There are some topics that are particularly difficult to try to tackle, and this is one of them, admittedly. Every movie obviously has an opening scene, and many great movies have great opening scenes, so picking out any select number is going to be quite the ordeal, and one that’s never going to make everyone happy. These ones are just particularly good, and, notably, serve as perfect starting points for the movies they’re attached to.
One other thing before starting: this is really only about the first scene in a movie. Like, not counting opening credits if a movie begins with that, but the first actual scene, whether that scene is just one or two minutes long, or maybe a quarter of an hour in length. Doing it this way means excluding Saving Private Ryan, in case you’re wondering, because it opens in the (then) present day before flashing back to World War II. Yes, it’s technical and annoying, but there it is.
10
‘Jaws’ (1975)
And hey, here’s another Steven Spielberg movie to numb the potential pain of Saving Private Ryan not being here: Jaws. This movie’s all about a shark terrorizing a small coastal town, and so it’s obvious to get things rolling by having a shark attack, and that’s what happens here. It’s all in the execution, though, with this sequence perhaps being the most intense one with the shark in the whole movie, and it also shows the shark the least of all those scenes.
Like various other soon-to-be-mentioned opening scenes, the first scene in Jaws is like an opening statement for the movie as a whole, laying out the main threat, sure, but also what you’re in for more generally. It does a lot with a little, and that makes the later scenes with more in-your-face spectacle stand out further, and contribute to the sense of escalation that begins right here, at the beginning of all things.
9
‘A Clockwork Orange’ (1971)
The whole energy of A Clockwork Orange is incredibly uncomfortable right from the jump, before it depicts anything more traditionally disturbing or violent, and the music by Wendy Carlos plays a huge role in that. It doesn’t sound like much else that was even remotely popular in the early 1970s, so right away, you feel out of time and kind of surprised/on edge.
You’ve also got an immediately striking setting, Malcolm McDowell’s instantly iconic narration, and maybe the most noteworthy/infamous use of the “Kubrick stare.”
It’s the kind of music you want near the start of a movie with a futuristic setting, especially if that futuristic setting is being used to explore the sorts of things A Clockwork Orange wants to explore. You’ve also got an immediately striking setting, Malcolm McDowell’s instantly iconic narration, and maybe the most noteworthy/infamous use of the “Kubrick stare” from any movie Stanley Kubrick ever directed.
8
‘The Lion King’ (1994)
The Lion King has an opening scene that mirrors its closing one very directly, and since it has an all-time great ending, it’s not too surprising that its opening is also incredible. The animation is excellent throughout the whole film, but the look of The Lion King (namely, the use of color) is at its most striking during this opening sequence, and “Circle of Life” might well be the highlight of the film as far as its songs are concerned, too.
It’s obvious why it’s so strong an opening, because it even feels special when you’re young and watch The Lion King, presumably with no understanding – in a technical way – of what an opening scene is and what it’s supposed to do. It’s a classic among animated movies for reasons that go well beyond the “Circle of Life” sequence, sure, but it certainly plays a part in the overall scheme of things.
7
‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ (1989)
It was hard to pick an Indiana Jones movie to highlight here, because the first three all start quite well, to put it mildly (and then with the other two that aren’t as good, they admittedly have opening scenes that are a little more engaging than much of what follows). Raiders of the Lost Ark perfectly introduces Indy, so how do you do something better than that?
Well, you can go back further in time, and not so much reintroduce Indy, but have a big and elaborate sequence that lays out the origins of various traits of his. That’s done memorably at the start of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with River Phoenix being as great as a young Indy as Harrison Ford is as the more familiar adult Indy. You could call it all a bit silly and over-the-top, but Indiana Jones has always been heightened, so the approach here ultimately works.
6
‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)
A fever dream straight away, even if the most intense stuff is still a long way off, Apocalypse Now gets you right into the head of its tortured protagonist, Captain Willard, and goes a long way to showing why he agrees to take on the dangerous mission he ultimately does. There’s also an undeniable hinting at the horrors to come, with the visuals of the jungle here already looking hellish.
