You're my exposition, and I love you, even though you killed my twin.

Exposition is like tourists in Paris; we hate it, and need it. So do it well. There are great ways to hide exposition in films – in character moments, in jokes, in pre-Predator Shane Black twists on movie clichés.

But if you’re here, it’s because you haven’t done this. You’ve done it in one of the ‘You’re my brother and I love you even if you kidnapped my twin’s father’s cousin by a baby I gave up to the clan that is my worst enemy, but that has something to teach me.’ ways.

The latest phenomenon in question is method of elaborating a complex bit of what’s supposed to happen (like the Cascade Failures of yore, in Star Trek: TNG), and then… having it happen. This is especially non-Hitchcockian, meaning that if it’s about having a hammer, or ‘thinking in Russian’, we don’t have any real life thing to compare it to, and the tension drains out like the blood from a Saurian on a space rejuvanation on the Ice Moons of Flaunor 8.