The review from the audience was pretty bad. 1.54.204.158 (talk) 04:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Not according to the reference that the above sentence is cited to in the Rian Johnson article, nor to the multiple citations supporting similar though more extended wording in the Star Wars: The Last Jedi article and section itself. If you can cite published Reliable sources that give differing data, you are free to add those to both articles in order to present a more balanced neutral point of view. Do not, however, remove any references already there unless you can show that they do not come from Reliable sources. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.121.161.82 (talk) 06:00, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Trope of having the end of the story as the prologue
There is a trope in movies and TV series (don't bother checking TVTropes, I already looked and it's not there) in which the opening scene or prologue is chronologically at the end of the story. For example, the assassination of Gandhi is the opening scene of Gandhi (film). In Chernobyl (miniseries), the opening scene is the suicide of the main character, two years after the disaster. What are some other examples of this trope, and what was the first film or TV series to use it? --Viennese Waltz 08:57, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Don't know if this qualifies, but 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy starts with Cohan going to the White House to see FDR, and most of the rest of the film is a flashback. 1941's Citizen Kane was also a lot like that. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:58, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * In literature this is known as a Circular Narrative, for which someone has created an IMDB list ( Lost Highway (film), Triangle_(British-Australian_film), Dead of Night (1945 film) and Twelve Monkeys). The TV series Lost also began and ended on a zoom in and out of the main characters eye as he laid on a beach. Blakk  and ekka 11:09, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It can also be a type of frame story.  Amadeus is an example of both.   It begins with the ending and is recounted by Salieri (if I remember correctly). 2606:A000:1126:28D:21C6:C1C3:BD49:7F4B (talk) 20:26, 9 October 2019 (UTC)


 * This is in TVTropes at Whole Episode Flashback. I'm astonished that only a handful of recent entries are listed in the movies section, because I've seen at least one with Humphrey Bogart that was structured that way; unfortunately I can't remember the title. The TV section is better, including examples in The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched as well as many newer ones. --76.69.116.4 (talk) 04:24, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * You could show the last scene first, without the entire episode being a flashback. That is, nobody says "Remember when..." followed by harp music and wavy lines and scenes from the past. So, after they show the final scene, the rest is shown as if it was happening then. Thus, the final scene is "a future event". SinisterLefty (talk) 05:01, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Very well said. This is not about flashbacks. In the example I gave of the Gandhi film, it's not like the whole film is a flashback. --Viennese Waltz 06:45, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the claim that such examples are "not flashbacks". --76.69.116.4 (talk) 07:12, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Agree with your disagreement. If the action of a story shows time X and then shows events from before time X, that IS a flashback. It may not be called out by dialogue, but it is still a flashback.--Khajidha (talk) 01:37, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, I'd say that the whole of Gandhi is a flashback as it's framed in the form of the classic trope of a character's life flashing before them at the point of death (like the aforementioned Citizen Kane). It's also one coherent linear narrative from that point (flashbacks and Nonlinear narratives are different things).  Another example is Saving Private Ryan which, come to think of it, is probably the best example of what you're looking for.Blakk  and ekka 15:51, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Dead Reckoning may be the Bogart film you're thinking of. Clarityfiend (talk) 19:43, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * That's it, thanks. --76.69.116.4 (talk) 23:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Passage to Marseille is a more convoluted example, with flashbacks piled on top of flashbacks. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:31, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The Bewitchin' Pool episode of the Twilight Zone runs the end scene first and last because the episode turned out too short (among many other issues encountered during filming) Rmhermen (talk) 01:39, 11 October 2019 (UTC)


 * The Man Who Would Be King (film) from 1975 seems to fit this description. HiLo48 (talk) 21:15, 11 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Traditionally, this is a type of In media res Latin for roughly "in the midst of the story". One interesting type of analysis of stories like this comes from Russian literary criticism known as Fabula and syuzhet.  The fabula is the actual order of events as they happen to the narrator, and the syuzhet is the order of events as they occur to the reader.  There's lots of ways to construct a story by aligning different parts of the fabula to the syuzhet.  TvTropes has an entire page on Anachronic order which may provide a useful starting point.  Two others that are told with the last events as the first scene I can think of are Fight Club and Memento.  -- Jayron 32 14:10, 14 October 2019 (UTC)