Mr Exposition / Live-Action Films

• Lindsay Brigman in The Abyss does a slightly lampshaded version of this in the early descent scene, as she explains the (plot critical) perils of prolonged deep water diving to a SEAL team that is thoroughly familiar with them. They end up finishing most of her sentences for her.
• Airplane II: The Sequel McCroskey tries to get Johnny to do this, to his regret.
  McCroskey: I want you to tell me everything that's happened up until now.
  Johnny: Well, let's see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di's clothes. I couldn't believe it. He just took her best summer dress out of the closet and put it on...
• Alien:
  • In Alien, Ash, being the Science Officer, is the one infodumping the rest of the crew (and the audience) regarding the Alien and the planet it comes from.
  • Ripley in Aliens, when she provides a briefing to the Marines. She basically tries to explain what happened in the first movie, but fails as the Marines are constantly interrupting her story, and asking mocking questions. Once they encounter the xenomorphs they aren't in a laughing mood anymore...
• Austin Powers: Basil Exposition (with British Intelligence) is an obvious send-up of this type of character.
• M. Night Shyamalan is fond of this Trope, especially in such films as Lady in the Water and The Last Airbender, particularly Zhao and Kanna. In The Atlantic's review of the latter:
  Exposition has not merely vanquished mimesis, it has burned its homes to the ground and sown salt in its fields. It's really bad when Katara is describing what is happening on screen.
• Back to the Future:
  • Lorraine McFly serves this purpose in the first two movies. In Part I, she explains the circumstances of how she and George McFly originally met and fell in love. In Part II, she explains Marty's problem with being called "chicken", and how it got him into a car accident which changed his life for the worse. She also filled Marty in on everything that had changed in the Alternate Timeline.
  • Doc Brown does a lot of this too, but he's so damn entertaining to watch ("ONE POINT TWENTY ONE GIGAWATTS!!??") that you don't even notice you're being infodumped.
• Barbarella: The biggest exposition dumpers are the President of Earth (gives the background of Barbarella's mission), Professor Ping (explains the nature of the city of Sogo that Barbarella has to infiltrate and what the labyrinth is for) and Durand Durand (explains what the Eldritch Abomination known as Mathmos is).
• The Water Works crew in Batman Begins during the train chase. They were not originally part of the script, but added in to further explain the danger of the situation, and perhaps for visual variety.
• Big Trouble in Little China:
  • After Wang Chi's fiancee Miao Yin is kidnapped by members of the Lords of Death gang, he and Jack Burton follow them and end in a gang fight at a funeral. Later, Wang's employee Eddie Lee (who's been out gathering information on the streets of Chinatown) walks in and gives an infodump on what happened and why.
  Eddie: The Lords of Death were only on a joyride, not acting on orders from the Wing Kong. They just wanted a girl to sell and Miao Yin got in the way. Plus, the skirmish you guys stumbled into. Lo Pan, the word is, ordered the boss of the Chang Sings, Mr Lem Lee, assassinated. That was his funeral.
  • Would-be Intrepid Reporter Margo Litzenberger temporarily embodies this trope at one point:
  Margo: You mean the Lo Pan that's chairman of the National Orient Bank and owns the Wing Kong Trading Company, but who's so reclusive that no one has laid eyes on him in years?
  Jack Burton: Who the hell are you, anyway?
• BloodRayne II: Deliverance: While in jail in Deliverance, Rayne meets a member of Brimstone in the next cell who is able to explain the details of Billy the Kid's scheme to her. Once he is finished explaining, he is executed.
• Cannibal Girls: Mrs. Wainwright, owner of the motel adjacent to the cannibal cult's temple, is the one whole relates the story of the Cannibal Girls to newcomers, including the protagonists Cliff and Gloria.
• In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the real history of the world from WWII to the present is explained by computerized Dr. Zola to our heroes. Subverted in that he's purposefully dumping useful info on them as a stalling tactic while he tries to kill them.
• The World's Most Helpful Guard in the original Clash of the Titans. Perseus, a complete stranger, walks up to him, and he manages to go from surly hostility to explaining the complete social and political history of Joppa in under a minute. While swatting flies.
• In Crimson Tide, real-life newscaster Richard Valeriani appears at the beginning and the end to report on the situation in Russia.
• Dune (1984): Adapting the plot of the book was so complex and so much of it was cut from the movie that Miss and Mr Exposition were required: Princess Irulan before the credits, explaining the general setting, and after the credits, the secret report within the guild giving the context for the next scene.
• The Thing in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
  "Okay. We're now officially enemies of the United States of America. Victor is out there somewhere with unlimited power. And we've got a giant intergalactic force that's about to destroy our planet in less than twenty-four hours. Did I miss anything?"
