24 Movies With Great Opening Scenes

"I'm sexy! I'm cute!" We know you know the rest. The opening cheer is not only catchy, but it establishes a very important fact about Bring It On: It's entirely self-aware. Lines like, "Hate us 'cause we're beautiful, well we don't like you either, we're cheerleaders!" let you know that Bring It On is in on the joke, and laughing right along with you. —Emily Blake

The first moments of The Lion King are what tears are made of: As “The Circle of Life” plays in the background, all the animals gather to meet — and bow down to — their newly born future king. —Samantha Highfill

Narc wastes no time, throwing viewers straight into the middle of a foot chase. With absolutely no context, there’s no way to know what’s happening, and yet, it’s a riveting entrance designed to get the blood pumping. —Samantha Highfill

Billy Wilder's ruthless Hollywood satire is known for its final line, but the opening is also tremendous: a tracking shot that starts on the street marker and traverses the titular road, panning to siren-blaring cop cars. William Holden's voice over accompanies the imagary — and even spoils the eventual climax. The final frames of a floating corpse in a pool, filmed upwards from underwater, are also how Norma Desmond thinks of herself: timeless. —Will Robinson

The Dark Knight’s tour de force opening sequence could be a short film itself. The bank heist that opens the film has no cowl in sight, instead offering us a first look at the franchise's most memorable villain, Heath Ledger's Joker. Except Christopher Nolan expertly toys with our expectations, and though the Joker doesn’t reveal himself until the caper is complete, his presence is felt throughout. Beautifully shot, edited, and layered with one reveal after another, the Joker sets the stage with an unforgettable, and deadly, introduction. —Jonathon Dornbush

Jaws’ opening scene alone forever changed both the way we look at the water and the way we watch movies in the summer. Behold the familiar tableau of a summer beach party, in which the impulse to go skinny dipping makes total sense. But then comes that unforgettable John Williams score, waves in the water, and a cultural terror of sharks that still hasn’t faded. —Christian Holub

The beginning of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds lasts for more than 15 minutes, but it maintains its intensity throughout. Meet Christoph Waltz's terrifying Nazi, Hans Landa, who interrogates a French dairy farmer about rumors that he’s been hiding a Jewish family. If there’s ever a scene to make you hold your breath, it’s this one, as said family hides silently beneath the floorboards, awaiting their fate. No faint praise: Tarantino considers it the best scene he's ever written. —Samantha Highfill

After the opening credits, accompanied by some then-advanced graphics from Saul Bass, Alfred Hitchcock’s film opens to find Detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) and a fellow officer in hot pursuit of a perp on the rooftops of San Fransisco. When Scottie attempts to leap between buildings, he finds himself hanging by his fingertips for dear life. The other cop tries to lend a hand ... and it doesn't go so well. —Megan Lewis

Not everyone is able to deliver Aaron Sorkin's verbal barbs, but Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara are up for the task. David Fincher reportedly took 99 takes to compose this back-and-forth conversation. The scene wouldn't sing without the taut editing, the lulls whittled down to add weight to the pauses and make Mara's final insult all the more crushing. —Will Robinson

Director William Friedkin opens The French Connection with two simultaneous action sequences thousands of miles apart. In France, a professional hit man kills a French detective. In New York, a man dressed like Santa Claus and a hot dog vendor chase down an armed drug dealer. Of course, Santa Claus and the hot dog vendor are undercover, but the details aren’t what matter: It’s the way in which the film throws viewers into the two worlds that are so crucial to the story. —Samantha Highfill

Welcome to P.T. Anderson's home: Los Angeles' porn-filled San Fernando Valley. It's impossible to divert your eyes in the first three minutes: The continuous shot goes from Sherman Way to inside the gaudy Disco Traxx night club, the camera roaming over the dance floor for perfect quick capsules of the colorfully debauched characters. —Will Robinson

Reservoir Dogs’ opening includes surprisingly low stakes. The film’s main characters are sitting around a table, making small talk about Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” tipping, and other seemingly mundane topics. But it’s key for not only understanding the film but Tarantino’s general style. He’s building realistic characters and forcing us to focus on them by making the scene seem so innocuous. Brilliantly simple yet hilarious in its execution, it introduces the crooks we’ll spend the next 90 minutes with and ultimately have to learn to trust — or not. —Jonathon Dornbush

