13 Awesome Opening Scenes In Otherwise Terrible Movies

9. Hancock

The Opening Scene: Talk about a movie that gets off on the right foot: Hancock begins with gang-bangers racing through the L.A. streets with the cops in pursuit, all while a very hungover superhero, the titular character (Will Smith), is woken up on a park bench by a child, informing him that a crime's taking place. He dismisses the kid (who calls him an a**hole), before flying off into the sky, flailing around as he holds a bottle of booze in the other hand, just barely missing crashing into a plane. Hancock eventually subdues the criminals, but as news reports state, it is at a huge $9 million financial cost to the city due to all the destruction he caused along the way. Meanwhile, after a failed business meeting, Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) becomes trapped on the train tracks inside his car, and is saved by Hancock (again, at huge financial cost), before being berated by the witnesses to the accident. Ray steps in to defend Hancock, though, and the set-up is complete in around 12 minutes.

The Rest Of The Movie: Despite a delicious premise, Hancock sadly gets progressively worse as it goes along, for while some of the movie's first half is mildly entertaining, by the mid-way point it decides to become a totally different, much less satisfying movie that takes itself far too seriously. Didn't everyone just want more of what the opening scene promised? Basically, more property damage, more Will Smith playing a drunk superhero, and an occasionally exasperated Jason Bateman? Would that have been so hard?

8. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie For Theaters

The Opening Scene: The first three minutes of this movie should be played before every movie in cinemas all over the world. It begins as a typical old-school, friendly animated warning to be polite and considerate of other cinema patrons, with the cute popcorn, hot dog, choc ice and drink cup singing along. As their advice becomes increasingly more innuendo-laden and eventually just plain crude ("Don't pull your penis out...unless you really need to"), they come across another group of anthropomorphic items you'd usually find in a cinema: a mean-looking meatball with piercings, guitar-playing pretzels and ice caps, and a drum-playing nacho covered in cheese. The meatball then headbutts the hotdog and the band starts playing a heavy metal advisory warning about cinema etiquette (recorded by metal band Mastodon), providing advice such as, "If you make out here, I will cut your lips and tongue from your head with a linoleum knife", "Don't explain the plot, if you don't understand you should not be here", "Be considerate to others or I will bite your torso and give you a disease", and "Did you bring your baby? Babies don't watch this, take the seed outside. Leave it in the streets, and run over it after the show!" After a kick-a** guitar solo, an explosion goes off and the awesome song comes to an end.

The Rest Of The Movie: It's all downhill from there, sadly, for though this movie flings plenty of insanity at the wall, only a little of it sticks, and most of it is simply randomness for its own sake. Even fans of the show might have to confess that the bite-sized series just doesn't sustain particularly well over the course of 90 minutes.

7. Jeepers Creepers

The Opening Scene: Talk about a movie that doesn't bore the audience with foreplay. It's barely four minutes into the movie (following a little playful banter between Trish (Gina Philips) and her brother Darry (Justin Long)) that The Creeper shows up in his rustbucket of a truck, trying to run the sibling protagonists off the road before passing, revealing his license plate to read "BEATNGU" (as in, "be eating you"). A few minutes down the road, they spot the same truck parked by a building as The Creeper, somewhat visible for the first time, dumps what appears to be several corpses wrapped in sheets down a chute. The Creeper then gives chase once again, this time running them off the road, as the audience catches their breath and the movie starts proper.

The Rest Of The Movie: Though many critics were quick to praise the movie's opening sequence, sadly it quickly devolves into the usual horror genre cliches, and gets particularly painful once the The Creeper's mythology is over-explained, it gets its wings out and the characters stop acting plausibly. Still, like a lot of entries in this list, those opening 13 minutes would've made a spectacular short film on their own.

6. Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem

The Opening Scene: Yes, it might be tough to believe a whole ten years later, but there were a good seven minutes of this movie that didn't totally suck. AvP: Requiem picks up where the previous film left us, with a Predalien hatching out of a Predator impregnated with a Xenomorph embryo on a Predator ship. The shot of the baby Xeno with the Predator-like facial features is truly terrifying, and before long, it has matured into a fully-grown Predalien. The Predalien then attacks any Predator it comes across on the ship, causing it to crash-land on Earth at the very spot where a man and his young son are hunting deer. As the two investigate, various facehugger specimens escape onto Earth, as does the Predalien, and the scene ends with both the father and son being attacked by a gang of facehuggers. The acid blood of one wounded facehugger causes the dad's arm to burn off before he is subdued by another one, and a few seconds later, the kid is also attacked and impregnated by a facehugger. Finally, a Predator receives a distress call from one of his dead brethren, heading to Earth alone to take on the Predalien.

The Rest Of The Movie: After seven minutes of surprisingly great visual effects (and they've aged pretty well too) and the ballsy set-up for a child to later get chest-bursted, the movie falls down a hole as it introduces a litany of thoroughly dislikeable human characters who simply eat up screen time which should be given to the titular beasts. It's hard not to root against the humans in this movie, and despite some decent style and impressive gore, it sadly never regains its footing after that strong opening.

5. Ghost Ship

The Opening Scene: This one sneaks up on you. The movie opens on the titular ship, with upbeat music and happy passengers dancing the night away, including a young Emily Browning, who dances with the ship's captain. However, an unidentified hand pulls a lever, which causes a giant roll of razor wire to unspool, slicing across the dance floor. Everyone is stunned silent for a moment before they begin falling to the floor in pieces, the only survivor being Browning's character, who was too short to be cut by the wire. She screams, and then the garbage-fest begins at the 5:30 mark.

The Rest Of The Movie: Aside from this widely popular opening scene, frequently cited as one of the most inventive kill sequences in a recent horror movie, the remainder of Ghost Ship has been consistently panned by critics for its utterly generic haunting plot, overt predictability and, most depressingly of all, its fatal lack of scares. After the razor wire massacre, there's nothing else in this movie you haven't seen better executed in another film.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.