Phrases for Talking About Movies

So let’s first just go through a couple of really useful words that we can use when we’re talking about

movies and TV and also how we can actually put some of them together to explain what we want to explain.

OK.

So first very quickly let’s just go through these the plot the plot of a movie is basically what happens

in the story line that the story follows the points along the way in the story.

This is this is the plot doesn’t have to be a movie doesn’t have to be a TV series.

But when you’re if you need to when you’re explaining what happens in a movie or a video game or whatever

to your friends you’re actually explaining the plot to them.

OK.

The characters are the people who are in the video game or the movie or the TV series not real people.

They’re not the actual person that they are they’re playing a character the actor or actress plays the

character.

I have actors I need to put also actresses Here the actor or actress plays the character and the character

is the one in the story.

The trailer is what you see before the movie comes out.

So when you talk about a movie we say blah blah blah is coming out soon it’s coming out soon.

I can’t wait until whatever movie comes out.

I can’t wait until it comes out because because I saw the trailer and the trailer is so good.

Can you say preview.

Yes.

If you want to say preview.

That’s OK.

So some people would say that the trailer is different than the preview.

People often just use trailer and preview to mean both.

There is often a difference in how long they are but it’s not really that important.

People use these pretty much to mean the same thing.

I can’t I can’t wait to see.

I’m not going to say a name here because if you’re watching this 30 years from when it’s recorded then

this whole series will look ridiculous.

I can’t wait to see blah blah blah movie name because the trailer looks great or awesome great or awesome

or whatever you want to say.

OK.

Can’t wait means you’re very excited for that.

Yeah OK.

So that’s how you would describe that.

So what about series.

Can we use it for movies and TV.

The answer is yes you can say my favorite TV series is you can say my favorite series of movies is but

it has to be more than one movie.

And usually it’s many movies for example the Harry Potter movie series.

People often call it a series of movies.

I love the Harry Potter series.

In fact that can also be used for the Harry Potter books.

OK now for TV we often call the show itself a series.

Sometimes people use show sometimes they use series.

Many people use the word show when each one is completely unrelated to the others.

Every single one is completely different.

Maybe it’s a game show or maybe it’s a show where you just have a different sort of topic for each episode

which we’ll talk about next.

But for a TV series it’s usually a continuous story.

One story that has multiple seasons and the season is one year for that show or that series.

So if we’re talking about a TV series where maybe every episode the next thing is happening based on

the previous one.

And we have some some characters who are all the same.

And there’s one story there is there’s one kind of line or plot that’s moving along.

And then in this season you’ll have a very exciting ending.

And then you say oh I can’t wait until next season.

I can’t I can’t wait.

I can’t wait until Season 9 to come out to your waiting and you’re waiting and you’re waiting because

you’ve seen seasons one through eight and the story’s really interesting and you’ve fallen in love with

all the characters.

That means you just really like the characters and each little story within each one of those is called

an episode.

That’s what an episode is usually.

Episodes are used for TV not used for movies but there are some examples where episodes are actually

used for movies too like Star Wars Episode 1 episode 2 episode 3 an episode as each piece of that.

So we could say an episode each little contained story is this big season is this big and the whole

series is this big.

This is the whole thing.

So now let’s talk about how we can actually use actors and actresses their names and connect them to

the TV shows or movies they’re in so we could say stars in or plays as I mentioned before we can use

plays.

So let’s say let’s choose a person here.

Let’s say Hugh Jackman Hugh Jackman as an actor.

That’s a real person.

Stars in a movie or the movie called Wolverine.

So I’m just going to fill this in here.

Hugh Jackman stars in a movie called what’s going on right here Wolverine.

That’s the name of the movie.

I didn’t really like the movie by the way.

Anyway it was OK no it wasn’t.

It wasn’t that good.

OK.

Hugh Jackman stars in a movie called Wolverine which is set in.

And then you can say where it takes place or when it takes place.

Or you could just say Hugh Jackman stars in and then you could cancel all of this and just say Wolverine

and then instead of saying which is set in saying where it takes place you could say which is about

a mutant who lives for a very long time and blah blah blah.

You can talk about the story.

Now let’s use a classic example let’s use Kate Winslet.

OK so Kate Winslet a very good very good actress.

OK let’s use Kate Winslet plays.

OK.

Now we could say something about the character.

So this one the plays allows us to describe a little bit the character in the movie or TV series plays

a young rich girl.

So abbreviate that as young rich girl.

Why are g if anyone ever asks you what is why are g me now you know plays a young rich girl named you

know the name classic movie Rose.

OK Rose who.

What does she do.

Falls in love with a young man named Jack in the classic film Titanic.

So this is the structure that we can use and again you can say this whole thing or you can cancel it

which is also very common.

This person stars in this which is about or this person plays a that other character details named character

name who then something the character does in the movie.

Then you could say in the film Titanic or in Titanic you can just say in Titanic.

So this is very simply how you can describe characters and the actors or actresses who play those characters

in films and TV series.

Very very common.

There’s a word here that I didn’t mentioned before because I forgot.

So let me just tell you what that one means that is sequel.

OK sequel a sequel is one a movie usually that comes after another the original.

So you have the original and let’s say we’re talking about the movie bad boys.

I’ve never actually seen it.

It’s a pretty old movie.

I’ve never seen it.

OK.

So the original is just called Bad Boys because they don’t know if they’re going to make another movie.

But then it’s very successful.

It has huge box office success.

Actually I don’t know if this movie had huge box office success just choosing this example.

That means that it was very successful and made a lot of money.

OK.

Was a very big movie that made a lot of money.

This is sometimes called a blockbuster.

A very big movie maybe a superhero movie makes a lot of money.

Huge movie.

It’s a blockbuster.

OK so this is the original and then oh it did very well.

Very successful.

Everybody likes it.

So we’re going to come out with another one.

We’re going to come out with a sequel a sequel.

What will it be called.

How about bad boys too.

Notice that it’s often written like this instead of writing bad boys too.

Sometimes it’s written like this.

And if you want to do your own research about this I don’t want to teach you all these because it’s

not that useful.

These are called Roman numerals and u m e r a l s good research Roman numerals and learn it.

So when you maybe are in America and you see the Super Bowl is going on and it shows one of these big

numbers it’s a Roman numeral.

You’ll know what it means.

Pretty simple actually pretty easy to learn.

Takes ten minutes.

So the sequel of Bad Boys 2 was just as good as the original the sequel of Bad Boys 2 was not nearly

as good as the original was just as good as the original.

Not nearly as good.

What the sequel.

The sequel.

The sequel if it comes before sometimes we have what we call a prequel and a prequel a prequel is made

after but it’s about what happens before it’s made after.

But it’s about what happens earlier maybe to the characters when they were young star wars would be

a good example of that.