• In Fatal Instinct, secretary Laura Lincolnberry explains the situation in great detail to her boss Ned Ravine.
• Godmothered: Agnes magically makes her face appear in a grandfather clock to tell Eleanor that Moira knows she's gone. Later, she appears again to tell Eleanor that if she doesn't come back to the Motherland, she will lose her magic.
• Much of Dr. Serizawa’s screentime in Godzilla (2014) is devote to him providing backstory for Godzilla along with the Mutos, and how to potentially stop them.
  • In the 2019 sequel, this role is given to Dr. Ilene Chen. Being able to provide lengthy exposition dumps about Kaiju on a moment's notice seems to be a prerequisite for working with Monarch.
• Gooby: The kid that sits next to Willy outside during his first lunch there just provides basic information about various kids in the school.
• In The Great Muppet Caper, as Miss Piggy interviews for a job, Lady Holiday goes on at length about her prized jewels and her troublesome brother — both key plot points. This is then lampshaded by the following exchange:
  Miss Piggy: Why are you telling me all this?
  Lady Holiday: It's plot exposition. It has to go somewhere.
• Guyana: Crime of the Century: Johnson's opening sermon is entirely devoted to setting up the premise of his group's move to South America, complete with Johnson unveiling a map of Guyana to show them where they're headed.
• Most of Captain Elliot Spencer's role in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth consists of telling Joey how Pinhead Unbound came to be, and providing instructions to bring him back to him.
• Ariadne from Inception came off as improbably perceptive because of a somewhat borderline example of this trope.
• James Bond:
  • "M".
  • Tanner in some movies, notably Goldeneye.
  • In Casino Royale (2006), Mathis plays the role during the poker scenes, explaining what is going on to Vesper. Later, Felix Leiter briefly plays the role by offering to "stake" Bond and then promptly explaining what "stake" means when he looks confused.
• Jurassic Park (1993):
  • Donald Gennaro's first two scenes have him explain the reasoning for the visit to the park, one of which is done under the guise of him reminding John Hammond that the trip isn't a vacation, but an investigation. After this, he has relatively little to do.
  • Mr. DNA, an anthropomorphic cartoon strand of DNA who explains to the audience just how they were able to clone the dinosaurs from their DNA, as part of the park's in-universe welcome film.
    "A DNA strand, like me, is the blueprint for buildin' a livin' thing. And sometimes, animals that went extinct millions of years ago, like dinosaurs, left their blueprints for us to find. We just had to know where to look!"
• Kindergarten Cop has a "Miss Exposition" delivering a very quick setup at the very beginning as the guy pushes her into a hiding place — he already knows what he's going to tell the Big Bad so there's no reason she should be saying this except to fill the audience in.
  Girl: I mean his wife took his kid and a couple of million...
• Kong: Skull Island:
  • Kaiju-studying Monarch scientist Dr. Houston Brooks believes the Hollow World theory and that it explains where Skull Island's monsters and most of the MonsterVerse's other Kaiju originally come from. He provides exposition on Hollow Earth which, starting in this film, has a major presence or is referenced in nearly every MonsterVerse instalment moving forward.
  • Shortly after his present day introduction, Lieutenant Hank Marlow, who's been stranded on Skull Island for nearly 30 years and thus knows the setting and its inhabitants intimately, provides a full infodump of King Kong's backstory. He explains Kong's importance in maintaining the island's balance, his justifiable reasons for attacking the expedition when they started bombing his home earlier in the film, and the threat posed by the Skullcrawlers and the Skull Devil.
• In The Last Witch Hunter, Kaulder often provides information about the world of the film to Chloe and 37th Dolan, who are both new to the job.
• The Matrix Reloaded:
  • In addition to providing keys when needed, the Keymaker provides a great deal of information to Our Heroes about the bomb-trapped office building with many doors (and how to break into it).
  • The Architect, who did almost nothing but spout exposition.
• Midwinter Night's Dream has the teacher at Jovana's special needs school, who explains autism to Lazar.
• Mission: Impossible: The nameless voice (presumably the Secretary) who provided the tape-recorded briefings.
• Ardeth Bey in The Mummy Returns, which actually is quite at odds with his characterization in the first film. As Stephen Sommers says on the commentary track, "In the first film Ardeth Bey was this cool, mysterious character. Here he's just a chatterbox. Every chance he gets, it's just wave after wave of exposition." In fact, he refers to the character as Mr. Exposition. There's some exposition provided by him in the first one, too. For example, the very crucial fact that you can't shoot Imhotep. And the entire prologue.
• The psychic in Paranormal Activity helpfully explains the whole plot up front. The other characters don't really pay attention to him.
