Ten Perfect Opening Scenes

Sometimes pressing play on a movie can feel like a big commitment. We’ve likely all watched enough average-to-poor films that we can recognise the signs early on and when this is the case, it can be hard to enjoy the rest of the film when it already simply feels like time you won’t get back. What an opening scene done well does is act as a promise, a promise to the audience that they are in good hands for the next 90-180 minutes, and that the film won’t waste any time in making it’s mark. In this article, I’ll detail ten opening scenes that do an excellent job in setting the tone for the rest of the film.

Whiplash - Andrew and Fletcher’s First Meeting

Whiplash is spearheaded by two-stellar performances from Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, and in this movies first scene, everything we need to know about the relationship between the two is laid bare in the space of two minutes. We learn Miles plays the drums to a high-standard and that Simmons is looking for players. We learn that Miles knows who Simmons is, indicating the admiration he holds for him, but we quickly learn Simmons to be unforgiving and seemingly impossible to please. Once they finally seem on the same wavelength and Teller seems to be impressing him, Simmons disappears.

We learn more about these characters later on, but the fundamentals of their goals and obstacles are made clear right from the start, and this opening sequence paints a pattern that repeats itself to increasingly intense degrees as the film progresses.

Shrek - All Star

A case to be made for keeping it simple. This introduction offers little more depth than the fact that Shrek thinks like a human, does human things (like shower and brush his teeth), but differently, because he’s an ogre. This forms the basis for the majority of the jokes in this sequence, but it never feels like it’s being overdone.

It’s effective, but simple. And it shows that if done right, all it takes is the addition of the right music track (in this case, Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’, an all-action anthem about a simple-minded jester choosing to be optimistic and live his best life despite his low-standing in the world), and you’ve got one of the most memorable movie intros of the decade.

La La Land - Another Day of Sun

Another Damien Chazelle flick and this film pulls no punches, putting right at the front end its strongest ear-worm and its most visually captivating musical number. We open on a heavily congested Los Angeles overpass on a very hot day, something you’d imagine would drive those involved to the brink of insanity, but instead we get an explosion of joy and optimism in a musical number where everyone in shot seems to be having fun (apart from the camera operator for whom I imagine this was a nightmare). The chorus is fitting for the scenario, detailing refusing to ever be let down and instead always looking to the next day as another day of sun.

Much like Whiplash, the themes of the film are laid out in the verses to this song, describing a man and a woman both with nothing to their name but utter devotion to pursuing their goals. The lyrics also detail the two having to leave behind their relationship to chase their dreams, something that may or may not be foreshadowing of the events to follow in the film.

Falling Down - Traffic Jam

We’re on the less-enjoyable end of the traffic jam scale here, but Falling Down’s version of the experience is much more familiar. The searing heat, the monotony of looking around at things you’ve already looked at, the point where you get sick of the radio. As Michael Douglas looks around at the surrounding cars, the sounds from each slowly accumulate; children yelling, honking, a rumbling lorry engine. We’re soon stuck in this congested, inescapable soundscape.

On top of this, his A/C appears ineffective, his windows won’t roll down, and a fly that he can’t catch keeps returning to sit on his neck. These stresses accumulate until the audience feels just as claustrophobic watching as Michael Douglas feels inside the car. When he finally opens his car door and these sounds all drain away, there’s a sudden influx of calm and, for now at least, we sympathise completely with Douglas and understand why he doesn’t get back in that car.

Tropic Thunder - Trailers

I wish I could have seen this film in a cinema, just to experience the initial shock when the movie trailers continue even after the film’s supposedly started.

Tropic Thunder sets out with two goals; to make fun of Hollywood, and to make fun of Hollywood Actors. The film documents the shooting of a fictional film Tropic Thunder, a motion-picture adaptation of the memoirs of a Vietnam War veteran, and it’s clear every step of the way that the actors taking part are there for career-oriented reasons only.

The opening trailers set up the characters perfectly. Ben Stiller’s over-the-top action hero Tugg Speedman stars in Scorcher VI, the sixth edition of a repetitive blockbuster franchise, Robert Downey Jr’s acclaimed actor Kirk Lazarus has just taken his method acting to a new level by portraying a 12th century gay monk, and Jack Black’s Jeff Portnoy has just played every role in family comedy The Fatties: Fart 2. It’s effective as we instantly recognise these types of films, and it sets up the film’s irony as these actors reaching lower and lower attempt to step up to the biggest role of their careers.

It’s A Wonderful Life - “You Will Get Your Wings”

Another scene that gives us what we need from the outset. Right from the start, we know there’s an outcry of concern for George Bailey. These concerns reach heaven, where higher beings explain to guardian angel Clarence his task of intervening before Bailey throws away God’s greatest gift, promising that if he succeeds, he’ll earn his wings at last.

