The 20 best movie intros

Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting begins, appropriately enough, with chaos and destruction, with Ewan McGregor’s character delivering a monologue about his personal choices. Boyle is one of those directors who knows how to execute a scene perfectly. In some ways, the intro to Trainspotting is a distillation of the entire film’s general ethos and sensibility. One can’t help but be in awe of just how effectively he uses this relatively short film intro to plunge the viewer right into the lives and minds of his characters, in all of their destructive complexity.

From the moment that Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring  begins, it’s clear that this is going to be a film that is epic in every sense of the word. Galadriel’s haunting, ethereal voiceover relates the history of Middle-earth and the One Ring, giving us important context and information about what’s to come. It’s an intro that works on every level, from Cate Blanchett’s delivery to the visuals, and, taken together, they create an atmosphere that shapes the entire film, truly capturing the spirit of Tolkien’s work.

Ridley Scott’s Gladiator  helped to breathe new life into the genre of the swords and sandals epic, and Russell Crowe gives a powerful and moving performance as the general-turned-gladiator Maximus. The opening scene is particularly resonant and poignant, since it juxtaposes Maximus walking through the golden fields of his estate with the brutal gore of the Romans’ battle against the Germans. It makes it clear this is going to be a film filled with beauty and violence.

By this point, it’s become clear that Margot Robbie was simply born to play the character of Harley Quinn. This fact is much in evidence in Birds of Prey, one of the more underappreciated entries in the DCEU. The opening animated sequence is one of the more visually striking intros that this franchise has produced, and it’s made all the more enjoyable thanks to Robbie’s inimitable vocal delivery. Small wonder that Quinn has come to be seen as one of Robbie’s best roles.

The Prince of Egypt helped to demonstrate that DreamWorks had what it took to be a major competitor for Disney, at the time, the powerhouse of animation. The intro scene features both a powerful song and the film’s trademark sophisticated animation. It conveys, in a relatively short amount of time, just how biblically powerful this film is going to be. While the film itself might not have been a huge success upon its release, thanks to scenes like its intro, it has come to be regarded as a true classic of animation. 

One of the most surprising things about The Little Mermaid is just how long it takes for the viewer to even meet the title character. Indeed, the first several moments of the film are taken up with the unfolding credits and the beautiful music, all taking place against the lush backdrop of the film’s underwater world. It’s a poignant and powerful introduction, and it also allows the viewer to understand that this film will be a return to the musical form and the beginning of a new age for Disney.

Billy Wilder was one of those directors who knew how to craft a sharply defined noir film. Double Indemnity is both one of his best films and one of the best of the genre, and its opening sets the tone for what’s to come. The opening sequence sees Walter Neff, an insurance salesman played by Fred MacMurray, arrive at his office, severely wounded from a gunshot wound. This opening sequence, which shows just how grievously wounded he is, captures the sense of menace and doom that will be key to his development as a character as the film goes on.

There are many reasons that Sunset Boulevard is often regarded as one of the best films ever made. It features some of Billy Wilder’s best direction, and the acting from the various members of the cast is likewise excellent. Its opening scene is also unforgettable, focusing as it does on the police arriving at an opulent Hollywood mansion where a man is floating face-down in a pool. The fact that the man ends up narrating how he got there and his own demise is remarkably memorable and very much in keeping with the movie’s noir ethos.

Orson Welles is a marvel both behind and in front of the camera in the film noir Touch of Evil. The movie is notable for many reasons, not the least of which is an extensive crane shot that occurs during its opening. It’s a true technical achievement and a testament to Welles’ unrivaled vision as a filmmaker who understood the remarkable power of the moving image. Even though different edits of the film contain different music during this key scene, it never loses its power to amaze.

Steven Spielberg outdid himself with the opening sequence of the war film Saving Private Ryan, which depicts the storming of the beaches at Normandy on D-Day. Few films have so intimately captured the brutality of war, and to this day, this opening sequence is largely unmatched in its immersive power. It’s a testament to what cinema can achieve in terms of not just bringing the past to life but also showing the extraordinary bravery and sacrifice that the Allies exhibited during the Second World War. 

