The 411 Top 5: Week 34
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 11.10.2006
The Top 5 Opening Scenes
Ahhh, it's good to be back. After a little over a month off for the October Zombie-Thon, I find myself back in the warm embrace of my old stomping grounds. OK, I know that's a bit of a mixed metaphor, but give me a break, I haven't done this in a while. First things first; I want to thank George H. Sirois for the great job he did filling in as Top 5 host while I was gone. I certainly wasn't expecting anything less from the man, and he certainly delivered (and if you don't already do so, do yourself a favor and check out George's weekly Scene Anatomy 101. Next week is the 100th installment, and the only thing more impressive than that is sheer quality of the column every week).
Oh, and since I was gone for his weeks, allow me to just quickly throw in my two cents on a couple of the topics George covered in my absence. My personal all-time favorite SNL skit is the "Census Taker" skit with Tim Meadows and Christopher Walken. Everyone and their brother is obsessed with the now-infamous "cowbell" skit, but for my money you can't top the "Census Taker" for out and out Walken hilarity. Considering it consists of nothing but two guys talking in a hallway, thanks to Walken's increasingly odd answers to simple questions. My personal favorite is when Meadows asks Walken how many people live in his apartment, and Walken fires back with "80." When Meadows questions that number, Walken thinks about it: "Okay, there's me…my wife…our plants…we have some candy bars." Genius. But, then, when it comes to Walken, when is it not genius?
As for the double-dip DVDs, I'm gonna say the 2-disc Criterion edition of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, which was just jam-packed with extras on both the film and Hunter S. Thompson himself (make sure to listen to Thompson's extremely bizarre audio commentary for a good time), and was a huge improvement over Universal's previous release, which only featured a few deleted scenes.
Anyway, enough with the past, let's get on with the business of the day. It might be a bit of a stretch to suggest that this first week back is like a new beginning for me on the Top 5, but just go with me on it, because it's the perfect way to segue into this week's topic:
THE TOP 5 OPENING SCENES
I've often heard that Hollywood-types will generally toss aside any screenplay that doesn't grab their interest in the first 5 or so pages, so there's no denying the importance of a strong opening scene. But what movies are best at grabbing your attention right off the bat and super-gluing your ass to the seat?
Not the largest turn-out for this week's entry, but that's ok. If I've learned one thing during my time on the Top 5, it's this: you can always count on Kristopowitz. And apparently Sirois got hooked during his time on the Top 5, and is finding it hard to say goodbye (I guess Boyz II Men knew what they were talking about). So sit back and allow the three of us to give you our takes on the best opening scenes in film history.
Trevor Snyder
Honorable Mentions
- The James Bond series: Rather than single out one of the Bond films, I'll just give the entire franchise credit for its killer opening scenes. It's a time-tested formula – each Bond film starts with an amazing scene of Bond doing what he does best. The scenes are usually independent of the film's main story, and in fact are often a lot better than the rest of the movie that follows (I'm looking at you, The World is Not Enough), but they usually do a pretty good job setting the tone for what's to come.
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002): Gandalf fights the Balrog. It's a great sequence that not only sheds more light on an event from the previous film, but is a nice hint of what to expect in the rest of the movie. It lets us know that despite his apparent death, Gandalf is gonna be a part of this film. Oh, yeah, and he's gonna be a badass.
- The Matrix (1999): It might seem kind of quaint now, considering how many times we've seen The Matrix mocked and imitated. But try to remember just how cool it was the first time you saw Trinity go to kick that cop, freeze in mid-air, and the camera spun around her. The Matrix was a film that would go on to inspire nearly every action or sci-fi movie that followed, for better or worse, and the first scene was our first glimpse at a new day in cinema history.
5) Saving Private Ryan (1998)
4) Way of the Gun (2000)
3) Dead or Alive (1999)
2) Scream (1996)
1) Jaws (1975)
5 – I suppose it's somewhat of a cheat to include the incredible D-Day sequence from Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, since it's technically the second scene, and is a hell of a lot longer than what you might consider an "opening scene." But, oh well, it's the scene which everyone remembers, and is just as devastatingly powerful the 30th time you watch it as it was the first. I'm not gonna say that Spielberg was the first director to really show how horrible war is, but I will say that when I first saw this scene I knew this movie intended to depict the fighting in a far more realistic manner than the majority of war-films that came before it. Pretty much every war film since has tried to emulate Ryan's approach, but you still can't top this sequence as the finest example of conveying the sheer chaos of war.
