I was watching Pacific Rim the other day (fantastic film BTW), and I noticed that the title wasn’t flashed up until 17 minutes after the film had actually started. It seemed like a very long time, but I bet there are movies with a longer gap
(NB I guessing there are some films out there that show the title right before the closing credits, but don’t think these count in this case)
Captain America: The First Avenger first showed its title after the closing credits: the screen goes black and the up-tempo music starts and – oh, I see it was directed by Joe Johnston; screenplay credits, okay; producer, co-producers, executive producers; director of photography, production designer, costume designer, visual effects, music, casting – ah, here we go, Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Bruno Ricci, JJ Feild, Kenneth Choi, Richard Armitage, Stanley Tucci – look, I’m sure the title is coming any second now; aaaaany second now; c’mon, title…
Not counting films where there are no credits until the film is over, Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie had the first of its credits a half hour into the film (“A Film by Dennis Hopper”). The title didn’t appear until fifteen minutes later.
Yeah, thought I’d seen this myself, but couldn’t work out where, but its a bit of a different thing. Putting it at the end is a lot less disruptive than putting it 20-30 minutes into the movie
I’ve noticed a few TV shows doing something similar lately too. My wife watches “Castle” and they’re running the opening credits 15 minutes or more into the episode.
Many shows now vary the length of the teaser. This has become a good thing. Instead of being locked into a 2- or 3-minute block that severely limits story options, the opening is allowed to run as long as appropriate to get the first story hooks in.
It’s probably as much for ad/audience lock as anything else, but it has freed up storytellers quite a bit. There are any number of shows, mostly from the Old Three, that follow the old format rigidly (2-minute tease, 14-minute blocks) and we can’t stand to watch them because the story is so artificially forced around those time limits. Heroes was the last I recall; we gave up after about two episodes for that and other reasons.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is supposed to go 18 minutes before the title. I can’t really remember the details of Heaven’s Gate (which is a blessing), but I’m left with the impression of a long time before the title.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus did that a few times- most notably in the episode built around the filmiing of the movie Scott of the Antarctic. They didn’t have Cleese do the “Now for something completely different” bit and they didn’t play the theme music until about 20 minutes into a 30 minute episode (they resumed with Cleese entering the post office to get a fish license).