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Prolonged Prologue: Difference between revisions
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'''Kiko''': Well, how far are you in ''FF''?
'''Gabe''': I don't know. Like, twelve hours?
'''Kiko''': Come on! At least play through the '''''tutorial'''''.
|'''[[Penny Arcade]]''', ''[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/4/14/ Purgatory]''}}
{{quote|''"[[Defied Trope|Start as close to the end as possible.]]"''
|'''[[Kurt Vonnegut]]''', Eight Rules for Writing Fiction}}
It is normal for a work to have a beginning sequence that, for whatever reason, is mostly unrelated or just setting the scene for the main plot. This is called a prologue.
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Related to [[The Teaser]] (aka Cold Open) and [[Get On With It Already]]. When it's supposed to be funny, that's an [[Overly Long Gag]]. Compare [[Close on Title]], when you don't see the title until the very end. Contrast [[Ending Fatigue]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==▼
▲== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Berserk]]'' took ''twelve volumes'' to go through the Golden Age arc with the Band of the Hawks. Notoriously, the anime ''doesn't get out of the flashback'', as the anime is more focused in telling the story of [[How We Got Here]].
* ''[[Gungrave]]'' similarly spends 15 of 26 episodes on a flashback to before the plot of the video game it's based on to establish [[How We Got Here]]. Sadly, it's by far the best part of the series.
* ''[[Vinland Saga]]'' is also impressive. You start off [[In Medias Res]] with a fortress getting besieged, then there is a flashback where you learn that Thorfinn (the protagonist)'s ''entire'' motive for being with the mercenaries is to kill their leader in a fair duel - because that man killed his father by holding Thorfinn hostage. Thorfinn is seriously that dangerously single-minded. So it's pretty clear that the entire story is about Thorfinn's various adventures while he tries to kill Askeladd (the leader). Then, when everything is said and done and {{spoiler|Askeladd ''finally'' dies}} and you think the story is going to end, you see the chapter title: "Chapter 54: End of Prologue." We're in it for the long haul, boys.
== [[Fan
* ''[[Shinji and Warhammer40K
* The ''[[Naruto]]'' fanfic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5729693/18/Students_of_the_Snake
▲* ''[[Shinji and Warhammer40K|Shinji and Warhammer 40 K]]'' is an excellent example. The prologue alone is many thousands of words just of how Shinji's childhood has been changed by his exposure to the tabletop game ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''. That's right, the fic is ''novella-length'' before Shinji even arrives at NERV!
▲* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5729693/18/Students_of_the_Snake This] Naruto fanfic goes on ''18 chapters''before the plot get rolling. It even says so in the [[Word of God|author's note!]]
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[The Departed]]''{{context}}
* The Uwe Boll film ''[[Alone in the Dark (2005 film)|Alone in The Dark]]'' is notable for having the longest text scroll in film, clocking in at about 100 seconds, as in nearly two minutes of spoken word and text. The scroll was inserted into the review because [[Viewers are Morons|test audiences couldn't make heads or tails of the film's plot]], so they wrote the scroll to explain some of it. Audiences then complained that it was too boring, so they added a voiceover. It didn't help much..
* ''[[The A-Team (film)|The
* Most ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]'' pre-title sequences clock in at a few minutes. The one for ''[[The World Is Not Enough]]'' is nearly ''fifteen minutes'' long, and actually has a fairly clear cutoff point between its two scenes that could've been the act break. This is because that was originally going to be the end of the pre-title sequence, but test audiences felt that it was lackluster compared to recent Bond movies, so they stretched it out to include the next scene as well, which involved a lengthy, exciting boat chase.
* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]]'' has what seems like an interminably long prologue set just before World War I, when Indy is a preteen boy. This prologue serves multiple purposes: 1) to set up the Cross of Coronado as a [[Chekhov's Gun]] that turns up (a quarter of a century later!) in the film's ''real'' [[Action Prologue]] with an adult Indy; 2) to establish Indy's fleeting relationship with his father, which lends a certain weight to those characters' later scenes together; and 3) to explain how Indy acquired his trademark fedora, his bullwhip, the scar on his chin, and his crippling fear of snakes.
