Top 10 Best Opening Scenes in Movies

Almost every science fiction film has to tackle world-building. The opening scene of Children of Men perfectly introduces the grim, hopeless dystopia of its near future. The film opens in a café where a stunned crowd watches a news report announcing that the youngest person on the planet has died at the age of 18. Clive Owen's character walks in and leaves with a coffee, barely paying attention to the headline, when a bomb suddenly blows up the café.

Few opening scenes are as undeniably cool. At a slow, deliberate pace, the film stylishly introduces three dangerous-looking gunmen entering a railway station. Without saying a word, they intimidate the station master and lock him up before settling on the platform to wait for the train. When it leaves, a steely-eyed Charles Bronson stands facing them, playing a harmonica, before he guns them down.

The 'Choose life' speech at the start of Trainspotting is one of the all-time great monologues in cinema. The film opens with Ewan McGregor's Renton waxing lyrical about his junkie, nonconformist lifestyle as he runs down the high street dropping stolen goods, chased by security guards. We quickly meet his mates Spud, Begbie, Tommy and Sick Boy before seeing Renton collapse on the floor of his squalid flat in a drug-induced haze.

Tracking shots are always a bold creative choice, but few match the technical skill and masterful suspense of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. A swooping crane camera opens on a man planting a bomb in the trunk of a car. The camera follows the car through a busy street, then shifts to a couple walking alongside. They all stop at the same moment at a border checkpoint on the US-Mexico border, and seconds after the couple walks away, the bomb explodes.

The opening montage of Up is a mini-film in itself. It condenses the love story of Carl and Ellie, from meeting as kids to their old age together, into a moving four-minute tribute to love and marriage. A short montage of Ellie tying Carl's tie every day says more about love than most romantic films do in their entire running time. But it also offers a heartbreaking look at the sadness of love, showing there's much more to the grumpy old protagonist than meets the eye.

Is there a more ominous opening scene than Jaws? John Williams' iconic, menacing score builds as the camera glides over the ocean floor, creating the uneasy feeling that something terrible lurks in the water. We then cut to carefree teens around a beach bonfire before a young woman runs off to swim. Shots from below focus on her kicking legs, until the calm is shattered as she's dragged under and thrown around by something unseen from the depths.

The opening bank heist in The Dark Knight is a masterful piece of filmmaking. There's barely any supervillain theatrics as a group of armed men in clown masks rob a mob-run bank in Gotham. It feels more like a crime thriller than a superhero film, as the crooks take each other out one by one on the Joker's strict orders. An intense opening that leaves the audience unsure what to expect next.

There are simply no other title credits as visually stunning and immersive as those of Gaspar Noé's psychedelic Enter the Void. Names and titles flash by at an insane pace in striking techno colors, fonts and symbols, until the credits pulse and dance across the screen with epileptic intensity. The perfect way to set the tone for the strange, psychedelic film that follows.

The opening scene of The Matrix tells you you're about to watch a real game-changer. From the moment the camera circles leather-clad hacker Trinity as she leaps into the air and delivers a slick bullet-time kung fu kick to a police officer, The Matrix has established itself as a film unlike anything you've seen before.

Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore's iconic Watchmen received a mixed reception, but it's hard to fault the first five minutes. The brutal murder of former superhero The Comedian by a masked attacker in his apartment is an intense opening that sets the story in motion. The title sequence that follows is an even more intriguing introduction to this dark superhero tale.