4 – I have always been surprised that there aren't more fans of this criminally underrated movie, for many reasons, not the least of which is the hilariously profane and violent opening. As a crowd mills about outside a nightclub, a young woman (the always entertaining Sarah Silverman) notices two men, Ryan Phillipe and Benicio Del Toro, leaning on her car. She makes it quite clear she would like them to stop, letting loose with a string of curse words. Un-phased, Phillipe simply suggests that the woman's boyfriend "shut that c**t's mouth, or I'll come over there and f**k-start her head." When the boyfriend hesitantly tries to defend his girl's honor, our "heroes" break every movie convention we know by simply attacking her instead, stomping on her foot and breaking her nose. It isn't long before the entire crowd is kicking Phillipe and Del Toro's ass, but you get the sense the two think it was well worth it. The scene doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of the movie, apart from letting us know that is these two guys are our main characters, we're in for a wild ride.
3 – What can I say, I'm a sucker for Takashi Miike. When you watch a Miike film, you know you'll be seeing something unique, something completely different than the majority of the dreck Hollywood churns out on a regular basis. Miike brings more energy to one scene than many directors will accomplish throughout their entire career. Need proof? Check out the balls-to-the-wall opening to Dead or Alive, an exhilarating 5 minute montage of murder and mayhem. The very first image is the two lead actors, Riki Takeuchi and Sho Aikawa, out of character and counting down the seconds till the film begins. We then launch right into an audacious rapid-edit montage: strippers dance, a body falls from a roof and splatters on the pavement below, a man jumps onto the roof of a limo and blasts away the man inside with a shotgun, a man's throat is slit while he indulges in a little sodomy, and a gangster's noodle dinner is interrupted by a shotgun blast to the back, which literally explodes the noodles out of his stomach. Incredibly over-the-top? Of course. Attention-grabbing? You betcha. For the record, Dead or Alive also contains what is certainly one of the best closing scenes ever, as well, but I really can't say too much about it without giving away why it's so incredible.
2 – Scream now seems so long ago that it's kinda hard to remember how big of a deal this opening sequence was. But that's what happens when you put Drew Barrymore front and center on the movie poster, advertise her as one of the film's main stars, and then kill her right off the bat. I think Craven himself has admitted that he was trying to emulate Hitchcock's Psycho, but at least Janet Leigh got a good half hour before she was out of the picture. Still, you can't argue with the scene's impact; it gave you the sense that no one character was safe, no matter who was playing them, and that's exactly what Craven wanted.
1 – By now, most people are familiar with the stories of how the shark was supposed to play a much bigger part in Spielberg's classic, but the director was forced to drastically reduce the shark's onscreen time due to the robotic shark never working right. As we all know, this is perhaps the greatest example of dumb luck in movie history, as the fact that we never see the shark until late in the film is exactly what gives the film its power. After all, whatever is in your imagination is always better, and scarier, than anything even the best director can show you, which is why the film's opening scene – in which a young skinny-dipper is attacked by something as her boyfriend is passed out on the beach – is so terrifying. And, of course, we can't forget the music, which perfectly sets the ominous mood. The fact that the movie proceeds to only get better from that point on helps explain why Jaws was the first big summer blockbuster.
Bryan Kristopowitz
Honorable Mentions
- Making breakfast - Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985) - Well, heck, we all remember the opening sequence to this flick, after the bike racing dream, where Pee Wee gets up and gets ready for the day ahead. Even way back when, when I was a child, I saw this and wondered why Pee Wee was so weird and what the deal was with his house. We never really found out anything beyond the opening sequence in regards to his house, but it was a bizarre start to a bizarre road movie where a grown man looks for a bicycle.
- Stopping the tractor trailer truck - Tango & Cash (1989) - You've got Sylvester Stallone as a slick LA cop traveling behind a tractor trailer truck in the middle of the desert, a police helicopter up above telling Stallone's Ray Tango not to get involved. Of course, being the tough as nails cop that he is, Tango floors it, passes the truck, moves on way up the road, stops, and then, as the truck comes baring down on him, Tango takes out his gun, unloads it, reloads it, then shoots it three times. He doesn't move an inch. The shots eventually get the truck to stop and the two occupants to fly out the windshield. Holy crap that was cool. Stallone hasn't done much cool stuff like that in a while.
- Nick Pirandello retrieves the vital map - Real Men (1987) - The movie proper actually starts out with John Ritter walking through the woods. He gets killed and "the vital map" that both the Americans and the Russians need has been stolen (at that time, the Russians have it). Who is the CIA going to bring in to find the map? Jim Belushi, of course. We see him working undercover at a fish market. He spots some bad stuff going down, captures a Russian spy, makes him eat his shirt button, and then uses the information gleaned from interrogation to find the map. He picks a door with a fork, kills some Russian bad guys, dry humps a big breasted blonde, and manages to swing from ledge to ledge using his shoe laces as rope. And he does manage to get the map. Great stuff from a great movie that deserves more respect.
