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<div align='center'><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog/18397/Eye-Popping-Movie-Opening-Title-Sequences/'>Eye-Popping Movie Opening Title Sequences</a><br><div align='center'></div><br><a href='http://www.kontraband.com/blog'>See more like this on kontraband.com</a></div>

The opening title sequence, when made well it will blow your eyeballs away with its visual voodoo, and on occasion can be more enjoyable than the film itself. It's like a little mini-movie before the main event, something to tantalise our cine-buds, and set the mood. The granddaddy of the title sequence, Saul Bass, once said that if in the first nanosecond you haven't understood the entire concept of the movie through an elaborate series of lines and unrecognisable shapes, then you clearly haven't done your job. Nah, he didn't really say that but he did say, "Design is thinking made visual." And then he bumped into his mind.

So with that little gem nestling away in your brains let us begin on this rather epic journey into the visually resplendent world of wonders that are opening title sequences. Optical glory assured. Mine eyes indeed.

Lord of War
This sequence shows a 7.63x39mm round being produced in the Soviet Union and ending up in the head of a child soldier in Africa. Brutal, but necessary. The song playing is For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield, a song about social unrest and clashes with the law, juxtaposing the hippy sentiments of the song with the journey of a projectile used for killing, from its industrialised birth to someone's death. Clever, poignant and powerful. Not bad for a Nic Cage movie.

Lost highway
I love the frantic disruption, and sense of displacement that this opening manifests in the viewer, unsettling us while drawing us into this Lost Highway - literally visualising that title. It makes your head spin with its frenetic, heady, intoxicating mania. And makes me cry salt fearful tears for my mom in dreaded anticipation of the unforgiving, confusing, but darkly enjoyable madness that will unfold.

Watchmen
That punch that starts off the sequence is a punch to your face for believing in hope. That's what it feels like watching this engrossing and artful prologue to the movie. A recurring motif in this sequence is the constant flashing of a camera's bulb, documenting this alternate history of the 20th century - from lesbian embraces to presidential assassinations - filtered through the lens of the Minutemen and Watchmen. Taking iconic images and subverting them, all in a virtuoso 5 minutes, set to the nasal tones of the great Bob Dylan and his ode to the unremitting and rebellious nature of change, The Times They Are A-Changin'.

Man With The Golden Arm
Ah the great mercurial Saul Bass, the title man's title man - graphic artist, sage of the visual form. So great I wouldn't be surprised if God had asked him to give the universe form in those busy 7 days. The titles for this movie couldn't be simpler; lines build with the crescendo of the song which eventually come to rest in the image of a paper-cut out of a heroin addict's arm, the arm of the title. Bass wanted to create visuals that would enhance the viewing experience, encapsulating the tone of the movie, something that would adorn the movie like a beautiful, exquisite piece of jewellery. And why the f#ck not.

Casino Royale
Putting the 'tit' into 'opening title sequence' since 1962. The bond films could have a whole article just for them. The famous gun barrel shot at the viewer, the naked ladies concealed beneath a panorama of colour, the music. There's many a good 'un, but I've gone for Casino Royale; bold colours, men fighting and turning into cards, being slain by playing card motifs. The world may change but Bond title sequences don't.

The Pink Panther
His lanky gait is instantly recognisable to us now. Music is an integral part of an opening title sequence, and here the image and sound are now inseparable in our minds. Watching this is like seeing your childhood run away with your hot 8th grade teacher to make made passionate love. You watch it and think why waste such a brilliant creation on an opening title sequence? Why indeed. Hawley Pratt's unnaturally coloured cat shows how visually impactive a title sequence can be, and this had the honour of getting its own TV show. It didn't work for all those naked girls from the Bond sequences though. Shame.

Ang Lee's Hulk
The most underrated of the superhero adaptations. This opening title sequence starts at the cellular level and builds, inventively engaging us - and like the Watchmen it acts as a prologue to the film, informing us of the Hulk's creation by his father, showing us the experiments that would eventually result in Bruce's angry overgrown teenager routine. It is a masterful display of dizzying editing and intense music, creating an urgent immediacy that makes me want to leap up and launch my armchair through the living room window.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Ethereal, daunting, mystical, naked gynoids; it begins with what looks like rain drops falling but...wait...they seem to actually be some sort cybernetic sperm impregnating a...what? A mechanical womb that looks like the Death Star? It then explodes and gives birth to an automaton and the themes of the movie; artificial intelligence, post-human evolution and the technological singularity. Stuff like that.

