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1. Avatar film opening analysis
The movie begins with a black screen and music overlaying. There is then a
voiceover that says “sooner or later though you always have to wake up.” As
he says that there are eyes opening simultaneously. This is a graphic match and
is used well as it looks like the corpse awakes from death, however it is the
brother who looks very similar to the dead body. There is a dystopia city set in
the future full of people, completely overcrowded and overpopulated.
Everyone is wearing masks, this shows that it is most likely filled with heavy
pollution due to all of the people and factories. This is a genre signifier as a lot
of sci-fi movies have overpopulated and heavily polluted cities. The voiceover
talks about how with money a broken spine could be fixed, but in his economy
12 bucks would get a cup of coffee. This shows that in this dystopian city
money is a huge problem for people who don’t have it. This heavily populated
dystopian city tells the audience that this film is a sci-fi as most dystopian
futures are a sci-fi film. The camera slowly pans up and shows the city being
heavily populated with an enormous crowd of people.
The next scene is set in a bar, it shows the protagonist and shows the audience
that even though he is in a wheelchair he doesn’t care as he jumps on a man
and punches him multiple times. This shows he still acts like a normal guy even
though he can’t walk. He is violently thrown out of the bar and is on his back
staring at the sky. There are trains flying past once again showing the
dystopian future. The two men mention his brother and they are then at a
crematorium, this shows his brother is dead and about to be cremated. The
voiceover says that he was stabbed for his money and that the weak prey on
the strong. He was a scientist and his brother was able to take over his dreams
in honour of him. Whilst his corpse is burning the fire disappears and his
brother is laying exactly the same and opens his eyes. He is then slowly pulled
out in a futuristic silver space rocket.
All of this portrays the sci-fi genre yet again as it shows they are on a giant
rocket in space. Sci-fi is really easily spotted in most movie opening as they
have obvious genre signifiers, things such as dystopian futures, overpopulated
cities, factories/huge buildings and more. This opening has most of these genre
signifiers in the opening which makes it obvious for the audience straight away
that it is a sci-fi film and they know bits of what to expect as most sci-fi films
have the same equilibrium and disequilibrium.