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<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/17230/Awesome-Opening-Movie-Scenes/'>Awesome Opening Movie Scenes</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

The scene that opens a movie is our first peek at what's on offer, our first glance at the goods. I'm not talking necessarily about the title sequence or the credits, but the very first scene; sometimes that's before the credits, sometimes that's when the credits play. Sometimes the opener will grip you tighter than the Terminator's handshake and in the best instances it's an indication of how engrossing the rest of the movie will be. Other times you'll cry salty popcorn tears because in a matter of a few celluloid moments any hope you had of an entertaining few hours has been dashed against the screen. Here's a selection of the times when not only did the opening signal something spectacular was afoot (like say, The Matrix), but some have entered the lexicon of film language (Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, Raiders). This is quite a long list due to the volume of engaging opening scenes, so bear with me...

Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
"YOU!! SHALL NOT!!! PAAAAASS!!!!" In those four words Gandalf lets that Balrog know that it might not be getting across the bridge, not today, not on his watch. Then the Grey One starts laying waste to the fiery behemoth, while hurtling through the air, and some geological layers. Pretty impressive by anyone's standards, he certainly earns his wizard's stripes, and a great opener to a second movie; no story recap, no credits, no explanation, just starting where we left off. Simple, and on a big enough screen, pretty immense.

The Dark Knight
It comes on like a heist movie and starts with a beautiful sweeping long take across the city to a skyscraper before *pop* we're propelled into the bank and the beginning of a frantic 6 minutes. Where we're introduced, unknowingly, to Ledger's deranged, debased Joker as he cleverly ensures that: his cohorts are laid to waste, he's the last man standing (or driving), he has the mob's money, and he can smartly rework a Nietzsche quote. All in a morning's work.

X2
Set to the strains of Mozart' s Requiem, a teleporting, demon-tailed, symbol-ridden, blue mutant infiltrates the White House and attempts to kill the president. Instantly gripping, it captivates you like a naked streaker riding a unicorn backwards at a state funeral.

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Starts with that quote that I won't repeat, then the famous opening crawl, then a black screen, then a planet comes into view, then a spaceship flies past and it's being shot at by something, then OMFG! a seemingly never-ending Star Destroyer comes into view with those now familiar laser sounds. And so begins what is perhaps the most iconic opening to any film in the history of cinema. I'm making no small claim with this one. Then it's on board the Rebel blockade runner as the Storm Troopers blast through them blast doors, and we get our first glimpse of Gimp Vader emerging from the smoke amid the lifeless bodies. An epic win of an opener, and now part of our collective movie-going unconscious.

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Another truly iconic start to a movie, it plays out like a filmic theme park ride. View the seat you sit in to watch it as your seat on a rollercoaster. Wait for the mechanical strap to come down and you're away. No need for explanations on this one, just watch and enjoy. Along with Star Wars it's become part of the mythos of Hollywood. Parodied, copied, emulated, but never bettered.

Gangs of New York
Scorsese is a cinematic master, we all know this, and he's done many a great opener to his movies; Raging Bull, Mean Streets. I've chosen this because I think this film is underappreciated in his oeuvre. It starts as we follow the Dead Rabbits about to enter battle with The Natives (I've included the battle scene here), while the ritualistic battle cry of a song builds to a crescendo with its marching beat and wind instruments. Monk throws open the door on the battle ground and on the movie itself, and so begins a dramatic, violent, but also heart-rending opener.

Pulp Fiction
It starts in a diner as Honey Bunny and Pumpkin discuss the pros of robbing a bank over a liquor store. Then a moment of clarity (so to speak) about robbing restaurants, and the legendary line (changed later in the film when we revisit this scene) that is "ANY OF YOU F#CKING PRICKS MOVE! AND I'LL EXECUTE EVERY MUTHAF#CKING LAST ONE OF YOU!" And freeze-frame. The fun thing about this scene is that on re-watching it you can see elements that come into play on the revisit, like Vincent walking around behind Yolanda dressed like one half of "a couple of dorks".

Touch of Evil
A one-take breathless tracking shot that starts with a man holding a bomb which is placed on a car which the camera follows four blocks from the Texan border across into the murky underworld of Mexico. The boldly brilliant shot follows a doomed couple as they travel towards the border and, ultimately, their death. So begins this great movie. Truly masterful.

Vertigo
The spiralling, despairing strains of the masterful Bernard Herrmann's virtuoso score open a movie about obsession and the compulsion to repeat. As ever with Hitchcock so much is told with so little. Even the opening shot is full of tension, a hand comes from nowhere and grabs a rung in a ladder and we instantly know that person is running from something. Then it pans back to reveal that we're on the rooftops of San Francisco and in the next 1 1/2 minutes the movie's themes of fear, paranoia and anxiety are expertly set up.

Halloween
A classic POV shot creepily encroaching on a suburban abode with a pumpkin sitting out front, meaning it can only be one night of the year...Thanksgiving! I jest. In the opening scene of this movie Carpenter lays down the blueprint for the slasher film; the canoodling couple, the dumb teens, the bewbies, a suburban setting and a mad bogeyman with a knife on the loose. Watch and learn people, watch and stab...

Manhattan
Cue George Gershwin's Rapshody in Blue, cue a black and white montage of shots of Manhattan, cue stumbling voiceover, cue fireworks, cue wonder - like a film-noir made by the Marx Brothers. Although now Allen is about as good a moviemaker as he was a father to Mia Farrow's adopted child, back then he was a cunning, witty, literate force to be reckoned with. Eerily this film later became life imitating art, imitating life, doing a mime-artist impression of death.

