- The movie opens with some orchestra music and singing, along with a kaleidoscopic image of some books and math equations.
- (And if books and math don't get you psyched for this movie, don't worry. There's plenty of both, butt there's also bar fights and romance.)
- Now we see a guy (Will Hunting) reading books inside a really bare-looking apartment. The camera jumps to a blue car pulling up outside. Will's friend Chuckie comes to the door and picks him up.
- We flash to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where a math professor named Gerald Lambeau is finishing up a lecture.
- He tells the students that he's put a very advanced math equation on the chalkboard in the hallway. He hopes that someone will be able to prove the equation by the end of the semester.
- Former people who've won this contest have gone on to be some of the best math minds in the world.
- Flash back to Will Hunting, who works as a janitor at the school. He passes the chalkboard in the hallway and sees the professor's equation, looking around a few times.
- Will has a drink at the bar with his buddy Chuckie that night, but he leaves early to go home and work on the prof's math problem on his apartment's bathroom mirror.
- While buffing the floors at MIT one day, Will grabs a piece of chalk and writes out an answer for the prof's equation.
- Will and Chuckie hang out at some batting cages. Chuckie tells Will they should go hang out around Harvard on one of the coming weekends.
- Will agrees, though he doesn't' know why they'd bother going.