Thursday, October 20, 2022

What is the best example of 'show but don't tell' in movies?

DGermanFunk

Captain Jack Sparrow’s first scene in Pirate’s of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

This scene is expertly crafted that not only is it a character entrance but also a character introduction that says everything about him. And not a single word was said through most of it.

Here’s how it plays out.

First we find the Captain himself entering the scene.

You watch him standing atop the post of his ship. A captain of a great vessel.

You watch the wind against his face, flapping his long hair and ribbons of his cap. Facing forward to unseen adventure.

You see the shine in his eyes. The fierce determination. A fearlessness akin to any hero of many tales. All the while an epic song plays in the background.

But all that - as well as out expectation - gets turned over its head the moment Jack jumps down to reveal…

Jack’s ‘ship’ is no more than a tiny dingy. A sinking one too.

But then pauses when he encounters the hanged corpses of pirates. Taking his hat off and saluting the dead.

Culminates to an epic entrance of him making it into port at the mainmast of a sinking dingy and walking away as if exiting an elevator

Oh, and not before talking his way out of paying for the port fees by bribing the man

before walking out and stealing said man’s purse for more coins than he gave.

In a single scene, we find that Jack is a down in his luck pirate or one desperately clinging to his glory days, a man with respect and morals or maybe even a heart from how he salutes the dead pirates, an optimistic easy going soul who always makes it on top even at the cost of everything falls behind him, and a man with a silver tongue who could both talk and work his way out of any situation while getting away with everything.

This wonderful character introduction is simply superb that shows Jack Sparrow for all that he is without making any long drawn out monologues that most movies suffer from and a personality that hardly changes through the course of not only the movie but the entire franchise

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