So I didn’t want to hijack the “best movie themes” thread but it got me to thinking. There are a few movies for which I remember the opening credits sequence more than anything else; some that have been the best part of the movie. My favorites:
Supercop – probably my all-time favorite. It’s the perfect opening to a Jackie Chan movie; it manages to be really cool, really cheesy, and really dated all at the same time.
Raising Arizona – half the best lines in the movie are in the first 10 minutes, and that theme is one of the most memorable ever.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – yeah, it’s the worst of the Indiana Jones movies (so far), but the “Anything Goes” bit at the beginning is awesome, as is pretty much the entire scene in Club Obi-Wan. I still remember seeing it for the first time, thinking “This is going to be the best movie ever!” and slowly feeling the enthusiasm getting sucked out of me.
High Society – (the musical version of The Philadelphia Story). It’s been years since I’ve seen this, but I remember the opening being pretty cool, basically Louis Armstrong singing the back story and introducing the characters like in a Greek chorus.
I’m sure someone will say this so I’ll just say it first… Seven. Awesome merging of music and visuals, and a great mood-setter for the whole film. One of the best opening credits sequences ever, and to hear David Fincher talk about it, it almost happened that way by accident.
Fight Club was pretty cool (loved the music, great visuals)
Se7en was also good
Charlies Angels was good fun
The Player has a 15 minute single tracking shot that introduces all of the main characters; that is wonderful to watch
It’s not really an opening sequence, but I have the T2:Ultimate Edition DVD and the THX logo (molten metal like the terminator) shakes the whole room
I should really like some arty film opening, like the much-acclaimed opening to Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, but the truth is that the movie opening that always grabs me is the one for Richard Donner’s Superman.
It perfectly evokes the character’s true literary origins, goes through a wonderful credits sequence, re-adjusts the mood, and drops you at the start of the story. It opens with 1940’s style movie curtains opening up on a small-format (not wide-screen) movie screen, and the movie starts with the sound of a projector barely evident and music that sounds kinda 1940s tinny. There’s a POV shot of a kid reading a comic book (drawn in the late 30s style) on a patterned carpet, which is also in the period, as the kid’s voice reads the narration. The last panel, of the Daily Planet building, with that unlikely-looking globe balanced on top, blends into a convincing model shot of a plausible-looking Art Deco building with a believable-looking planet on top, with stained and weathered leading ho9lding panes of glass on it. Then the camera moves off to the side and zooms into space. The narration stops, the music abruptly changes to modern dramatic, and the stars start zooming by to the sides, warp-speed-like. The R/Greenberg slit-scan blue credits start to come ionto the screen, dramatically in time to the music, and John Williams’ intro turns into fanfare. “Alexander and Ilya Salkind present…A Richard Donner Film…Marlon Brando…(etc.) … SUPERMAN” The camera continues to zoom through space, and occasionally some bit of dramatic nebula or debris wafts along. (My only real complaint is that this suff looks pretty obviously fake. You’d never realize that this kind of thing had been done infinitely better a decade earlier in 2001). R/Greenberg Associates wanted to have the names appear and disappear in time to the music, but the contracts required that the names get equal screen time, so they had to work around that. Ginally, after all the credits roll, and we’ve made a heckuva long space journey, we end up going past the Red Sun (whose prominces look too much like Dry Ice vapor, and not enough like magnetic-field-shaped plasma) at the glistening white crystal world of Krypton. The first words we hear are Marlon Brando’s “This is no fantasy”. What follows sometimes lets us down, but it’s a wonderful setup, taking us from the grim world of the Depression to the heights of its ecapist fantasy, clothed in 1970s style.
I should really like some arty film opening, like the much-acclaimed opening to Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, but the truth is that the movie opening that always grabs me is the one for Richard Donner’s Superman.
