Best Opening Sequences

Filmmakers have an obligation towards an audience - they have to make them enjoy their film's plot, characters, camerawork, and everything else they've spent months crafting. And how do they do that? They draw them in with a film's opening. In order to make a real impact, a film has to reel you in within the first ten or so minutes, so that your whole attention is on it. There are thousands of films in the world, so it's important to make a lasting impression, otherwise people will turn off your masterpiece and reach for their copy of The Notebook instead. So here are our selection of films that grabbed us from their first few seconds, and created openings so intense, hilarious, or beautiful, that we were hooked.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

I am soooo completely attached to Beasts - basically every part of it is my favourite part of any film. But, the beginning is especially captivating. Opening with a silent, earthy calm, it gradually builds up to a sparkling sequence that will pull you into the spirit of the Southern Wild and make you wish you could stay for always. We’re introduced to the land known as “The Bathtub”; shots of the looming, still sea juxtaposed with the reckless power of the inhabitants on land. “We got the prettiest place on Earth” Wink reflects, and the glimpses of brusque beauty we’re offered make it hard to disagree. The interchanging backdrops of heavy silence and haunting, fresh melodies flow perfectly. Plus, this whole introduction is narrated by Hushpuppy, her headstrong will effortlessly making you fall in love with her homelands, fast. The first eight minutes of this film are an exhilarating mini-adventure - leaving a drop in the pit of your stomach and awakening a fierce will in your heart, to simply: experience.

- Anita Bhadani

Inglorious Basterds

Most of the films on our list jump straight into the action without apologizing, which is all well and good, but sometimes I like to allow myself to become acclimatized to the world of the film that I'm watching. This is certainly the case here, as instead of leaping straight into scenes of Brad Pitt wielding machetes and scalping Nazi's (which we certainly get a lot of later in the film) an audience is instead placed at the bewildering location of a remote French farm. Though unknown at the time, we are introduced to two of the film's most important characters - the Jewhunter Hans Landa, (a deservedly Oscar-winning turn from at the time complete unknown Christoph Waltz) and his target, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Played brilliantly by the beautiful Melanie Laurent). Tarantino agonizingly drags the scene out for as long as possible, adding in twists and turns such as a change in language, to completely throw both the audience and the poor French farmer off the scent completely. When the scene finally reaches its denouncement, it's every bit as horrifying, blood-stained and masterful as you can imagine.

- Grace Barber-Plentie

The Social Network 

Not only is this THE best film of the last ten years, it’s also one of the best openings. It throws you right in at the deep end with ten pages of dialogue that reportedly took 100 takes to film. It forces you to keep up with it. It’s not just an opening scene: it is a standalone cinematic masterpiece. Every time I hear the opening chords of this film followed by “do you know there are more people living in China with genius IQs than there are of any kind living in the United States?” I just get so excited. And yeah that’s right, I do know this opening scene of by heart and for good reason: one day I will get to tell some asshole he is an asshole by using Aaron Sorkin’s badass lines delivered by the even more badass Rooney Mara.

-Beth Johnston

Little Miss Sunshine

One of my favourite opening sequences is that of Little Miss Sunshine. After the slightly melancholy music begins, you are first presented with an extreme close of little Olive Hoover’s big blue eyes through 80’s style glasses starring right at you, or so you think until you notice the reflection of a woman on the TV in her glasses and the unmistakable voiceover of a beauty pageant host. As the music builds we see young, slightly chubby Olive re-winding, re-watching and imitating this plastic, barbie doll woman. After, we are introduced scene by scene to each member of the Hoover family, and slowly it begins to dawn on you that this is a family of failures. “There are two kinds of people in this world, winners and losers.”- Richard Hoover

-Lydia Heathcote

Funny Games

It’s not just the fact that there’s some shrieky death metal music playing in the background. It’s the nonchalant way it’s presented; a jarring soundtrack for a tranquil car journey with a quaint family. The music is bluntly inconsistent with every other aspect of this introduction, introducing the first of many unsettlingly cruel aspects of this film. It sort of makes you doubt yourself - the first time I saw this, I remember wondering to myself the music was all in my head, because it was just so out of place! For making me question my grip on reality within the first five minutes, Funny Games deservedly earns a place on this list.