Pixar is one of those studios that has a knack for tugging on the heartstrings, but even so, there’s something uniquely devastating about the opening sequence to Up. The opening sequence, which portrays the marriage and life of Carl and Ellie, is beautiful, tender, and absolutely heartbreaking. It is a work of art in its own right and, in some ways, it’s both the best thing Pixar has ever done as well as a core memory for many millennials and younger members of Gen X.

Jurassic Park is one of those movies that is the perfect blending of director, stars, and material, and this much is clear right from the beginning. The opening scene of the film is filled with tension, terror, and action, and even though the raptor remains mostly hidden from view, there’s just enough to inspire a sense of thrill and dread. Spielberg once again proves himself to be a true master when it comes to the movies, and the rest of the movie bears this out.

Planet of the Apes is a film that is very much of its era. With its cautionary tale about humanity’s hubris and the specter of nuclear annihilation, it spoke to the concerns of the atomic era. It also features an unsettling intro: after the various astronauts put themselves into deep sleep, the credits unfold over the vastness of space and a very spooky score. It manages to create just the right sense of tension and unease that will characterize so much of the rest of the film, with various sounds evocative of ape vocalizations that gesture to the story to come.

Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of Batman was revolutionary when the films came out in the 2000s. Of his trilogy, arguably The Dark Knight  is the strongest, and it features a remarkably intense intro. Most notably, it introduces the character of the Joker, so eerily and terrifyingly portrayed by the late Heath Ledger. This intro sets the tone for the entire film to come, and it allows the audience to realize that this iteration of the Joker is going to be more sinister and deadly than any that had emerged before. 

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey might be best-known for its stunning visions of space and time, but it begins on Earth itself, when a group of primordial hominins confront each other and also encounter one of the alien monoliths that will play such a large role in the story. It’s a powerful and violent beginning, demonstrating the extent to which humanity’s evolutionary gains are often built on a foundation of blood and violence and conflict. It’s a message as timely now as it was when the film was released in 1968.

Javier Bardem has, of course, given many remarkable performances during his career, but few are as viscerally terrifying as his portrayal of antagonist and murderer Anton Chigurh in  No Country for Old Men. The opening sequence of the film is arguably one of the most unsettling and brutal that the Coen Brothers have ever created. It shows just what kind of a man Chigurh is and how he will stop at nothing  

Few directors have been quite as masterful when it comes to suspense as Alfred Hitchcock. The opening sequence of Vertigo is a master class in both suspense and setting the stage for the movie to come, as James Stewart’s Scotty Ferguson watches a fellow policeman fall to his grave. It’s the kind of scene that etches itself in the mind of the viewer, and it makes the hero’s later struggles with acrophobia explicable. Even now, after so much has changed in filmmaking, it manages to be an effective and unforgettable beginning.

It’s not every franchise that could produce a truly great film several decades after the first was released, but this is exactly what Mad Max: Fury Road was able to accomplish. From the moment that its intro unfolds, it’s clear that this is going to be a violent, beautiful, and haunting film. This opening sequence is ample evidence that George Miller remains one of the most kinetic and visionary directors of his generation, someone who knows just how to use the visual language of cinema to capture the feeling of a place and time that are in the future and yet also feel remarkably present.

The Lion King is arguably the apex of the Disney Renaissance, with a strong story, dazzling animation, and songs that were instant classics. The opening is one of the best in the Disney canon, showcasing the movie’s ability to capture the realism of animal movement in the vibrancy of 2-D animation. Of course, there’s also the stirring song that begins the movie, and no one who has ever heard “The Circle of Life” is likely to forget it, and it’s one of the Disney songs that everyone knows by heart.

Wes Craven breathed new life into the slasher genre with Scream,  which managed to be both entertaining and terrifying, while also offering commentary on the genre as a whole. No one who has seen the movie can forget the sequence in which Ghostface brutally murders Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker and her boyfriend. It’s a remarkably effective way to start a slasher movie, and it sets the stage for the many brutal kills to come. It encourages the viewer to wonder just who is responsible for this slaughter of two teenagers.