Paul Thomas Anderson's operatic tale of modern-day despair in southern California begins with three vignettes, narrated by famed magician Ricky Jay and establishing the world of raining frogs and unintentional sing-alongs, where "strange things that happen all the time." —Kevin P. Sullivan

You watch the first 90 seconds of Martin Scorsese's mob epic and kind of wonder why the director needed to make a full-length film. Of course, the end product is a sprawling, vivid masterpiece, but it kicks off with a self-contained bang. There's mystery (What's the noise in the trunk?), brutal violence (Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro are, with few words, as badass as ever), and the signature dark humor that pervades the film in the way of Ray Liotta's opening narration, "As far back as I could remember I always wanted to be a gangster." —Eric Brown

Has any movie ever matched the scope of Stanley Kubrick's space epic? Doubtful, since the first scene of 2001 — following the equally iconic title sequence — takes place during the literal dawn of man, as primitive apes become inventors and destroyers, the two roles that would define their lineage for millennia to come. —Kevin P. Sullivan

What’s your favorite scary movie? A seemingly harmless question from a mysterious caller turns terrifying — and then deadly — for Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker. Her death in the film’s opening minutes was all the more shocking because Barrymore was the biggest star in the horror flick — a la Janet Leigh in Psycho — when it was released. —Jessica Derschowitz

Boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy and girl learn they can’t have children, boy and girl grow old together and plan to fulfill a lifelong dream, but she falls ill and dies before they can. That story could fill the plot of an entire film, but in Pixar’s hands it’s all condensed into just a few heartbreaking minutes. —Jessica Derschowitz

Steven Spielberg’s adventure film begins with the strong, tall silhouette of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) donning his hallmark sable fedora. By the end of the opening scene, our hero is covered in cobwebs, surrounded by spear-toting natives, and forced to give up his prize to his nemesis — a predicament that makes him all the more relatable. In between, Indy faces poison darts, booby traps, tarantulas, treacherous companions, and, of course, the giant boulder that chases him out of a cave. Who wouldn't root for the whip-wielding archaeologist after that kind of entrance? —Noelene Clark

The opening to Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film is straightforward in the best ways. "I believe in America," begins one man's solemn plea, which evolves into a negotiation with a powerful man on the day of his daughter's wedding. It's like a mission statement for the entire film, oozing with themes of justice and loyalty, Coppola's stark framing of conversations, and, of course, Marlon Brando's magnetic performance as boss Vito Corleone. —Eric Brown

Those abbey bells ruin everything, don't they? The opening sequence of The Sound of Music is as unhurried as Maria's song, putting the spotlight on two of the film's favorite things — the Alps and Julie Andrews' vocals — only to pin this cloud back down on earth with a punchline: She's late again. —Kelly Connolly

There Will Be Blood does not do things halfway. Watching this movie means you’ve agreed to sit down for a two-and-a-half hour stare into the darkness of the human soul. All of that is apparent in the nearly wordless opening sequence, which introduces Daniel Plainview’s relentless money drive against the backdrop of Johnny Greenwood’s terrifying drone score and the bleak hellscape of the American desert. —Christian Holub

The nearly dialogue-free opening to Sergio Leone's spaghetti-western masterpiece clocks in at over 13 minutes long and is the perfect distillation of the filmmaker's signature style. Quiet, observational, and eventually explosive, this is the genre at its most cinematic and badass. —Kevin P. Sullivan

We meet Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) as a neurotic young mother, wild and fussy with a sheen of effortless glamour. She's panicked that her sleeping baby daughter, Emma, has died in the crib — so she pinches her and makes her cry. It's funny, but also a perfect encapsulation of this touching and hilarious mother-daughter relationship. —Madison Vain

Think whatever you want about the politics of American Sniper. The opening scene puts the audience on the ground, behind the scope of a rifle, as Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) has to make the split-second decision whether or not to kill a potentially threatening woman and her child. As Kyle takes aim and inhales slowly to calm himself, there's only one thing to think there: "Holy sh-t." —Madison Vain