A great ending can almost save even some of the worst films from total oblivion – making you either question everything you have seen up until that point or perfectly wrapping up the narrative with a neat little bow.
A great opening, however, is something that can truly make or break a movie. Those first few minutes are essentially an audition for the movie to impress its audience and intrigue everyone for what is about to come.
Whether it’s setting the tone through shock and excitement or introducing us to a key character with engrossing dialogue, a great opening isn’t just about spectacle: it’s about storytelling.
Here are 26 openings that effortlessly grabbed the viewer’s attention and left them wanting more.
26. Shogun Assassin (1980)
Here’s a rarity – a movie opening that was made famous by the opening song of an album. Liquid Swords, the seminal second studio album by Wu-Tang Clan rapper GZA, uses practically the entire intro of the violent samurai film Shogun Assassin – a spliced-together telling of the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films intended for Western audiences. Visually, the opening scene – a series of shots of the titular assassin at work – isn’t overly remarkable, but the voice dubbing by Gibran Evans is what has created its cult status. The naivety and vulnerability that Evans manages to evoke not only raises the movie’s stakes but merges its brutality, atmosphere, and mythic storytelling.
25. Blade (1998)
After a brief sequence depicting the birth of the titular day-walking vampire, gory 1998 superhero film Blade launches into a truly spectacular curtain-raising sequence, as an adult Blade (Wesley Snipes) hunts down his foes at a vampiric nightclub. The nightclub itself – creatively called “Club Blood” – is an ingenious location, a place where blood sprays from sprinklers to the sound of Pump Panel’s remix of “Confusion” by New Order. Such was the scene’s cult reputation that a venue full of New York revellers gathered in 2015 to re-enact the scene at a real nightclub, allowing themselves to be drenched as fake blood rained from the ceiling.
24. The Thing (1982)
The Thing deals with the Lovecraftian fear of the unknown, and the paranoia and isolation that envelopes the film is evident from the get-go. A seemingly innocent dog is hunted by Norwegian scientists, who frantically shoot at the poor pup from a helicopter in Antarctica. The terrified dog reaches another research facility, run by Americans, who are baffled as to why the Norwegians are trying to kill the pooch. Both the American researchers and viewers have no idea why the dog is so dangerous, instantly creating intrigue before the actual horror erupts. That’s no dog...
23. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
A good Bond movie always needs a great opening and the franchise has had plenty to choose from over the years. From Sean Connery blowing up a cache of drugs in an unidentified Latin American country in Goldfinger to Pierce Brosnan’s death-defying bungee jump sequence in GoldenEye, the films rarely fail to grab viewers’ attention in the opening few minutes. If you want something that is quintessentially Bond then look no further than 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, where in the opening four minutes, a nuclear submarine is hijacked, and Bond is seen fornicating with his latest lady of choice before being pursued over mountain tops in a ski chase and eventually diving over a cliff, saved only by his Union Jack parachute. It’s ridiculous and sublime in equal measure, and like the song says: “Nobody does it better.”
22. The Incredibles (2004)
Animation studio Pixar has had its fair share of great openings over the years – more than a few of which have had the power to emotionally devastate. The opening to The Incredibles – a succession of talking-head TV interviews with the core adult characters in their crimefighting prime, before we get a look at Bob and Helen Parr’s action-packed wedding day – doesn’t have the emotional impact of, say, Up or Finding Nemo, but it’s an exercise of extraordinary elegance in scene-setting, establishing the specifics of the film’s retro-futurist world with a lightness of touch that is, dare I say, incredible.
21. Zoolander (2001)
“Is Derek Zoolander real?” “Why are all these very famous people (Donald Trump, Victoria Beckham, Natalie Portman) talking about him?” “Why haven’t I heard of him?” These are the questions that you might ask yourself when you first watch Ben Stiller’s Zoolander, a satirical take on the fashion industry and early 2000s culture. Not only is it fun and convincing, but it’s executed with such stylish panache that it wouldn’t feel out of place on an MTV documentary.
20. No Country for Old Men (2007)
The Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning film is a rare example of an opening and closing scene practically mirroring each other. “I don’t wanna push my chips forward, and go out and meet something I don’t understand,” says Tommy Lee Jones in one of the directors’ now trademark voiceover intros, played over idyllic shots of the Texas landscape. As he becomes more philosophical we are introduced to the film’s demonic antagonist Anton Chigurh, who comes to represent the evil at its core. The simplicity of the opening only really hits home as Jones’s character delivers a devastating monologue at the end of the film, where he speaks of a symbolic vision of hope he witnessed in a dream in the face of uncertain darkness.