12 Monkeys
Like the karmic wheel turning around, much like the circular, unremitting, unbreakable structure of the movie itself. A man caught in time, fulfilling his destiny, unable to escape fate. Don't stare too hard or you'll become entranced and think you're a volunteer for time travel duty in an effort to gather cherished information about mankind's imminent doom in exchange for an early prison release. That or you'll start overacting, like Brad Pitt.

Dr. Strangelove
First movie to use that hand-written scrawl, it was designed by Pablo Ferro, a graphic designer, as they often are, who started out as a comic-book artist. He was responsible for some other titles in this list. This sequence captures the frivolous fun to be had with a nuclear holocaust. Ho ho, Jimmy's face is melting into his shoulders! Kubrick knew the impact of a great title sequence, just look at A Clockwork Orange, another of Pablo's masterworks.

Fahrenheit 451
Turning the usual delivery of titles on its head by speaking them rather than presenting them in writing, while the camera menacingly zooms in on TV antennas. Made all the more apposite because the film is set in a non-literate world in which the written word, books, are banned, thus giving us a pertinent indication of what such a wordless world would be like. Those clever b#stards.

Alien
A great title sequence, as powerful, succinct and unnerving as the movie. The music creeps upon us like a waiting beast and those bold lines appear from the dark unforgiving blackness of space to form one terrifying word: A L I E N. Yeeearrrgghhhh! I don't know why I'm bothering, no one can hear me scream.

American Splendour
Splendour by name, splendid by title sequence. What could be a more fitting title sequence for a man who made his life a comic-book. He walks from the street onto the comic page flitting between live-action to drawn comic, thus illustrating what the upcoming film is about while cross pollinating the two mediums of comic and film. Splendo.

Catch Me If You Can
An unashamedly retro pastiche, but it works very well. Playful, eye-catching, the sort of title sequence Saul Bass would wipe from his chin after breakfast, look at on his hand and say, "By god I'm a genius". Then he would transform into a complicated sequence of vertical lines and catch the bus to work.

Donnie Brasco
Another of the classic prologue-type sequence, informing us of what we're not going to see in the film juxtaposed with a serious, reflective Johnny Depp in still photos to show how pensive he is. So we get gangsters, heart-stirring music, exploding cars, Al Pacino...Woohaa! Somebody give Al some more scenery, he's already finished chewing the entire set of Scent of a Woman...I weep so much at this sequence I have to steal some of Marlon Brando's Godfather tissue from his cheeks to wipe away the tears.

Fight Club
This is more like it, nothing to cry about here, just manly adrenaline pumping around ironically. The first rule about the opening title sequence of Fight Club is that you don't talk about the opening title sequence of Fight Club.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Innuendo, Soul Bossa Nova, synchronized swimming, visual nods to the first Bond book, a naked Mike Myers. This sequence has pretty much got it all. Oh beehive.

Napoleon Dynamite
It's got the White Stripes, it's got plates of food with credits written in condiments and also on library and UFO-abduction insurance cards - what's not to like? Looks like me and you are gonna be friends. Freakin' sweet titles for a freakin' sweet movie. Gahd!

Hallam Foe
These are by Scottish artist David Shrigley, so we get crude simplistic forms that look not unlike something Napoleon Dynamite might draw, except no Ligers. But there's plenty of wit and dry humour. It may look like the drawings of a retarded child with the depth perception of a Cyclops, but trust me he's doing it on purpose.

LA Confidential
Another of Mr Pablo's finest. Archive footage of 50s celebrities and all American lawns and idyllic American lives, with the audio supplied by Danny Devito's hack (he's typing an article for Hush Hush). Then he cackles half way through, right about when his name appears in the credits, and we switch tone, setting the scene for the upcoming film; so it's murder, corruption, faux police bravery and the mob.

Mission: Impossible
Dun-Dun. Dun-dun. Instantly recognisable music by Lalo Schrifrin and it just had to feature a burning fuse or the world would've stopped spinning on its axis. This is, in actual fact, a direct homage to the TV show's opening titles. Just like the 60s staple it features a montage of the upcoming entertainment edited together in a fast-paced style to correspond with the thrilling theme song. If the world's action movies were distilled into song through the biceps of Arnold Schwarzenegger, it would sound like this track.