- AB

The Royal Tenenbaums

When watching a Wes Anderson film, it's easy to count things off of a checklist - (and incidentally, if you ever want to, here's a great one) absent fathers, overheard shots, quirky kids, a sixties soundtrack. The list is endless. While I'm a huge fan of his entire ouevre, I can certainly understand people's views that he prefers style over substance, and the above checklist seems to hammer that home. HOWEVER, Tenenbaums, undoubtedly Anderson's greatest film, uses all of the above and more to place us into the family home of the titular Royal Tenenbaum, just as his marriage disintergrates. (Absent Father, CHECK.) In a voiceover delivered by the deliciously dulcet tones of Alec Baldwin, the audience is taken on a whistlestop tour of the Tenenbaum house to meet its inhabitants. What sets this film and particularly its opening apart from later Anderson films is the real sense of heart in it. He wants us as an audience to like - and equally dislike at times - this flawed family. Plus, as usual with every Wes Anderson film, it sounds great, it looks great, and Bill Murray's in it.
-GBP

Trainspotting 

Well, I don’t even know where to begin with this opening scene. The exhilarating “Lust for Life” playing as our favourite junkies run down Edinburgh’s Princes Street after stealing videos to pay for his heroin addiction from the soon-to-be closed down HMV? The iconic monologue that now adorns the walls of hundreds of teenage boys – who actually fail to grasp its very concept? Maybe as an Edinburgh native, I’m slightly biased in this choice as its fun to watch your hometown in a film but you can’t deny the sheer brilliance of this opening scene. The editing between the 5 aside game where Renton (played by a skinny, unwashed, ginger Ewan McGregor) and his four misfit pals, Spud, Begbie, Sickboy and Tommy is a particular highlight. And overall, it does what any opening scene should do; it makes you want to watch the rest of the film so bad, no matter how many times you’ve seen it before.
-BJ

La Haine

Black and white film La Haine has a beautifully stylistic opening in which the credits are combined. Before the credits Hubert begins telling us a story over a black screen. “Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good... so far so good... so far so good. How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land”.
Slowly the image of what looks like the earth appears, until a falling lit glass bottle breaks the still oil over the image and sets it alight in a big fiery sea.  After numerous videos of police and rioters, accompanied ironically by Bob Marley’s song Burnin’ and lootin’, for the credits and a news report introducing us to Abdel (who we find out about later on) the screen returns to black. The time 10:38 pops up joined by the noise of a ticking clock until, you hear a gun fire and it cuts to a shot of Said standing in the middle of le banlieue. As the camera moves in to an extreme close up of his face, we wait for his eyes to open. As they do Bob Marley’s Burnin’ and Lootin’ starts playing diegetically somewhere off in the background. The camera switches position to behind Said where we see him facing a long wall of police officers with police vans standing motionless. This well thought out and elegant opening sums up the whole essence and message of the film neatly before it has even really begun, mainly the issue with French society.
-LH

The Dark Knight

You know how with some films there’s that little period at the start where you have to “settle” into the groove of things? This isn’t one of them. Director Christopher Nolan doesn’t spare a single second in delving straight into the cutthroat action of Gotham City. The rush of constant thrills, juxtaposed with the intelligent choreography of the heist has a strangely elegant feel to it. Sort of like a ballet, but with murderous clowns! Flitting between multiple narratives is just one of the many skilful techniques employed to keep us raptly engaged: this introduction strikes the perfect balance between action and intelligence, thrills and substance. I wouldn’t consider myself a die-hard superhero movie fan, but to me, this famous intro definitely lives up to the hype.

- AB

American Beauty

Here's a fun fact - I used to live in American suburbia. Sure, I was two at the time, and it was only for a year, but I watch American Beauty, and I listen to the tales my parents tell me about living in the clone world of Cleveland, and I want to tear my skin off. So it's almost painful watching this film, particularly its opening scene, which so carefully paints for us a picture of the true horrors of suburbia. Everything about this opening works - Spacey's droll voiceover, the panning overhead shot of the neighbourhood juxtaposed by one of Spacey floundering in his beige bedroom, the bright roses like something out of a David Lynch film, and of course, the eerie yet cheery soundtrack. Oh, and that's before we mention the fact that the audience is already aware that our protagonist isn't going to survive the rest of the year. The opening gives us no clues about where the story's heading, yet hooks us along for the ride and invites us into these characters lives.

-GBP

Bring It On 

Look me in the eye and try and tell me you haven’t got this opening chant memorised. Or at least, you wish you had the chant memorised. No one can deny the cinematic achievement that is: Bring It On but it is the opening scene that really makes this film what it is. The bitchiness; the uniforms; the roll call; Kirsten Dunst; Kirsten Dunst’s hair and finally, the shocking reveal that it was all just a dream – the landmark opening of the Bring It On Saga (Seriously, how many films is there now? Four? Five?) Whatever, all jokes aside, I completely, totally and unironically love this opening scene and I will continue to dance AND sing it all day, every day. 
-BJ

Up

Now if the opening of Up doesn’t make your heart ache you are doing life wrong. The opening tells the story of young Ellie and Carl becoming friends over their love of Great explorer Charles Muntz and their life as a loving married couple when they are older. The vibrant, playful colours of the soft animation make it a pleasure to watch besides the adorable yet sometimes harshly realistic narrative accompanied by the elegant sound of strings. This opening sequence reflects on how life often plans out, dreams don’t get fulfilled, and makes this animation distinctly human and relatable, rather than a fantasy world.
-LH