My Pleasure. (Although I think that clip is from a dubbed foreign language version of the film, as Elly seems to be speaking Spanish(?) right at the very end.
If you haven’t seen the movie Bees, I highly recommend it, It’s a very enjoyable flick.
The opening scenes in Fellowship of the Ring. The battle followed by the scenes showing the history of the One Ring.
Also, say what you will about the quality of the film itself, but I’ve always been partial to the opening of the first Blade movie. The poor kid is getting tormented in the nightclub by the vampires and then Wesley Snipes just appears in the middle of the floor and the everyone just stops dead in their tracks. You just know, instinctively, that a gigantic can of ass whooping is about to be unleashed. I choose to ignore the unfortunate fist pump at the end. 
Well, it’s kind of stretching the idea of a scene (it covers at least 8-14 months of time, but is all narrated by a single monologue), the opening sequence to Raising Arizona is my idea of the perfect set up to a story. If you haven’t seen it, this is just the first minute or so of the sequence. It goes on for another 10 minutes before you get the title of the movie.
Actually I think the opening of The Two Towers with Gandalf battling with the Balrog while hurtling through the earth, easily trumps the first film. I say that despite strongly preferring FotR overall.
I would agree accept that we don’t get to see the end of the fight! That doesn’t come until later when…
(spoilered just to be safe…)
Aragon, Legolas, and Gimli encounter Gandalf in Fangorn.
It takes some of the punch out for me. 
Maybe it doesn’t foot the bill as “bad ass,” but the scene in Team America: World Police with the marionettes within a marionette scene is awesome. Then of course the scene after that is pretty bad ass in its own rights.
The cavern / lost tomb scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Would “Raiders of the Lost Ark” count?
And on a related note, biggirl, imo the Polly character in “Sky Captain” was NOT the whiniest, dumbest romantic interest, my vote goes to Willie Scott in “IJ and the Temple of Doom.”
(I was posting this before I saw your post, Superman, so I am not questioning your choice, I was asking the OP if that would count)
Agreed with many of these, especially Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, and Contact.
But my all time favorite has to be Swordfish. No fancy special effects, no revolutionary film technique, no explosions. It’s just Travolta and the camera. It’s the most honest and pure form of filmmaking possible. Travolta is so powerful, so in control, so completely badass – it’s almost hynotizing.
Which was the opening scene in You Only Live Twice? The one with Bond faking his death and being buried at sea, or the one with the spaceship being captured and the spacewalking astronaut being cut loose? Either way, it was a pretty bad-ass opening scene.
As for a bad ass-opening scene, I am guessing either Deliverance or Pulp Fiction probably takes the prize.
The train is still sitting right where the movie was filmed. It’s on the bank of the Tuckaseegee river near Dillsboro, NC. I kayaked past it last month.
For those of you who couldn’t remember the opening to Pulp Fiction maybe this will ring a bell:
“Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!”
Technically not the opening scene. The opening scene is a bit of business at the hospital and then her coming home to her husband, briefly discussing American Idol and then going off to have some sex.
Now the CREDITS sequence with the Cash song and the footage from all over the world IS probably one of the best credit sequences of all time.
The exact two I thought of when I saw the thread title. With the Matrix, you knew you were about to see something new. With X2, it just captured Nightcrawler’s fighting style from the comics perfectly.
And wasn’t it Amanda Plummer who said it? Possibly Hollywood’s meekest sweetie?
I thought it came later. But the opening scene of the original Bladewas pretty badass where it starts with Traci Lord leads some chump into a vampire club and ends with Blade going ape-shit on their asses like a spider monkey with a sword.
One of the best opening scenes of all time was wasted on a total stinker of a movie: Swordfish.
Not quite the instant gratification of Star Wars’ initial “Wow!” shot, but those first eight minutes promise something that never shows up. (The eye-candy is a product of Friendly Manitoba - and you thought they just did sunflower seeds.)
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I did a quick F3 of both pages for “Swordfish” before I posted, and missed this somehow.
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It’s mainly the fancy special effects and bad-ass explosion that made me think of Swordfish in this context.
Heh. Thanks for the link, though.
I think that the monologue stands on its own as pretty badass. But the ensuing explody stuff makes it all the better.
The coolest by far has to be The Way of the Gun*. What’s great is that it has very little to do with the rest of the story, the scene only serves to introduce you to the badassedness of the 2 main characters.
*Warning, some profanity