- We open with a country road under a country sky with some country music twanging in the background. We're all set up for outlaws galloping across the screen.
- Then we meet Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon), who is waiting tables with toughness and grace in a little old diner in who-knows-where, Arkansas.
- Louise calls up her friend Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) about a fishing trip they're going to take together for the weekend. We know Thelma is hot stuff, but she's married to a hothead dump sluggard named Darryl (Christopher McDonald). If the turquoise blazer doesn't tell you everything, he's a first class jerk.
- Too scared to ask him straight up about going away for the weekend, Thelma, after packing—and dropping a handgun in her bag for good measure—leaves Darryl a note.
- Louise picks Thelma up in a '66 Thunderbird, and they take the world's best selfie.