Thriller opening analysis

50secs – 4mins

This thriller opening is very action packed and has a lot going on throughout it, it’s very futuristic and could possibly fall under the sci-fi thriller sub-genre but defiantly the action thriller sub-genre.

At the beginning of the opening we see lots of skeletons and skulls scattered everywhere alongside what looks like a burnt out city. This sets the enigma straight away to why this has happened and what exactly happened to course this. Enigmas are very common in thriller openings as they leave it open and make the view want to read on. As the camera finally stops panning around we get the foot of what looks like a robot stamp down and then the camera revels the rest of the robot followed by lots of lasers and explosions.

By the lasers we can tell that this falls into a sci-fi category and the explosions which are very common in all thrillers tell us that this film is almost certainly a thriller. There’s lots of fire throughout the whole thing which again is very common in thrillers and gets the audience pumped and into the action.

We are then introduced to humans who as far as we can see are all mature males. The mature men characters are very common in all thrillers and are usually the main characters in them but as there are so many on screens we can’t tell who the main will be yet. The men carry guns which is a familiar piece of iconography for thriller films as it symbolises action and that what thrillers are mostly about.

We then realise that the humans and robots are in a war and the action then kicks off. We get sounds of explosions and gun shots going off from here on in. The fire and lasers stand out very strongly against the dark low key lighting that remains through the entire opening. We get lots of jump shots between all the men shooting back and fighting the robots. The camera work is very effective because where it’s jumping around everywhere it looks asif it’s caught up in the action.

It then cuts to what looks like he humans stronghold and the camera seems to be concentrating on one man but it’s only the back of him we are yet to see his face, this starts another enigma to who what we thing our main character is. We then get his name from the voice over “John Connor” and the camera cuts round to his face which is covered by binoculars. When the binoculars are lowed it reveals an uncut, unshaven, mature man. Again this is a main character we expect to see in thrillers.

The opening then finishes of with a full screen of fire and a voice over. Behind the voice over though he hear a soundtrack, the music is quite epic and goes well with the rest of the opening we have just seen and sets the mood of it for the audience watching.