Saving Private Ryan
And so the dramatic wheel turns and we go from the comedic to the tragic. The D-Day landings on Omaha Beach on 6th June 1944 in real-time; stark, brutal, violent and mesmerizing. Famously putting us into the head of the soldiers with that sudden empathetic loss of sound. Must rank as one of the best war scenes and a powerful and upsetting start to a great if at times cheesy movie.

Trainspotting
The pounding beat of Lust for Life comes unmistakably resounding to your ears as a young, shaven Obi-Wan and Spud leg it down the street. It owes a nod to the freeze-frame start of Mean Streets, which itself owes a nod to the French New Wave. Fun, hip and witty. So yeah, choose heroin kids.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." A great opening line, a great movie, a great book and a great writer. Taken verbatim from the riotous novel it's a winner, and this opener sees Raoul Duke and his attorney careering towards Vegas, while being circled by 'bats' in the Great Red Shark, for a career defining moment in the writer's life. The movie continues to spiral out of control from this point, taking us on a drug-addled, maddening, hilarious adventure that's scary, sublime, deranged and twisted, enough to rival the ferocity and anguish of any war movie. Getting Terry Gilliam on board to direct was a stroke of genius.

Blue Velvet
Blue sky, then the beautiful song kicks in, white picket fence, then a fire engine goes by in a slightly slowed down manner, like you're nanoseconds from having a stroke. School kids cross a road. Then this all-American, mom's apple pie scene is violently punctuated with a wasp sting and a man spasming. The spluttering jet of water unleashing the torrent of madness that will prevail. Then the music grows distant and the mood darkens as the camera shyly travels into the undergrowth, and the film never really resurfaces...

Full Metal Jacket
Who could forget this opener involving the legendary Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and his maggots trying to sound off like they've got a pair. He comes out with some of the best put downs ever to be uttered on screen. And we meet the bullied, bruised and f#cked up figure that is Private Pyle, who already looks like he's on the verge of taking a rifle into a shopping centre and shooting indiscriminately. Is that you John Wayne? Is this me...?

The Matrix
A blinking green cursor stares back at us from a black screen and Trinity's voice can be heard. Then the fluctuating numbers draw closer as we enter the tinted-green world of the matrix for the first time. Unwittingly we are through the rabbit hole. This is a monumental way to start a movie, the palms of your hand sweat as you watch a mysterious world unfold before you and Trinity starts whooping ass, in bullet time, then with a nod to Vertigo it's off for another chase across the rooftops. This is most definitely not Kansas, or even Oz for that matter. Like a Hitchcock movie scripted by Philip K Dick, a total WTF opener.

Boogie Nights
Another fantastic one take shot. The camera frames the nightclub that gives us the film's title, as The Emotions' Best of My Love kicks in, instantly placing us in a time and place, namely the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s before the intertitle tells us such. The camera floats about until we meet the silver fox that is Jack Horner and are introduced to the players in the club. Groovy.

Goldeneye
After many years spent in the wilderness this was a return to form for Bond, and what an awesome, iconic way to do that. Was translated over to the N64 game, and nobody ever looked back, least of all Bond when he jumped off that dam.

Blade
Hands in the air as we enter this underground rave. The pounding beats start to hypnotically entrance you, bit of slow down for effect, some chicks kissing, life is good. We the viewer are that annoying dickwad in the stupid hat, gullible, unknowingly being led to our doom. Stephen Doff walks past and - oh sh#t, is that blood? You know the night isn't going your way at this point. Then in comes our man Wes...

Reservoir dogs
"Let me tell you what Like a Virgin's about..." With that pop-cultural, post-modern opening line the world was introduced to Reservoir Dogs, and Quentin Tarantino. As the camera pans round and round the smoky table introducing us to this motley bunch of 8, the next 8 minutes treat us to some brilliant dialogue taking in the metaphorical implications of Madonna's hits, the merits of tipping and of course Toby Chew. And the scene ends with them strutting slow-mo down the street to the tune of Little Green Bag. Epic.

Goodfellas
A creepy red light colouring the screen like a popped blood vessel, then Joe Pesci stabbing a man repeatedly with his mom's kitchen knife. Hell, it makes me want to become a gangster. Like other opening scenes mentioned above the physical act of something opening on screen, this time a car boot, symbolically takes us into the movie, then comes the beloved freeze-frame on Ray Liotta as that infamous line is uttered. An aggressive, beguiling start to an aggressive, beguiling movie.

Apocalypse Now
Any film that begins with a song proclaiming rather apocalyptically, 'This is the end, beautiful friend', you know is going to be something special. Captain Willard's face and booze-ridden room is juxtaposed with the flaming, exploding madness of the Vietnam War while the beat of a helicopter and the beat of a ceiling fan becoming indistinguishable. If you've seen the documentary Hearts of Darkness then this scene will resonate even more. The spooky, strained, evocative rhythms of The Doors' The End perfectly encapsulate what will unfold, and irony of ironies, this is only the beginning of the film. But fittingly, the end of my list.

Because I didn't want this list to be as long as the full opening for Saving Private Ryan here's some that didn't make it, but get an honourable mention: Ghostbusters, the library scene, "Ready...ready...GET HER!!", Snake Eyes, Raging Bull, The Usual Suspects, Spaceballs, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Children of Men, The Player, Alien, Jurassic Park, The Goonies, and Back to the Future (flick the switches, turn up the overdrive to the max, plug in the guitar, plectrum and STRUM!!) Remember, an opening scene isn't just for the first few minutes, it's for life.

Added: 1022 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Nerdcore | 26 Comments

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