- Ancient cave man fights alien in ice cave - The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998) - While I was extremely excited about this flick coming out, being the big X-Files nerd that I was (and still am), I had this sneaking suspicion that it wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to be the TV show, it wasn't going to expand on the TV show, and it wasn't going to be a good movie period. And when the flick started with the cavemen in the ice cave, I thought my "bad" suspicions were playing out in front of me. What the heck was going on? And then the alien creature showed up and the fight began. The fight. I wasn't expecting the whole thing to start out like that, and it certainly made me want to keep watching. This movie was going to be like the TV show and we were going to be let in on some secrets. Aha.
- Point of View Steadicam murder - Halloween (1978)- This established, at least in the modern sense, the point of view of the killer thing in slasher movies. I just saw it on the big screen for the first time, and it was even more effective than the dozens of times seen on TV. It gets you jazzed about the upcoming roller coaster ride.
- Parris Island Boot Camp - Full Metal Jacket (1987)- The entire first half of this movie could be seen as one long opening sequence, featuring the boot camp training of the Marine recruits about to be sent to Vietnam. R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sgt. Hartman is still amazing, and without him yelling and screaming and using creative profanity, you couldn't have the second part, the part actually in Vietnam. Brilliant stuff.
5. The loner bus ride - Death Wish 3 (1985)
4. Jason chases FBI agent through the woods - Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
3. Alex Rain runs - Nemesis (1993)
2. Vampire "nest" siege/Hotel massacre - John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)
1. Supermarket slaughter - Cobra (1986)
5. - Chuck Bronson, alone on a bus, riding into New York City to meet up with an old Korean War buddy. Bronson, as Paul Kersey the vigilante, hopes to see his buddy, someone he cares about. Of course, it's a Death Wish movie so you know that Chuck's friends aren't going to come out of it, well, alive. Besides all of the funny, somewhat campy, over the top stuff that's made Death Wish 3 so popular, the emotional aspect of the flick is summed up right the beginning. There's a bit of hope in Kersey's eyes as you watch him on the long ride, but you know, you just know, things aren't going to work out. And you want to watch the upcoming train wreck, knowing it's coming, hoping that Chuck's hope is real and can be fulfilled. Still brutal.
4. - Every horror nerd was curious to see how this movie, the "last" Jason movie, was going to turn out. Why exactly was it going to be the final Friday? So it starts out with a cute woman in a cabin in the woods, changing light bulbs, taking off her clothes, wondering what all of that weird sounding stuff is but not paying attention too much. The lights go out again, and then Jason shows up, machete in hand. She falls off the balcony, lands on a table, and Jason is in pursuit. They go through the woods. She gets Jason to follow her to a specific point in the woods, in a clearing, and then the lights come on! And a SWAT team shows up, guns blazing. They shoot the big monster with the hockey mask to bits, launching a grenade at him, blowing him up. And then you've got Steven Williams as bounty hunter Creighton Duke out in the same woods, watching it all, and saying "I don't think so." They just blew up Jason freaking Voorhies. How the heck are they going to bring him back after killing him in the first five minutes? Oh, boy.
3. - Okay, I'm not going to get into the various plot points made at the beginning of the Albert Pyun/Olivier Gruner sci-fi/action classic because, well, there are many of them and most of them make no sense. This is what happens in a nutshell. Gruner's Alex Rain is whambamming a hot babe who turns out to be an android. And then a gang of killers show up to kill Rain. So Rain break out his auto-shotgun and runs off into the abandoned steel mill next door. The killers follow. And so we have a massive gun fight. Rain brings down the killers one by one. One of them, though, uses a grenade launcher to bring Rain down. It's an amazing opening that, when you realize that the flick was made for very little money to begin with, is even more amazing. It's still more dynamic than most modern 100 million dollar movies.
2. - Oh yeah. Jimmy Woods as Jack Crow and Daniel Baldwin as Montoya lead a band of Catholic Church vampire killing mercenaries into a house in the middle of New Mexico suspected of being a "vampire nest." The team goes in, guns and daggers and razor staffs ready, and, after a few quiet moments, all gory heck breaks loose. Vampires bleed and then get burned up in the sun. Boo freaking yah! And then scene shifts to a nearby hotel motel where the mercs are banging prostitutes and getting drunk and having an orgy and getting a priest drunk. Little do they know that a "Master vampire," Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), the one they thought was in the house, is on his way to the hotel motel. To do what? All gory heck breaks loose once again, this time with the mercenaries getting slaughtered. We get everything we need to know about the movie in the first twenty minutes: ultimately, what we're dealing with is two sides of the same coin. The vampires and the vampire hunters are both evil sick, and twisted, and tough, and they're never going to stop until they're dead.