That’s before getting to the use of The Doors, which is so brilliant a choice here, even if the song is called “The End,” and it’s playing at the start. If you’re bothered by that, then it also plays again near the end of Apocalypse Now, so there. You’ve got angst, unease, psychedelic music, and almost overwhelming visuals right from the jump, and reading up on how the opening sequence was filmed serves to make it even more nightmarish and uncomfortably raw, somehow.
5
‘Trainspotting’ (1996)
Trainspotting is another classic movie that wastes no time in getting started, and it has one of those opening sequences that feels like it condenses much of the movie into just one scene, but not in a trailer-like way, necessarily. It’s got the whole “Choose life” monologue that’s integral to basically everything in the film to come, and it’s also key in establishing the creative way Trainspotting is ultimately shot and edited.
On top of all that, you’ve got great music being used here (it’s almost a bit of a pattern developing, the whole “great music being in great opening scenes” thing), with Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” being far from the only great song heard in Trainspotting’s soundtrack. It does everything an opening scene needs, setting the stage for an overall fantastic movie to come.
4
‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
If you left after the end of the opening sequence in The Dark Knight, then sure, you’d be missing out on so much great stuff, but you’d possibly already feel as though you’d gotten your money’s worth, since that opening heist scene is so very good. It’s also a key indication that The Dark Knight is going to be more impressive and exciting than Batman Begins, especially regarding its action scenes and how they’re shot.
The Dark Knight’s opening also introduces the Joker without really showing his face clearly, but you get his presence and hear others talking about him, plus he orchestrates the whole situation that plays out, so it almost does what Jaws did for the shark (an antagonist not explicitly/directly seen, but most certainly felt). Put simply, though, you watch a scene like this play out right near the start of a film, and you’re instantly aware you’re in good hands. Those hands are Christopher Nolan’s, and they more than hold steady for the rest of the movie to come.
3
‘Scream’ (1996)
In plenty of other years, Trainspotting could probably claim to have the most memorable opening scene of any movie from said year, but unfortunately for Trainspotting, it came out in 1996, and so too did Scream. This is about as definitive and memorable as opening scenes in horror movies get, pulling a Psycho but doing so even earlier in the film than that movie did, regarding killing off someone you wouldn’t normally expect.
It’s Drew Barrymore’s character, which was probably a spoiler at one point in time, but it’s now the defining moment of the whole long-running series, and that’s saying a fair bit when the series is packed with wild plot twists and various other surprising deaths. The opening scene/kill in Scream establishes the idea that no one’s safe in about as fast and ruthless a manner as is possible, and if Wes Craven kind of out-Psycho’d Psycho on that front, that’s pretty darn impressive.
2
‘Inglourious Basterds’ (2009)
For its whole runtime, Inglourious Basterds functions as a relentlessly great – and nail-biting – World War II movie, and it’s maybe at its most tense right near the start. The opening sequence here is longer than most of the other examples in this ranking, but it really does stick with the same characters and settings for the entirety of the sequence, so “it still only counts as one,” to paraphrase Gimli.
It’s also a great introductory scene for the movie’s central antagonist; one who gets shown and explored here much more thoroughly than the opening scenes did for the villains in Jaws and The Dark Knight. Christoph Waltz won an Oscar and became internationally recognizable in large part from this scene alone (okay, his performance throughout the rest of Inglourious Basterds didn’t hurt, either), and to this day, you’ll still likely to find people saying it’s the single best sequence Quentin Tarantino has ever directed.
1
‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968)
With Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino paid homage to one of the opening scenes in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which is, for sure, a Sergio Leone movie that kicks off expertly. It has a stronger ending, though (an all-time great ending, to put it mildly), and then Once Upon a Time in the West is also no slouch when it comes to endings, but the opening scene here is just incredible, and Leone’s best.
It would sound boring to try to describe it, because it plays out over a fairly long time for an opening scene (the credits roll throughout… slowly), and it’s basically just a bunch of people waiting at a train station. It’s tense and oddly funny, with a great payoff once Charles Bronson finally arrives, bringing with him music, in effect (not as much as you’ll hear later). There’s so much packed in here, even with it all unfolding in an intentionally slow manner, and it’s a huge reason why Once Upon a Time in the West can easily count itself among the greatest Western movies ever made.