The Myth of the Required BIG OPENING

Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Opener: Timeless, peerless, iconic.

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Faster, Indy!

It's all about Indy’s humanity – he sets off traps, smiles with triumph, sags with relief, is betrayed twice and runs away from a massive rock with the same frantic fear the audience is feeling. And all, somehow, in under ten minutes. (x)

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And he did all this in 1987.

Screenplay gurus of all kinds, especially on forums, are very fond of telling nascent screenwriters that they have to have a BIG OPENING in the first ten minutes.  HOOK the reader, if they will have any hope at all of being recommended. 

But it's not 1987.   And perhaps one reason theaters are closing and the industry is in the doldrums is: they are boring the living fuck out of us with tentpole films and big damn openings when we'd just like to see a good story.  Anyone see Man of Steel (Henry Cavill)?  ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION (lengthy exposition) ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION (lengthy exposition) ETC.

The problem is: screenwriters write for readers, readers read for producers, producers are not filmmakers.  

What producers really want is to make the same picture people wanted to see once, over and over and over in various disguises.  SSDD as Stephen King would say.  

What would happen if screenwriters wrote for audiences?  If there was no BIG OPENING, no GIANT HOOK?  Would the audience walk out?

Let's see what happens: Someone sees a trailer.  The trailer makes them want to see the movie.  They go to the movie.  Buy a ticket.

Alien 1979

 Sit down.  They are seeing Alien.  How many people walked out of Alien because there was no great action sequence, no monster, nothing but a few people to get to know?

No one.  People don't walk out.  They came and they will stay at least 30 minutes.  Take a look at this list of 50 Greatest Movie Openings. 

What's with all these readers supposedly rejecting scripts for boring openings?  If that is happening,  it's because they haven't seen the trailer.  

BUT IS IT HAPPENING?

Are readers "walking out?"  Reading ten pages and moving on?  No.  Readers get paid to read the script, all of it.  To write coverage, including the story they read.  

Needing a BO is BS.

Great movies are structure, story, drama and character.  Let's do that.