Opening Scenes That Were The Best Part Of The Movie

As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. That's almost doubly true when it comes to movies, where the first five minutes have the chance to turn an unfriendly audience into deeply invested fans. After all, it's the audience's first glimpse at the themes, characters, and even possibly the spectacle of the movie they're about to see. To put it simply, the opening scene of a movie might be the most important scene in the movie.

Unfortunately, sometimes movies go a bit overboard in the opening, showcasing a world or creating ideas that the rest of the film just can't live up to. And while the rest of the movie might be pretty awesome — or it might absolutely suck — it never quite compares to those first few minutes that promised so much. From superhero flicks and spy thrillers to horror films and modern-day classics, here are the opening scenes that were the best part of the movie.

It might be hard to remember now that we're over a decade into Daniel Craig as James Bond, but when he was first cast as the suave super spy for 2006's Casino Royale, there were plenty of fans who hated the idea. These fans argued that Craig was too blue-collar and even too blond to play the legendary role. Whether they liked it or not, however, the Bond series was in desperate need of some new blood after 2002's Die Another Day was savaged by critics and audiences alike (even if it did just fine in the box office).

With so much pressure to showcase a new James Bond for a new generation, the opening scene of Casino Royale became even more important. Traditionally, the opening scenes of Bond movies had been high-budget, action-packed affairs filled with explosions, mysteries, and Bond at his most competent. Casino Royale immediately subverted audience expectations by presenting two very different and very important kills that would go on to define Craig's Bond. In one, Bond confronts a crooked MI6 section chief in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse, shot with a cool black-and-white filter. In the other, Bond drowns a man in a bathroom sink in the world's dingiest bathroom, shot with shaky camerawork and a garish filter. It immediately presents Craig as capable of the kind of dry coolness that his predecessors had, while also showing that his version of Bond is more than willing to get dirty in a protracted and violent bathroom fight scene. As cool as the later parkour set piece might be, this is when Daniel Craig truly became James Bond.

Hancock presented audiences with a singularly powerful high concept: What if Superman was an alcoholic good-for-nothing? It's a concept that's only become more pertinent as the superhero genre has widened from being a small slice of the pie to one of the few genres that consistently make money at the box office. In any case, 2008's Hancock makes the movie's original high concept clear within minutes. Audiences meet Hancock passed out on a city park bench, pushed into action to stop runaway bank robbers by a little boy who seems frustrated to even have to tell the superhero about a crime.

Hancock flies after the bank robbers, swaying in the wind like a drunk minutes after last call, and when he finally stops the robbers, it's only after causing millions of dollars of damage in Los Angeles. At a time when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was just ramping up with the release of Iron Man in the same year, Hancock could've been a gleefully nihilistic and biting satire of superhero films. At the very least, it could've presented the sort of juvenile thrills and half-baked ideas of other Superman-pastiches like Brightburn. Instead, this version of Hancock — drunk, lazy, and annoyed at the demands people make of his heroism — is nearly instantaneously replaced with a good-hearted guy just doing his best after years of tragedy. The opening scene promises a more vicious (or at least more fun) look at superhero action, but the film itself provides the same redemption and superhero origin story that every other film in the genre offers.

Blade is a phenomenal movie for many reasons. There's Donal Logue's absurdly lovable and eminently hatable vampire henchman, Quinn. There's the exceptional fight choreography that, more often than not, just wants to show how physically talented Wesley Snipes is as a performer. And there's Snipes himself, so absolutely, undeniably cool in the roll as the half-vampire vampire hunter that the comic character itself was basically reshaped around Snipes' performance. All of those qualities are immediately shown off in the best way in Blade's opening scene, along with plenty of other wonderful details.

As Traci Lords' vampire character drags an unwitting victim to a rave, she barely even bothers to hide her disdain. Even when the soon-to-be victim sees a human body in a bag getting carted through a slaughter house, he's immediately distracted by Lords kissing him dispassionately. It's become rote to her, and even the other vampires barely bother trying to hide their true nature from him, especially once blood starts pouring down from the sprinklers. It's absurd '90s excess, casting vampires as the ultimate bored rich kids. Then Blade walks into the room. The music cuts, the vampires react like embarrassed children, and Blade, covered in black leather, proceeds to slaughter the entire crowd of vampires. It's an incredible opening scene, so good that the rest of the movie almost pales in comparison, like Deacon Frost wearing sunblock.

David Cronenberg's The Brood is, like all Cronenberg films, deeply upsetting. In the case of The Brood, a lot of that horror comes from the eponymous brood and the movie's subtext that familial trauma is basically a bomb just waiting to explode on the next generation. It gets even more upsetting when you read interviews with Cronenberg himself where he makes clear that the film, which follows a man trying to keep his daughter safe from her increasingly unhinged mother, was written after Cronenberg's own divorce. In his own words, "The Brood is my version of Kramer vs. Kramer, but more realistic."

There's a lot to unpack there. There's also a lot to unpack in the opening scene, which features a public therapy session between the creepy Dr. Raglan and Michael. Dr. Raglan goads Michael, taunting him like a disapproving father, while Michael sobs and the audience watches quietly. When Michael finally explodes in anger, ripping off his shirt, his flesh is covered with strange boils or sores. It's immediately clear that whatever therapy Dr. Raglan is interested in, it doesn't seem to be beneficial for the patients. The movie gets wilder from there, especially once Cronenberg's trademark penchant for body horror and violence emerge, but the film is never as strange or enticing as that opening scene.

Vampires isn't likely to be on anyone's list of the best John Carpenter movies, but the mostly-middling film has a couple of excellent qualities. One is Twin Peak's Sheryl Lee, gamely putting in far more work than the film really deserves. The other is a great opening scene. As a van and jeep drive up to a farm house, a priest and a cavalcade of well-armed men get out. They're at the house to clean out a nest of vampires, and they treat the whole affair with as much fear and concern as any type of exterminator treats a new job. It's not so much a tense scene as it is an exceptionally blue-collar one.

Every vampire movie since Nosferatu has struggled to get past the monster's recognition in pop culture. From Blade to Twilight, basically every vampire ever has had to stop the action and establish what makes this specific movie's version of a vampire different from all the other versions. Vampires eventually falls into that trap, too, but the opening scene says leagues more about this universe's conception of the monster than any number of expository monologues. Like Carpenter at its best, it showcases themes and worldbuilding with visuals, rather than getting bogged down with complicated mythology. It's just a shame the rest of the movie can't live up to that promise.

Robert Downey Sr. (father to Robert Downey Jr.) made plenty of great films in his time as a director, but 1969's Putney Swope might be his most successful, at least according to him. It's the story of a token black man on a board of advertisers who becomes the head of the company and immediately starts instituting wild changes. The movie ranks up there with Mel Brooks' films for sheer jokes-per-minute, but while the characters can sometimes hit too broadly in the back half of the film, the opening scene is a thing of beauty.

A tracking shot from a helicopter leads to a man who's holding a chained briefcase and wearing a jean jacket covered in fascist symbols with "MENSA member" on the back. The man heads to an advertising agency board room where he proceeds to tell the assembled men that "beer is for men who doubt their masculinity" before leaving the room. One executive reveals that the brief exchange cost $28,000, and that they "got off easy" for that price. From there, it quickly devolves into petty squabbles, pointless stories, and arguments over who actually deserves their seat at the table. In other words, it's a standard advertising meeting. Then a body keels over, and the energy of the scene gets as manic and hilarious as an Eric Andre bit. It's no wonder that Putney Swope gets a bit broad for the rest of its runtime. This scene alone has as much energy as a whole season of SNL skits.