* ''[[Raising Arizona]]'' begins with an accelerated account of how the main characters met, got married, discovered that they could not have a child, and hatched a scheme to steal a baby. The title screen rolls just as they're driving out for the kidnapping. Essentially the prologue is the first act of the film.
* ''[[Monty Python's The Meaning of Life]]'' begins with "The Crimson Permanent Assurance," which was originally supposed to be just one of the sketches of the film, but grew into a 15 minute short film that got stuck at the beginning.
* ''[[Friday the 13th (film)|Friday the
* The remake of ''[[Friday the 13th (film)|Friday the
* ''[[Halloween (film)|Halloween]] H20'' has the title screen about
* The opening credits of ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'' appear 18 minutes into the film, at the end of the first reel.
* The 2009 ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' reboot doesn't get to the title until
** ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture]]'' begins with a 10-minute overture - not unique in film, but more often found on 3-hour historical epics than on sci-fi movies.
* ''[[Blood Night: The
* The movie ''[[127
* The credits for ''[[The Departed]]'' don't appear until nearly
* ''[[The Deer Hunter]]'' has an extremely long first act showing the main characters' lives in small-town, working-class America before they get to [[The Vietnam War|the actual war]].
* The first sequel to ''[[Silent Night,
* In the film ''[[Helldriver]]'', the opening credits are approximately
* Both ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes]]'' movies have very long, very awesome, prologues.
* ''[[Hugo film)|Hugo]]'' has a very long prologue, which is awesome.
* A full
== Literature ==▼
▲== [[Literature]] ==
* In Stephen King's ''[[IT]]'' a brief teaser chapter leads into the ''rest'' of the prologue, an over 100 pages long story about how the main characters start their return to Derry.
* The ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' series uses these from book
* [[Michael Crichton]], starting around ''[[Prey (novel)|Prey]]'' and [[It Got Worse|getting worse]]. The prologue of ''[[State of Fear]]'' is one third of the book. ''Next'' can be seen as nothing but prologue.
* [[Dean Koontz]]'s book ''[[Your Heart Belongs To Me]]'' was terrible about this. The summary of the plot on the back of the book explains the second half of the book. The entire first half is the prologue.
* [[Your Mileage May Vary]], but even fans of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' will admit that Tolkien takes his sweet time getting the hobbits out of the Shire.
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* The book ''[[Spring Moon]]'' starts with a prologue about the main character at the age of about eight, and recounting the despair and suicide of her servant and friend. It has ''no'' bearing on the plot, except for [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|some symbolic and thematic value]] - but it is at least an excellent short story all by itself.
* ''[[Life of Pi]]'' takes around a hundred pages just to get to the point where the blurb begins.
* ''[[Tristram Shandy|The Life and Opinions of
* The first ''[[Bionicle]]'' book, ''Tale of the Toa'' dedicates six chapters to describing how each of the Toa discover themselves, their surroundings, meet their people and each other, until they finally all come together and kick off the plot.
* In ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya|The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', an unnecessarily large amount of time is spent on the SOS Brigade preparing for a Christmas party that {{spoiler|the audience doesn't even get to see}}. A few important plot points are established, but most of it can be seen as unnecessary padding. Kyon even lampshades it, observing that it was "too long for a prologue." The movie adaptation, despite mostly being very [[Adaptation Distillation|well made]], makes it even worse, as, [[Your Mileage May Vary|arguably]] very little actually happens until about an ''hour and a half'' into the film.
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* ''[[Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone]]'' doesn't even ''get'' to Hogwarts until halfway through the book. Then again, the beginning was absolutely necessary to set up the plot for the entire series.