19. Birth (2004)
All of British director Jonathan Glazer’s four feature films include remarkable openings, from Sexy Beast to Under the Skin to 2023’s Zone of Interest. But there’s something singularly hypnotic about Birth, in which the camera follows a man as he jogs around Central Park, before he collapses of a heart attack. It is an event that sets in motion the events of this sad, bewildering and often funny film, in which Nicole Kidman believes her husband has been reincarnated as a young child. And it’s an opening that seems to be everything at once: poetic, haunting, mysterious.
18. Princess Mononoke (1997)
Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 epic is a high point in the legendary Japanese animator’s career and is filled with some of the best action sequences ever drawn. But there’s no topping the exhilarating opening, in which the film’s hero Ashitaka slays a rampaging demon to save his village, and is cursed in the process. It’s incredibly dynamic, intricately designed, and, like much of the film, tonally complex – so much more than just a rote good guy vs bad monster battle scene.
17. Trainspotting (1996)
The pounding drums of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” and Ewan McGregor’s legendary “Choose Life” monologue at the start of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting kicks off what would become a phenomenon and an inescapable piece of British 1990s culture. Buzzing with the type of electricity and swagger that seemed to be reverberating through the country at the time, Trainspotting’s dark humour and cynicism are captured perfectly in its opening 90 seconds. Furthermore, it sets up the central themes of addiction, escapism, and the clash between societal expectations and personal destruction.
16. Star Wars (1977)
An opening so good that they tried to remake it 40 years later. Let’s be honest: if the first Star Wars film hadn’t gotten off to a rip-roaring start, would it have even spawned the behemoth that is still dominating entertainment today? The answer is almost definitely yes, but Darth Vader might not have been so imposing if he wasn’t given one of the coolest and most intimidating introductions in movie history. 2016’s Rogue One provided a nice little prequel to the scene, depicting Vader as a terrifying, almost unstoppable force.
15. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
The noir genre has given birth to plenty of classic opening sequences, from Kiss Me Deadly to Double Indemnity. Sunset Boulevard – which opens with its narrator face down, dead, in a Hollywood swimming pool, is perhaps the finest and most lasting example – a “you’re probably wondering how I got here” for the ages.
14. Vertigo (1958)
The strange and unsettling world of Vertigo is established superlatively in its opening scene, which sees Jimmy Stewart’s copper John “Scottie” Ferguson embark on a rooftop chase that claims the life of a fellow police officer. The scene features Hitchcock’s first use of the memorable dolly zoom effect, to evoke the effects of Vertigo – a camera movement as impactful and famous as just about any in the history of cinema.
13. Scream (1996)
The late, great Wes Craven reinvented the horror genre several times during his blood-soaked career, but the opening to Scream might go down as his greatest achievement. The film opens lightheartedly as Drew Barrymore’s Casey receives a series of wrong-number phone calls. However, the stranger is persistent and the two eventually start talking about horror movies in a meta wink and nod to the audience. As the lingering sense of doom ramps itself up, the audience slowly realises that Scream isn’t abiding by the usual horror tropes – it’s creating a whole new rule book.
12. The Dark Knight (2008)
Christopher Nolan’s seminal 2008 superhero blockbuster may have borrowed many of its moves from the 1995 heist movie Heat – but when the results are this good, you don’t ask for receipts. The Batman-less opening sequence sees a gang of clown-masked criminals stage a violent bank robbery, leading up to the ultimate reveal of Heath Ledger’s Joker. It’s expertly paced, thrillingly tense, and morbidly amusing – setting the stage for a film that would reinvent an entire genre.
11. The Matrix (1999)
“That’s impossible,” says a police officer who has just watched Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and an agent effortlessly jump over a street from one building to another. Those two words sum up what it feels like watching that opening scene (and the rest of The Matrix for that matter) for the first time. There are more memorable scenes in the film than this one but seeing the bullet time special effect for the first time is truly mind-blowing.
10. Touch of Evil (1958)
If you thought complex long takes were a new gimmick invented by Netflix, then think again. In a single take Orson Welles shows us a ticking time bomb being placed into the boot of a car. As the car moves through the bustling streets, the camera subtly introduces two main characters played by Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh. They walk along the same path as the doomed car, unaware of the danger nearby. The scene is filled with movement and ambient noise – people talking, music playing, cars passing – adding to the immersive tension. The explosion immediately shifts the film into its central mystery: who planted the bomb? This inciting incident brings in Hank Quinlan (Welles), the corrupt police captain, and sets off the film’s noir plot about crime, corruption, and morality.
