Day 25: Indiana Jones and the Awkwardly Foreshadowed Ability
Foreshadowing is always tricky business. The fact is, especially in an action-adventure film, characters are going to have to perform some amazing feats, and if these abilities materialize suddenly without any explanation, you risk losing believability with the audience.
So it's important to establish that characters can perform certain actions so it won't seem awkward later on, but it's equally important to make sure that foreshadowing is as seamless as possible. At its best, foreshadowing is demonstrated through actions, with characters performing a task on a small scale at the beginning of the story, then on a large, impressive scale right at the end. If that's not possible, the next best kind of foreshadowing is to fit it seamlessly into dialogue. Find a way to have characters discussing a related topic drop character information into the conversation. It's a little worse than the first way, but if done correctly, it can be worked into the film without being too noticeable.
