Not box office. Opening scene. You remember, the one that just guaranteed a great ride. I’ll offer up the obvious ones:
Raiders of the Lost Ark - Where are we? What’s going on? Who are these guys? I don’t get…(Indy turns around) Ahhhhhh!. Now I know everything I need to know for this movie.
Star Wars - The scroll, the stars, the planet, the “What the frak is that?!?”
And my personal favorite
Pulp Fiction - At the first run off Dick Dale’s guitar, I turned to my date and said “This is gonna be good.”
I didn’t know that Touch of Evil’s opener was famous when I saw it; it filled me with a sense of breathless awe (soon to be replaced by a sense of sickening dread).
I saw Broken Arrow after an ugly romantic fiasco. Just before the movie opened, I turned to my friend and said, “A bunch of stuff better blow up real good in this movie.”
The opening shot, apropos of nothing, is a giant fiery explosion. I knew I was in for a good time.
Men In Black opens with delightful Danny Elfman music as the camera follows the flight of an insect through the night sky–wonderful and foreshadowing.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory begins with a CGI sequence of a highly inventive candy factory, accompanied by Danny Elfman music. Again, I knew I was in for a good time.
I know it’s been said before, but NOBODY saw Star Wars for the first time without thinking “holy Jesus!” and tingling with excitement. Nothing beats that opening star destroyer angle.
Goodfellas is a good one IIRC - The opening credits roll following a terrific shot of Henry Hill as he slams the trunk shut on a corpse in his car, saying something like ‘for as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster’
Not sure if this would count, but I’ll offer the beginning of The Stand–the miniseries from the Stephen King book, starring Gary Sinise.
The opening guitar riff of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” accompanies shots of a military base. Strangely, the base is quiet. As we see, all the personnel seem to be dead except one, who is frantically running home, trying to get his wife and child out of their on-base house and into the car. He crashes through the main gate as it is closing, and drives off down the road, pedal to the metal. The wife is asking for an explanation, the child is crying, the guy seems to be possessed, and through it all, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” just keeps playing.
I know King put scraps of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” in the book, and I was glad to see it was used in the miniseries. It went perfectly with the scenes, and set up the major point around which the first half of the series revolved.
Steven Speilberg made one that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense these days when people watch it at home on DVD scratching their heads thinking “what was that all about?”
But in Close Encounters of the Third Kind he starts the movie with 5 minutes of a completely blackened screen and a slowly building instumental hum that grows louder and louder. Everyone sitting waiting for the movie to start now has their pupils dialated fully because of the darkness. “mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMM BAM!”
The screen is suddenly awashed in white light synced with the “BAM!” of the soundtrack making people jump out of their seats and wince from being blinded at the same time.
Great fun in a packed theatre back in the 70s.
James Bond movies always make a point of having a great opener. I was just the right age to really enjoy the openings for The Spy who Loved Me (fighting on skis) and Moonraker (fighting in mid-air over a parachute).
Star Wars — Evebn before the Logo, the fanfare, and the crawl, I knew this would be a Great Film, because I heard, for the first time in ages, the complete 20th Century Fox fanfare over the “Lucasfilm Entertainment” lettering. It’s perhaps not clear to younger theatergoers that 20th Century Fox only ran the abbreviated version of the fanfare (Da d’dylya dah. da da da da da da da da Da d’dlya dahh.) before movies. The only time I heard the rest of it was for old movies on TV, where the rest of it ran over the words “A Cinemascope Presentation” (da da da DAAAAH (bomp ba bomp) da da da DAAAAAAAA (bomp ba bomp) da DA…DA…DAAAAAAAH (Bomp bomp bomp BOMPPPPPPP)). Lucas obviously went out of his way to get the whole thing in, and it was then I knew that he paid attention to detail, and tghis film would be a GOOD RIDE.
Superman – The opening is superb (no pun), starting out with POV shot of a kid reading a comic book, pretty obviously on the patterned carpeting of his circa 1940 living room floor. The final panel of the glove atop the Daily Planet becomes a realistic Art Deco planet that the POV moves past into the night sky and the stars. Then you get the John Williams overture, the dramatic R/Greenberg titles, and the sense of travelling deep into space. (I could’ve done without the hokey “wonders of space” that were poorly executed with liquids and pyrotechnics. Kubrick had done all that infinitely better a decade earlier in 2001), finally ending up at Krypton. It really does take you from the lowly comic book origins into the World of the Imagination.
Day of the Jackal – starts with a plain black screen, except for a Cross of Lorraine in the upper left. A voiceover tells you about the political situation in 1962 France, then the scene dissolves to a grafitto of Charles de Gaulle being hanged inside the “O” of OAS written on a wall. Perfectly sets up the situation.
The Matrix, where Trinity appears to be a normal hacker plying her trade in an empty apartment as the cops show up. Agent Smith arrives a moment later and mutters matter-of-factly, “No, Lieutenant, your men are already dead” and we see the workaday cops burst in on her. Cut to a chase that (at the time) was pure spectacular breathtaking awesomeness, and a pretty girl in latex to boot.
I’ll put in another vote for Raising Arizona, with the “Ode to Joy” on banjo, and the sensation that you’re on a weird wild ride and – oh yeah got to fit some credits in here – and away we go!
No one has yet mentioned The Wild Bunch or Once Upon A Time In The West? I’m not a huge fan of Westerns in general but these are awesome openings. “If they move, kill 'em!”
2001: A Space Odyssey opens showing the the African plain, setting up the bleak barely-alive existence the proto-men suffer through on a day-to-day basis. Until the obelisk shows up, and intelligence is sparked in Moonwatcher’s brain.
An otherwise totally crappy movie called “Sleeping Dogs” has a surreal opening of a bunch of women dressed in futuristic, electronically-controlled collars, gags and chastity belts, and not much else, grinding and polishing emeralds in a workshop, watched over by goon with guns. For just a couple of minutes there’s nothing but images of these women in futuristic kinkwear working silently in a factory-like setting, intercut with a thief sneaking into the building. It’s tone is very matter-of-fact, but there’s a surreal quality to it, too. I thought I’d happened into some really imaginative vision of the future, like the one in “Immortal.” Then there’s a a big fight and everyone runs around screaming except the gagged slavegirls, who just run around. After that, the movie turns to so much mindless z-grade SF mush. But that was a great opening. So much so that the producer/director used clips from it in three other of his films (all mush). In fact, he re-used the sam opening almsot scene for scene when he did a flick starring Kari Wuhrer called “Fatal Conflict.”
I don’t remember the film (it can’t have been very good :eek: ), but there was a ‘King Arthur + his knights’ type story which started with a bunch of knights riding across a dawn skyline, accompanied by ‘Carmina Burana’ by Orff.
Jack Sparrow’s entrance in the first Pirates of the Caribbean.
The opening vignette from **Sin City ** (The Customer is Always Right) which was made to convince Frank Miller that it could be done. As a huge fan of the comic books, it was incredible to see the imagery and style of the artwork brought to life so faithfully.