9. All That Jazz (1979)
The brilliant opening to Bob Fosse’s autobiographical musical All That Jazz is a masterpiece of editing. We get a snatch of the film’s overriding montage style and are introduced to Joe Gideon’s (Roy Scheider) frazzled, barbiturate-dazed morning routine, before the film drops us in a theatre auditorium, where Gideon is auditioning a mess of dancers for a new show. As they strut and pirouette to the sounds of “On Broadway”, we get a musical number that is both spectacular and uniquely real – we know immediately that All That Jazz is going to be a musical like no other.
8. The Godfather (1972)
Here’s an offer I can never refuse: whenever I stumble upon The Godfather on television, I have to keep watching until the entire opening sequence is over. Director Francis Ford Coppola has made great openings elsewhere – including the iconic beginning to the Vietnam war drama Apocalypse Now – but there’s no beating the first Godfather. The wedding sequence is the perfect introduction to the film’s characters, dynamics and themes, an immersive and patient piece of intricate scene-setting.
7. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 war film is one of his strongest efforts, elevated to greatness by two phenomenal set pieces. The first of these is the opening, a piano wire-taut interrogation scene, in which Nazi investigator Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) slowly coaxes a dairy farmer (Denis Ménochet) into giving up the Jews hiding under his floor. It’s one of the finest, tensest, and most memorable sequences in Tarantino’s entire career – and that’s no mean feat.
6. There Will Be Blood (2007)
There’s more than a little something primordial about the opening to There Will Be Blood, which follows Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he discovers silver in the depths of a mine. Watching Plainview drag his injured body out of the pit is a perfect microcosm of the film at large: a man reduced to his basest rudiments thanks to his own remorseless avarice. That the scene unfolds so cleanly without any dialogue is a testament to the clarity of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s storytelling.
5. Goodfellas (1990)
If Goodfellas is a cautionary tale about romanticising the lifestyle of a gangster then its opening scene communicates this in the most shocking way possible. A made man in the mafia is brutally beaten, stabbed and stowed in the boot of a car by Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). As the violence dissipates, Hill says the legendary line: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” The opening treads the fine line between the glamour of mafia life and its raw violence, mirroring Henry’s journey in the film.
4. Blade Runner (1982)
There is an awe-inspiring type of horror that greets you in the opening scene of Ridley Scott’s iconic Blade Runner. Flames erupt from towers scattered across an unrecognisable Los Angeles skyline; flying cars scream past your point of view; Vangelis’s ethereal score almost threatens to cause a sensory overload. The jaw-dropping spectacle is all in aid of what is essentially an over-the-top establishing shot for the imposing Tyrell Corporation building. Few sci-fi films have ever come close to replicating an introduction quite like this – so much so that Blade Runner 2049’s opening felt more like a homage than an upgrade.
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
There are great character introductions, and then there is Raiders of the Lost Ark, which immediately creates a legend out of Indiana Jones. In what is essentially a mini-adventure, Spielberg tells us everything we need to know about the character and the movie we are about to watch. Everything from the idol swap to the rolling boulder and Indy’s wit and sarcasm is an exhilarating spectacle and arguably the pinnacle of the franchise.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Nothing quite like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has been made before or since, and there isn’t anything that has matched the weird magic of the opening. After a slow, dramatic aligning of planets, set to “Also sprach Zarathustra” composed by Richard Strauss, we are transported into a prehistoric earth, where apes roam the land, discover a strange black monolith, and invent tools – or, rather, weapons. Incredible design; incredible costumes; incredible editing; and all in service of a story that is jaw-dropping in scope and significance.
1. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
The phrase “silence is golden” is a pure cliche, but few directors utilised minimal dialogue – or the absence of dialogue entirely – better than Sergio Leone. Somehow after the success of The Dollars Trilogy with the steely Clint Eastwood, Leone managed to make a western that was even grittier, this time with Charles Bronson in the central role. Its 10-minute opening scene in a deserted railway station, where three gunmen are waiting for their target, is a masterclass in slow-burn tension and visual storytelling. Instead of immediate action, Leone lingers on the mundane: creaking wood, buzzing flies, dripping water, and the rustling wind. As boredom almost threatens to get the best of them, Bronson’s “Harmonica” arrives playing his namesake instrument. We know instantaneously that this man is a force to be reckoned with and, after what feels like an eternity, the shootout is over in a matter of seconds. Leone’s patience creates a hypnotic opening that tells you “this isn’t your average western”.
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