Inspiring multiple song edits, Tik Toks and comedy sketches, HBO succession the opening credits almost immediately took their place in the cultural zeitgeist. Play this simple sequence on the piano in a room and you’ll be instantly recognized. Although the theme song and opening sequence inspired so much, Continuity, actually strongly influenced by the intro from David Fincher a film in which long before Continuity. This is a 1997 psychological thriller. A game.
Written John Brancanto And Michael Ferris and starring Michael Douglas, the film is about an extremely wealthy business executive who is given the opportunity to participate in a fateful game. Douglas’ character, Nicholas Van Orton, is involved in a series of events that change his view of what is real and what is part of the game he signed up for. Overshadowed by Fincher’s other work, the film is more than worth a re-watch if you haven’t seen it. The introduction to the film can be directly compared to succession IN many respects.
“The Game” and “Succession” intros are presented in the same way
In terms of how the intros are presented, the similarities are quite obvious. The aesthetic aims to look like home videos that each story’s characters were a part of. Seeing how both A game And succession involve the super-rich, neither Royce nor Nick Van Orton’s parents are holding a camera. Both intros show a montage of B-roll shots surrounding a large estate on a pleasant day, and both use a high exposure camera image with film grain. These introductions are intended to give context to the characters and events in the film and series, respectively. While succession the intro is interspersed with high-definition footage of the New York skyline and printing presses, A gameThe introduction stops at one day in the past of the protagonist, namely the birthday of Nick van Orton’s father.
Both intros have a piano song playing in the background, further strengthening the bond. Whereas succession the introduction is perhaps a bit more optimistic than that of A game, both still terrifying and ominous, preparing the audience for what lies ahead. As Fincher’s film audiences learn more about Van Orton and his family throughout the film, the dark tone makes more sense. If there’s anything obvious about both intros, aside from the music and looks, it’s that viewers are shown that the characters we’re about to see on screen were born into wealth and abundance, as evidenced by the vast estates that the opening episodes take place in However, the content of each intro reveals different clues to what lies ahead for viewers.
The scenes shown in each of them differ in important aspects
The purpose of these introductions is in line with the idea that they want to give viewers an idea of the main characters’ relationship with their parents. In Fincher’s film, there are really clear shots of the face of a young Nick Van Orton, other alleged friends and relatives, and Nicholas’s father. This is interspersed with footage from the birthday party and later single shots of Van Orton’s father, alone, smoking or walking. This becomes important when you learn that Nick witnessed his father commit suicide on the very same birthday that the home video was filmed, his 48th birthday. The intro informs the audience that Nick may have had a normal or even good relationship with his father until that fateful day when everything changed. In fact, the only reason Nick is given the chance to play the Game is as a gift for his own 48th birthday.
V succession opening credits, there are some interesting differences in content A game. First, grainy home video is sliced along with modern cinematic footage of the New York skyline, ATN news releases, and printing presses. In addition, the faces of the younger Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his then wife Caroline (Harriet Walter) are blurry and barely shown compared to Roy’s children. The footage we get of Logan is taken from a distance, and often he walks away as well. This should give viewers a sense of detachment and emotional neglect that has always been present in the Roy family and influences them to this day.
In these cases, the choice to use grainy film also has a dual purpose. The effect it has on presenting what’s on screen as a home movie is the most obvious, but it works thematically as well. Movie frames often show warmer colors, and this is true for both succession And Games opening loans. What we see in the footage tells us that the warmth of what the footage looks like is in direct contrast to the emotional coldness of the families we see. This is more evident in the intro to Legacy than in the intro to A game but with the added context of what happens to Nick’s father in Fincher’s film, understanding what he’s talking about about who Nick Van Orton becomes in life becomes much more clear.
After watching the intro to A game there can be no doubt about its influence on Continuity. Key differences indicate differences in the characters’ early relationships with their parents and give us context as to why they are the way they are when we observe them in the present. With hope, succession inspires future films or series to use the intro in a similar way and continue the idea that the opening credits can be just as important to the program as other elements.
Source: Collider
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