== [[Live-Action
* ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]''{{'}}s prologues would frequently go ten to eleven minutes. The show
▲* ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'''s prologues would frequently go ten to eleven minutes. The show is more radical in its first two seasons. Frequently episodes would end with the 3rd Act cliffhanger and the 4th Act would be knocked on to the next week where it would serve as an extended prologue pushing that episode's 1st Act into the 2nd Act's slot (roughly minute 11 to minute 22) the 2nd Act would then push the 3rd Act back so that the episode ended on the 3rd Act cliffhanger and so on...
* One ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' episode begins with a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the movie epic ''Scott of the Antarctic'' that goes on for about two thirds of the show before we see John Cleese's BBC announcer and the opening titles.
* According to [[SF Debris]], you can usually tell how much a particular ''[[Star Trek]]'' episode will suck (especially a ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' episode) by the length of the teaser; the longer the teaser, the more you're urged to run for the hills.
** That may be accurate. The teaser of Scorpion - which introduces Seven of Nine and pits Voyager and the Borg in an [[Enemy Mine]] against [[Cosmic Horror|Species 8472]] - was barely ten seconds if that.
* ''[[Flashpoint]]''{{'}}s prologues are generally about five to six minutes, though in some cases up to ''ten.''
== Theatre Productions ==▼
* ''[[Into the Woods]]'' begins with a musical sequence introducing the characters (and setting up the plot) that lasts for 12 minutes on the original cast recording. Seeing as that takes out several lines of dialogue, it could be even longer.
==
* [[Square Enix|The Company Formerly Known as Squaresoft]], developing mostly story-heavy role-playing games, has a knack for this:
** One of the most notorious examples is ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]''. The term Longest Prologue Ever is popularly used to describe the first part of the game, which takes between ''three to five hours'' and does little except setting things up for the ''actual'' plot and main character.
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** Surely the Endar Spire, the small, linear, tutorial-like level that precedes Taris is the prolouge. And the story begins immediately, in media res even, and takes a break on Taris to allow the player the chance to explore a wider, freer world.
** And [[Knights of the Old Republic]] 2 gives you Peragus. Big, almost depopulated mining station. REALLY big. And REALLY depopulated. If it wasn't bad enough already, half the time you're running in your underwear, with a mining laser. Alone. (Except you count voices in your head and com links as your party.)
* You spend the first few hours of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess]]'' learning your controls as Link and Wolf-Link. You don't have any idea of what's going on until the end of the segment, and you're not free to explore the overworld until after the first major dungeon.
** This is true for a lot of ''Zelda'' games, actually. You can't explore the overworld in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|Ocarina of Time]]'' until the tutorial (obtain sword/shield) and first dungeon (Deku Tree) are finished. ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|Wind Waker]]'' railroads you until you get a boat (and sail) several hours into the game. ''[[The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past|
** Not to mention the biggest offender in the series: ''[[
*** Which is thankfully skippable with the use of the dancing scarecrow in the observatory, as he is able to make Link skip ahead to the third day by dancing with him.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword|Skyward Sword]]'' was apparently intent on averting this, though there was difficulty concerning a scene where Link saves Zelda, as this was important to show their relationship. So they cut out ''many'' scenes.
* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' can easily take an hour to reach the title screen, during which you "play" a different character from the game proper. That's in scare quotes because you don't make any decisions in this part of the game.
* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]''. The airport. Unlike previous (or later) installments of the "When They Cry" series, which introduce us to the characters within the context of the overall story, thus keeping the plot moving, Umineko's first episode has Battler, the main character, meet two
** You could argue the entire first episode is this Trope. The main story in latter episodes revolve around the Meta World that is just introduced in the first episode ''epilogue''.
* The story mode of ''[[Star Wars Battlefront]] 2'', ''Rise of the Empire'', involves various missions centred around a group of clone troopers liberating various planets from the droids {{spoiler|and eventually taking part in Order 66}}. A cutscene after that event shows Vader's armour and an ominous image of the Death Star while the central character explains what the squadron did after the battle, which could be a perfectly valid ending to a game that's already full enough to be a game itself. Then the second opening crawl starts, finally introducing the actual ''Rise of the Empire'' storyline.