Psycho
Those lines slice the screen while the stabbing music comes lunging at us, like the knife that will slice our soon to be dead heroine. This is visually bare, but rich in ideas. Goes to show Saul Bass is a master of the form who set the tone for what could be done with very little. Graphic, bold, pronounced, and cleverly being a visual representation of what the film's central themes are about.

Sahara
Rubbish movie, great title sequence. Time was, back in the early days of Hollywood, that this title sequence with its funky tune and single-take sweeping camera showing the hero's previous adventures would've been enough, but not now. Oh no. Now they want to see an actual movie.

Se7en
Something of a revelation at the time and now considered a classic, this is the work of Kyle Cooper. Jump cuts, the messy scrawled lettering and the grinding music upset us, it sounds like we're being pulled through a vice while our teeth are being dragged down a blackboard made from the dismal blackness of a human soul. Kyle Cooper's another master of the form, and is responsible for Spiderman 2, The Incredible Hulk, Dawn of the Dead, and video game sequences for Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3.

Superman
The John Williams song that makes you think you can fly, and the actors' names sweeping across the screen with the epic lazer-blue trails flying through the distant nebulas of space. Kyle Cooper paid homage to these in his credits for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns.

Thank You For Smoking
The names of the actors on cigarette packs. Cos it's a film about smoking, so William H Macy is menthol, JK Simmons is cigarettey, David Koechner is Light. All this talk of smoking makes me fancy a cig, pass me an unfiltered Robert Duvall please. M'mm, a wonderful napalm blend.

The Terminator
Another sequence with some great iconic music, the letters of the film's title slide across each other menacingly while the famous pounding music stomps towards us, and the credits appear typed like the Terminator's internal data. Listening to the music always makes me angsty, my god what's that knock at the door. No, I haven't seen any boy...

The Kingdom
The camera sweeps across desert dunes and so begins a history of the kingdom, oil, and its relation to the US from 1932 to 2001. We get archive news clips and audio all laid out on a clear timeline. It's informative and makes you anticipate the upcoming movie. Learning is fun, do your homework.

Thomas Crown Affair
Another of Pablo Ferro's. It's the swinging 60s and these credits won't let you forget that. If you ever get nostalgic for a time you didn't live through where skirts were short and summers long then just watch this sequence and memories that aren't yours will come flooding back.

North by Northwest
Another Saul Bass classic, screeching music and a little thing we like to call kinetic typography. This movie features the astounding work of the triumvirate of old Hollywood, Saul Bass, Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock - those three together are the elixir that transforms motion and sound into movie gold.

Monster Inc.
Pixar are to digital animation what God(s) is(are) to religion: everything. This title sequence is animated like a 60s screwball comedy, deftly wearing its influences on its sleeve, whatever they may be. It's like visual jazz, man! Bo-bop-de-wop-woo!

Mimic
Reminds me of Se7en, has some arresting visuals of dead insects that flash before you in an unnerving way, along with photographs of children. I'd like to see a messy street brawl between this and Se7en's credits. My money's on Se7en.

Dawn of the Dead
The first few chords of Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around menacingly strike our ears after a few horrid screams and disturbing utterances about viruses and not knowing. The man in black's doom-laden biblical imagery is a perfect fit to a world in the grips of a zombie apocalypse (And I looked and behold, a pale horse.) The images that flash up on our screen create a sense of foreboding and confusion much like I imagine a world overrun with zombies would be. As creepy as finding a dismembered child's foot in your sock draw.

Naked Gun
There's not enough comedy ones on here so here's the opening to Naked Gun with great music and the car screeching off-road through people's homes, a women's locker room (get ready with the pause button), along roller coasters, finally ending at the donut shop. LOL. It's ludicrous, silly and like the movie itself, quite brilliant. As a little treat here's a GTA IV homage to this title sequence that's equally great. "Frank...why?"

So there we have it, there's a few I missed like Vertigo, Panic Room, The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, Untouchables, Delicatessen, Bullit and loads more, go look 'em up. And get out there and think with your eyes.

Added: 951 days ago by Kevin Holmes | Posted in: Nerdcore | 9 Comments

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