The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, of course! I’m a tad younger than most folks here, but to me, it’s a classic. The opening theme, I mean.
The closing credits for The Naked Gun are fun. All the bit part actors are credited with their spoken line of dialog.
For opening title sequences, I’ll nominate Catch Me If You Can. Not Saul Bass, but clearly influenced thereby.
I don’t want to open a whole separate thread to ask this, but is there a name for that specific type of opening credits? Others that come to mind are Daredevil, The Crown, or The Last Of Us. There are probably more that I’m forgetting or not aware of. But basically where they show something forming out of nothing, or flowing and changing. I find those kinds of credits fascinating to watch.
My kids and I loved the credits to “Gravity Falls”, especially when they started embedding ciphers in them…we’d pause and write them down, figure them out later.
In the same vein, the opening credits for Up In The Air are a neat slideshow of what you might see on a cross-country flight from your window seat (plus a cool song)
I wanted to say, “just about anything from Saul Bass”.
The closing credits for the final episode of Severance season 2 are pretty cool, and definitely inspired by Saul Bass:
For opening sequence, whether or not there are any actual credits in it, I nominate Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (original theater release version; there is an extended version but I don’t think the added bits are necessary for an intro). Here is an explanation from a channel called The Art of Storytelling that explains it better than I could.
Alternative, if you want something shorter, is this intro bit from the Bruno Cremer version of Maigret. I used to watch these with English subtitles all the time on the MHz channel, when my cable system carried it. Less than a minute, and you are ready for 50’s Paris on the Quai des Orfevre.
I think the Opening credits to the series Succession is one of the GOATS because it sets the mood perfectly before the story even begins. Grainy home-video clips of kids playing spliced with skyscrapers and boardrooms show a family warped by power and money. The fractured editing mirrors the broken relationships, and Nicholas Britell’s score (which is fantastic)—classical piano colliding with hip-hop beats—captures old money clashing with new swagger. The unnamed children make it feel both personal and universal, as if any heir could be trapped in this cold cycle. By the time the credits end, you already feel the wealth, dysfunction, and dark comedy that define the show. And the series itself is a GOAT, as well.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery from the beginning of the century, the one with Maury Chaykin as Wolfe. Every episode had customized animation and music to fit the random chronology of the adaptations. Good music, too.
As for kids’ cartoons, the opening to Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse is a GOAT because it packs style and story in under a minute. Johnny Holiday’s jazzy, hard-swinging trumpet line sounds more like a noir detective show than a kids’ cartoon. When I was 4, I thought that song was da bomb (and I still think it’s a toe-tapper). The mix of parody and earnestness spoofs Batman before Adam West but still plays as straight action for kids.
The theme music to Dead Like Me seemed perfect for its sense of humor and dark subject matter.
And I can’t believe (it or not) that I’m the first to mention the theme to Greatest American Hero. Truly an anthem for an unsuspecting yet good hearted guy gifted a super-suit.
I think the intro to Beavis and Butt-Head is beautiful in its stupid simplicity.
Pretty great I didn’t remember those…
I don’t know if this counts since it was only used in one episode, but I really liked the montage at the beginning of The Bear episode “Review”.
“It’s Enrico Palazzo!”: Joe Smith
“Who are you guys?”: Susan Jones
As I recall, the same thing was done in Airplane.
One other thing about the ZAZ films was that they threw in irrelevant things in the midst of the end credits. You’d see things like:
Second unit director: Bill Reynolds
Second unit camera: Jerry Anderson
Location scout: Christine Rogers
Author of “A Tale of Two Cities”: Charles Dickens
Second unit editing: Mike McCarthy
I wished more movie credits provided the dialog lines for the bit actors, just to make it easier to identify them. Sometimes minor characters are identified only by the character’s name, which may not have been clear to the viewer.
I also love the closing sequence of Grand Prix, with James Garner standing in the middle of the empty track, looking so lonely as he hears the roar of the cars in his imagination. It’s one of my favorite movie endings ever.
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