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* The opening to ''[[Harvest Moon]] Save the Homeland'' drags on for quite a while, which doesn't help the game's status as one of the least popular in the series (that and removing the [[Dating Sim|marriage and family]] aspects). Add to that the fact that the game has [[Multiple Endings]], and you can't skip the cutscenes on your [[New Game+]], and that intro ''really'' gets old.
* The unskippable intro to ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' last for thirty minutes if you don't bother reading any of the text. If you want the ''complete'' intro, you have option of watching it on the main title with that being twenty minutes.
* ''[[Golden Sun: Dark Dawn]]'' takes nearly
** This was a problem in the first ''[[Golden Sun]]'' too. The opening scene establishes most of the plot, yes, but the talking-to-fighting/puzzling ratio is way off.
* ''[[Mother 3]]'' is divided up into eight chapters. The first three happen over the course of three days, and cover the perspective of three different characters. Story-wise, they're important, but the gameplay suffers somewhat. [[It Gets Better]] after the [[Time Skip]].
* In ''[[Breath of Fire 3]]'', the first few missions take place in a very small portion of the map with very limited access to shops, fishing spots or masters, and after {{spoiler|1=raiding McNeil Mansion}}, your two allies pull a [[Wutai Theft]] and aren't seen again until the second half, and any [[Level Grinding]] you did with them is wasted. After that, you're sent on a very linear mission that only allows you access to one part of the map at a time while you assemble your team, and it isn't until you defeat {{spoiler|Stallion}} that you have full access to the majority of the continent and can start properly building your team.
* ''[[Okami]]'' begins with a ten-minute cutscene explaining the legend of Orochi, then a lengthy tutorial with your [[Exposition Fairy]] chirping at you all the while. But [[It Gets Better]], I swear.
* ''[[Advent Rising]]'' lets you witness the destruction of Gideon's [[Doomed Hometown|Doomed Homeplanet]] through his eyes. It takes pretty long.
* ''[[Lufia and The Fortress of Doom
* The first chapter of ''[[Tales of Graces]]'' concerns several of the main characters as children. Chapter 2 takes place after a [[Time Skip]] and mostly revolves around setting the scene and getting the group back together now that everyone's grown up. Nothing that could possibly be construed as the main plot kicks off until roughly the end of the second chapter and start of the third.
* The prologue for open world ''[[Kingdom Come: Deliverance]]'' is both hours long ''and'' on rails while never clearly communicates when the rails have ended (resulting in an explicit order with an exact time to start a quest that's both [[Take Your Time|indefinitely delayable]] and mechanically expects you to have gained experienced before starting). Amazingly, it was originally ''even longer'' before several scenes cut out and repurposed for an optional side story showing them [[And Now for Someone Completely Different|from the view of another character]] ''because'' the prologue was too long.
==
* Averted in [[Missing Episode|'The Long Lost Prologue']] of ''[[Our Little Adventure]]''. The first couple of panels started as black screened exposition, but [[Trickster God|The Palm Tree Ghost]] cut it short.
{{quote|
== Web Original ==▼
▲== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''[[The Gungan Council]]'' typically has roleplays to introduce new characters. They are are supposed to be simple in order to get a new character instantly acquainted to two or more established characters. Roughly 200 words is enough per post. Some have start with ''1,000'', and keep this amount up through over 15 posts and essentially almost writing enough to create a novella off the bat.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes]]'': The Avengers don't officially form until the end of the seventh episode. Furthermore, Captain America doesn't join until the ninth episode, Black Panther doesn't join until the eleventh, and Hawkeye doesn't join until two episodes after that, meaning that the core team of eight Avengers that make up the first (26 episode) season doesn't assemble until the end of the thirteenth episode. However, the first seven episodes feature plenty of action by the heroes working solo and do set up the season nicely, so this is a case where [[Tropes Are Not Bad]].
▲* A full 10 minutes go by in ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'' before the title and opening credits show up.
{{reflist}}
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