1. - Everyone who has seen this Stallone movie probably says that the opening supermarket slaughter is the best part of the movie, the one with the most "juice," and their favorite part. And they make that distinction for good reason. Because Marco Rodriguez as the killer is amazing. Stallone is ultra tough and nasty as Lt. Marion "Cobra" Cobretti, the "Zombie squad" cop sent in to get the killer. And the late, great George P. Cosmatos knew how to make this opening scene tension filled. Even with the great one liners from Stallone, the sadistic killer wiping out everything in sight and making that guy run down the aisle, telling him he's free only to blast him dead in front of his family... that's still sick and powerful. It shows you what Cobra is up against. And it makes you root for him to get the bad guys, the guys who are "part of the New World." No one since has made a better opening set piece. No one.
George H. Sirois
5. X2 (2003) – While the second X-Men film was in production, all we kept hearing was how the first film was a prologue to the second film, and there would be next to nothing regarding backstory and exposition here. Well, were they ever right! The first three minutes of the film not only jumpstarted right into the story, but it also introduced a brand new character in Nightcrawler, showed off his teleportation skills (we finally found out what BAMF! sounds like), was directed and edited really tightly and had a great adaptation of Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem as the music. By the end of the scene, the opening night crowd I saw it with burst out into applause. Rightfully so.
4. Rocky III (1982) – First, you have the sounds of the commentators during the Rocky / Apollo rematch from Rocky II. Then, you have the familiar trumpets blaring the Bill Conti theme as the title scrolls across the screen. Then, you have the final shots the rematch and both Rocky and Apollo collapsing on the ring. THEN, you have Rocky beating Apollo to his feet as the ref counts 10 and "Yo Adrian! I did it!" And from there, we dissolve to the coolest montage on the face of the earth. Rocky's winning fight after fight, appearing in commercials, magazines and on The Muppet Show. Clubber Lang is watching, training and destroying his opponents. Rocky's giving his family everything they ever want. Clubber yells at Mickey that he wants Rocky. All this is done to the new signature song of the franchise, "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. How pumped up are you after seeing this opening? And then you have the movie itself!
3. (TIE) Halloween (1978) – Only one prominent piece of dialogue is heard, the name of the character whose point of view we are seeing everything through. You don't get to actually see the stabbing of Michael's sister. It's a great combination of what you see and what you don't see – plus the chilling score by John Carpenter – that makes this first scene so effective. And the reveal at the very end of it, with Mr. Myers pulling Michael's mask off and showing that he's just a kid and not showing any emotion, still works so well.
3. (TIE) Reservoir Dogs (1992) – We go from characters barely saying a word to characters that just won't shut up. In this opening scene, literally Quentin Tarantino introducing himself to America, we learn that Madonna's Like a Virgin is a metaphor for big dicks, Vicki Lawrence is singing about herself shooting Andy, and words "too fuckin' busy" shouldn't be in a waitress' vocabulary. Would you have any idea that the very next moment we see after the opening credits is of a man bleeding to death in the backseat of a car after getting shot in the stomach? Didn't think so.
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) – Without a doubt, one of the best character reveals in film. We see a man whose face is hidden in the shadows lead a small group through the jungles of South America. One of the followers pulls out a pistol and cocks it. And then suddenly, a crack of the bullwhip and the gun is knocked away… and out from the shadows steps Indiana Jones. That's just awesome as it is, and we haven't even seen the rest of the opening sequence with the booby traps, the idol, the rolling boulder, Doctor Octopus, and Ivan Ooze (Alfred Molina and Paul Freeman)!
1. Superman (1978) – The curtains part, we can hear a projector start up, and then we see the title card JUNE 1938. A child reads a comic book out loud, we zoom into one of the panels and we see the Daily Planet building come to life. We pan up, and the opening titles begin. For the next several minutes, all we get are titles blasting in front of us over a star field, backed up by one of the greatest overtures you'll ever hear in film. And even though nothing happens during this segment, the mood is perfectly established. You're about to see something truly amazing. You're about to believe a man can fly. And these are the people who are going to make you believe this.
You know, if I wanted to be a jerk I'd point out that the opening Tango & Cash gag which Bryan refers to was directly ripped-off from Jackie Chan's far-superior Police Story. But Bryan loves his cheesy Stallone movies so much that I really don't have the heart to bring it up. Oh, wait, I just did. Oops.
Still, I totally agree on the coolness of the opening scene from Jason Goes to Hell, which was not only awesome but also a nice nod to all the fans who ever wondered how the hell so many murders could happen in one place without the police or FBI ever taking a real interest.
And kudos to George for bringing up the sweet Nightcrawler scene from X2. Nightcrawler has always been one of my favorite X-Men characters, so to see him done so right onscreen was such a nerdy mark-out moment for me. When I heard they had decided not to bring him for X3, I just knew that movie was doomed to suck. Well, ok, that wasn't the only reason…but it certainly didn't help matters, any.
Next week, we'll welcome Daniel Craig to the James Bond fold by reminding him of just what he has to live up to (remember, there's no motivation like intimidation). That's right, come back next time for The Top 5 James Bond Movies.