It perfectly evokes the character’s true literary origins, goes through a wonderful credits sequence, re-adjusts the mood, and drops you at the start of the story. It opens with 1940’s style movie curtains opening up on a small-format (not wide-screen) movie screen, and the movie starts with the sound of a projector barely evident and music that sounds kinda 1940s tinny. There’s a POV shot of a kid reading a comic book (drawn in the late 30s style) on a patterned carpet, which is also in the period, as the kid’s voice reads the narration. The last panel, of the Daily Planet building, with that unlikely-looking globe balanced on top, blends into a convincing model shot of a plausible-looking Art Deco building with a believable-looking planet on top, with stained and weathered leading ho9lding panes of glass on it. Then the camera moves off to the side and zooms into space. The narration stops, the music abruptly changes to modern dramatic, and the stars start zooming by to the sides, warp-speed-like. The R/Greenberg slit-scan blue credits start to come ionto the screen, dramatically in time to the music, and John Williams’ intro turns into fanfare. “Alexander and Ilya Salkind present…A Richard Donner Film…Marlon Brando…(etc.) … SUPERMAN” The camera continues to zoom through space, and occasionally some bit of dramatic nebula or debris wafts along. (My only real complaint is that this suff looks pretty obviously fake. You’d never realize that this kind of thing had been done infinitely better a decade earlier in 2001). R/Greenberg Associates wanted to have the names appear and disappear in time to the music, but the contracts required that the names get equal screen time, so they had to work around that. Ginally, after all the credits roll, and we’ve made a heckuva long space journey, we end up going past the Red Sun (whose prominces look too much like Dry Ice vapor, and not enough like magnetic-field-shaped plasma) at the glistening white crystal world of Krypton. The first words we hear are Marlon Brando’s “This is no fantasy”. What follows sometimes lets us down, but it’s a wonderful setup, taking us from the grim world of the Depression to the heights of its ecapist fantasy, clothed in 1970s style.
Saul Bass’s opening credits for pretty much any Hitchcock project in which he was involved, but most notably:
Vertigo, with each credit receding slowly into the distance – falling, as it were – over John Whitney’s bizarre lissajous spirals, and what was at the time a very experimental score by Bernard Hermann playing underneath. Quite creepy.
Psycho: That great, propulsive, Bernard Hermann score, with an ensemble consisting only of strings – no horns, no woodwinds, no percussion. Matching it, the jagged-edged titles and credits, which are broken in half horizontally and often shift back and forth against themselves.
Two great credits/titles from George Lucas:
Star Wars: In oh-so-cynical post-Watergate 1977 America, to see a movie which unabashedly used an outdated adventure-movie crawl during its opening, over that thundering John Williams score, went a long way towards making this movie a hit.
American Graffiti: Sunset over Mel’s Drive-In restaurant. “Rock Around the Clock” blares from a radio as we are introduced to our characters. It makes me nostalgic for 1962, and that was seven years before I was born.
The way the tension builds through the opening credits sequence, culminating with William Holden snarling, “If he moves, kill him!”, followed by “Directed by Sam Peckinpah” flashing on the screen is nothing short of brilliant.
Begins with a darkened stadium which gradually becomes lit as the umpires make their way into the stadium. Finally, the teams come out. Until then, about the only thing you hear is the title music - Toccata & Fugue in D minor; Bach.
Wonderful atmosphere created before the crowd begins to roar.
Ooh, I liked that one too. Nice illustration of the concept.
My favorite is the opening credits to Almost Famous – a hand holding a pencil writing the names on a yellow legal pad…writing “Francis”, erasing the “is” and correcting it to “es” for Frances McDormand. Very simple, but sweetly setting the tone for the movie.
Robert Altman’s **The Player[/]. One long continuous shot, moving from conversation to conversation, finally settling on Tim Robbins. Amazing. The coordination must have been incredible.
Fincher does good openings in general–Panic Room was also neat, with big looming block letters, casting loomy shadows just like the skyline being panned across.
Not so much for the credits, but the opening segment for sheer “holy crap” factor, Cube.