Your all-time favorite opening scene from a film

[achilles]

Star Wars, (1977), and Raiders of the Lost Ark, in that order.

[Surf]

Beverly Hills Cop. The jokes, the car carnage through parts of residential streets and the ultimate number of police cars in it. Neutron Dance.

[ChrisIII]

Along with the others mentioned, the opening pre-titles sequence and song of of GOLDFINGER pretty much set the tone of the Bond series going forward.

FWRL also had the pre-title sequence and opening with girls dancing, but both were kind of a prototype stage (The sequence doesn't feature Bond but a double killed as part of a training session, and the opening sequence doesn't use the actual song but an instrumental and faster-paced version along with a more suspenseful version of the Bond theme) but Goldfinger really solidified the formula.

[K7P5V]

Definitely, my next choice would be...

Perfect Blue
(パーフェクトブルー)

[krazijoe]

Saving Private Ryan.
A realistic view of what war is like without all the sanitization.

UP!
A Disney Movie that shocked you and set the whole tone for a great movie.

[achilles]

Beverly Hills Cop. The jokes, the car carnage through parts of residential streets and the ultimate number of police cars in it. Neutron Dance.

A completely and totally awesome movie by any standards.

[Scott Taylor]

Guardians of the Galaxy had a wonderful opening, with Peter Quill dancing around singing into lizards.

[caj]

X2

The sequence with Nightcrawler kicking the Secret Service’s ass lives rent free in my mind.

Yes, I probably held my breath through that entire scene. Great choice.

[Captain Craig]

I will not attempt an order.

Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek II WoK, Goldeneye, Pulp Fiction, Scream, X-Men 2, Dark Knight, Avengers


I agree some of these others I can recall and like such as BHC, Jaws, GotG and then there are those I don't recall like 2001, Kill Bill, and Up.
When someone says Top Gun are you just meaning that Aircraft Carrier montage of a plane being prepped to take off, which it does behind that awesome score? Without that score those scenes are little more than some educational footage. Is there a scene after that that you mean?

If I could re-watch all the Bond intros I'm sure a few more might fall in there cause those are typically good to great but for me Goldeneye stands out after all these years.

[ChrisIII]

^There's actually a cut bit from the opening showing Bond (although still not 'revealed' yet) cutting the phone lines and activating the gate controls that was cut from the movie, as well as keeping an eye on the plane that eventually becomes his escape vehicle.

It was kind of adapted as part of the dam level in the video game.



It's a bit goofy and it kind of hurts the pacing, and the "lazy guards" angle was used much better with the toilet joke. To it's credit it does keep Bond's face largely out of sight until that joke though.


Speaking of other openings ANH's would've been pretty much ruined pacing wise if they had the Luke & Biggs scenes intercut with the corvette siege.

The other films also had longer openings that were cut down-

ESB basically has a Wampa attack subplot at the beginning; plus it's made more clear that the probe droid actually attacked a lookout post of the base. Instead we just get Luke's troubles with the Wampa instead.

ROTJ would've had Vader trying to reach Luke telepathically who is finishing his lightsaber; the scene would've spoiled the reveal of the Saber at the sail barge later on. Luke also ignoring him kind of hurts his arc of redeeming him later on.

TPM would've had some droids gabbing about the Jedi arriving that would've made things even more silly.

AOTC would've had Padme show up in the senate. Would've slowed down the intro of Anakin a bit although it would've clarified some of the plot stuff.

ROTS had a lot more stuff onboard the spaceship. The sequence is long enough as-is....

Not too sure about the sequels but there seems to exist some alternate footage of Finn already being awake and piloting one of the bombers at the beginning of the movie that was cut judging by some BTS stuff.

[K7P5V]

Definitely, my next choice would be...

Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

[TheRay]

Love The Mummy’s opening. Made me want The Magi doing voiceover for the whole film.

[ed2962]

Even though Snyder missed the point of the source material, the opening credits of The Watchmen film is great

[TheRay]

A fantastic classic has a fantastic opener:

[Riv86672]

RAMBO 3 stick fighting scene. Now THATS how you start a fun, testosterone filled mindless badass action movie!