• Captain Steiger in Patton. He is a German officer assigned to research U.S. General George S Patton for the Nazi high command. Screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola said in the DVD commentary he invented the character as a way of giving out biographical information about Patton to the audience.
• Mr. Gibbs in the Pirates of the Caribbean series seems to exist primarily to tell Will about Jack's backstory or pirate lore. He takes it very personally when Those Two Guys, Pintel and Ragetti, try to do his job for him.
• Toward the end of Psycho a psychiatrist named Dr. Richmond shows up. He's a One-Scene Wonder whose only purpose in the story is to give a long monologue explaining the backstory and the various pathologies of Norman Bates.
• Grave-Robber from Repo! The Genetic Opera. His song, "Zydrate Anatomy", introduces himself, Amber Sweet, Blind Mag, some Applied Phlebotinum in the form of zydrate, the veritable epidemic of surgery addiction, and reveals the first of Rotti Largo's many, many plots.
  • And before that, there's 'Genetic Repo Man' and '21st Century Cure,' both of which go over the basics of the world they live in, explaining the role of Repo Men and some facts about the circumstances that led to the Repo Men coming into existence.
• Resident Evil: Degeneration: Since he's been in similar situations before, Leon S. Kennedy takes this role in Capcom's (Alice-free!) CG film. That said, he still gets to kick more ass than every other character combined.
• Bob Hope in Road to Morocco when they are locked up in a jail cell:
  Hope: A fine thing. First, you sell me for two hundred bucks. Then I'm gonna marry the Princess; then you cut in on me. Then we're carried off by a desert sheikh. Now, we're gonna have our heads chopped off.
  Crosby: I know all that.
  Hope: Yeah, but the people who came in the middle of the picture don't.
  Crosby: You mean they missed my song?
• Serenity
  • Mr. Universe to the point where Joss Whedon refers to him as The King of Exposition in the DVD commentary.
  • And River's imaginary/remembered/dreamed teacher explaining about Earth-That-Was and the Alliance and her class commenting on the Reavers.
• Sinister features Vincent D'Onofrio as a daemon expert who informs the main character, played by Ethan Hawke, that the daemon who is giving him problems is named Bughuul. This has led to RedLetterMedia referring to him as "Skype Exposition Man" in several of their videos after their review of the film because he only exists on Skype, and only exists to give Ethan Hawke's character exposition.
• In Siren (2010), the primary function of the man who rents the main characters the yacht is to explain the legend of the siren.
• Stargate: Daniel Jackson is often this. He's used to translate the hieroglyphics that explain the basic plot, then explains how the gate targeting works, then later he explains to everyone the backstory of the uprising against Ra on Earth after Sha'uri helps him read the "writing on the wall".
• Star Wars:
  • Ric Olié in The Phantom Menace has dialogue that consists entirely of exposition such as "That little droid did it, he bypassed the main power drive!"
  • Same thing with Admiral Ackbar in Return of the Jedi ("It's a trap!")
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi's main role in the original trilogy, besides dying dramatically, is to provide backstory on Anakin Skywalker, and even then he initially leaves out one very crucial detail.
• The author in Stranger Than Fiction.
• Tim (John's friend) from Terminator 2: Judgment Day exists only so John has a person to mention what happened to his mother to. Once he's filled that purpose, he vanishes off the face of the earth. John himself then somewhat nestles into this role, as he tells the T-800 (and by extension the audience) a lot of backstory and information.
• Theresa & Allison: The vampire who orients Theresa after she's turned, Mary Solenz, serves as one to her and also the audience, explaining things about how vampires work along with their society.
• Jetfire in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen just does not shut up. His exposition after being introduced is a good portion of the remainder of his on-screen appearance. When he first meets Sam and Mikaela, he rants a solid 2 minutes about the most nonsensical old man banter, like his father being the first wheel made in the Stone Age, and his problems with his mother. Later, he explains almost the entirety of Cybertron's history before the Great War, and only stops when he sacrifices himself to become a Magic Mushroom to Optimus.
• In Wayne's World, Wayne and Garth run into a security guard (played by Chris Farley) backstage at a concert who proceeds to give detailed info about a record executive that ends up being important later. Lampshaded immediately afterwards when Wayne says to camera, "You know for a security guard he had an awful lot of information, don't you think?"
• Wes Craven in Wes Craven's New Nightmare serves to explain the entire plot to Heather Langenkamp (and by extension the audience). He tells her about the Entity that has taken on the form of Freddy Krueger, that it has been released due to the end of the movie series and is trying to cross over into reality, and that Heather is the only one who can stop him.
• You Might Be the Killer has Chuck, who spends the movie explaining horror tropes to Sam over the phone. She even refers to herself at one point as serving as a source of exposition.

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