Information is delivered in a succinct and effective manner, but it is the visuals that make this scene so compelling. The meeting of angels is presented as a meeting between galaxies and solar systems that glow with each line. It’s an early glimpse at a type of surrealist humour soon made popular by Monty Python, and feels like a template for depictions of God in Futurama.

Toy Story 2 - Gamma Quadrant, Sector 4

In what turns out to actually be a video game level, Toy Story 2 opens with Buzz Lightyear hurtling through the atmosphere on a mission to destroy Zurg’s power supply. What ensues is a genuinely thrilling sequence in which Buzz destroys an army of robotic armed guards, evades death traps, crosses a hover bridge, and soon comes face-to-face with Zurg.

While obviously tongue-in-cheek, an over-the-top action sequence to contrast the light-hearted film that follows, it is still very captivating and visually impressive, packed with motifs paying homage to films like Indiana Jones, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars and even Thunderbirds.

The Big Lebowski - The Dude in Los Angeles

Sam Elliott steps outside the standard role of a narrator for this introduction, passing judgment on main character Jeff Lebowski, and offering insight into the background of his own character. The opening montage as well as the opening narration paints a picture of wonderment about two main features of the film even while focusing largely on their unattractive features; Lebowski himself, and the city of Los Angeles, which acts as a character in itself throughout the movie, throwing trouble at Jeff at every possible turn.

This intro endears us to Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski an an odd manner as the narrator can only offer bewilderment and criticism at his mere existence, cutting his introduction short when failing to come up with a single positive to say for The Dude. In reality though, he’d already said it. “He’s the man for his time and place.” His laziness is made abundantly clear as we see him strolling through a supermarket in a dressing gown, but his sunglasses emit a confidence, and a satisfaction at a lifestyle that, while baffling to many, including the narrator, seems perfect for him.

Inglourious Basterds - Chapter One

Including this may be cheating as it is much longer than a standard opening scene, but as our introduction into World War epic, it is incredibly effective. Inglourious Basterds is the story of several attempts to bring the second world war to an end by taking out Adolf Hitler using violence and deception. This opening sequence, in which Nazi officer Colonel Hans Landa arrives at a farm during a search for an unaccounted for Jewish family, informs us of what they’re up against.

Portrayed by Christoph Waltz, this Oscar-winning performance kickstarts with a brutal interrogation of the French farmer in which, very slowly and very meticulously, Landa extracts knowledge from his counterpart by slowly establishing control of the conversation. Firstly, he declines his offer of wine, asking for milk instead, then he asks farmer LaPadite to excuse his daughters from the room, then he asks to switch the conversation to English despite seeming to speak excellent French. LaPadite attempts to replicate such efforts, smoking from a pipe at one point in an attempt to demonstrate his chill, but Landa is unbothered.

This is an incredibly tense scene as we’re informed just minutes in that LaPadite is in fact smuggling the family under his floorboards and from here on, the tension lies in whether he can put on a strong enough show to not give this information away. It is not clear exactly when the penny drops for Landa, it could be from LaPadite’s attempts to disengage from further conversation once Landa initially says “we’re done here”, or it could have been from the moment Landa enters his house, but either way, the moment Landa breaks out his own comically-sized pipe that dwarfs LaPadite’s, it’s clear he already knows and from then on, is in victory lap mode.

The culmination of this scene showcases Landa’s cruelty, but it is the meticulousness and attention-to-detail shown by him throughout that establish how much of a force he will be, and make it all the more unsurprising that Brad Pitt’s attempts to trick him later on in the film by putting on an Italian accent should fail so miserably.

Desperado - The Stranger

The greatest, in my opinion. Steve Buscemi enters a Mexican tavern and, immediately upon sitting down, begins indulging everyone in the story of his day before, despite looking like the last person the patrons there want to hear from. Buscemi doesn’t take their hostilities to heart though, as he knows by the end of the story, the power in the room will have shifted.

He tells them of a bar he found himself in the day before, full of “lowlives,” as he describes, “not class acts like these boys here.” He describes how the air in the bar suddenly changed when Antonio Banderas’ character entered, a towering figure, who’s long hair obscured his face at all times, and carried with him only a guitar case.

The character prompts a brawl after a confrontation with the bartender in which he utters the word ‘Bucho’, a name that in Buscemi’s retelling of the story draws uneasy glances from his fellow patrons. Banderas’ character, one so mysterious and so volatile that Buscemi can only describe him as ‘this thing’, draws two guns from his guitar case and wipes out over half the room, leaving alive just Buscemi, and another patron who, fearing for his life, tells the stranger everything he needs to know.

‘Everything?’ asks the bartender, looking as tense as one can. Unable to recall anything further, Buscemi soon leaves with a skip in his step. He’s had the time of his life retelling this story, but in his wake, he leaves a chilling atmosphere in the bar as the patrons soak in what they’ve learned. It fantastically builds anticipation for the remainder of the film; we don’t know what goes on in this particular bar, but we do know the unstoppable wrecking ball that is Banderas’ “El Mariachi” knows about it, and he’s coming.