10 Movies That Never Got Better Than Their Opening Moments

You might as well turn these movies off after the first few minutes.

By Scott Banner /

There are so many things a movie has to get right for an audience to leave happy. Compelling characters they are able to connect with, an interesting story, and a strong and satisfying ending are essential, to say the least.

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None of that matters however, if the audience isn’t gripped from the start. Lose them in the first few minutes and you're facing an uphill battle to get anyone to care about the subsequent film, if they even continue watching it at all. There are some filmmakers who have taken this so seriously as to make the opening scene the very best there was to offer. Best foot forward and all that.

Some of these initial moments are never topped because they are so damn good that even a strong movie could never reach that bar again, while other movies started well and fizzled out over the next few hours.

Superhero team-ups, desolate dinosaur worlds, and even the shocking and gruesome death of a child kick-started these pictures in a way that made it impossible for anything else to compete with them.

10. 28 Weeks Later

The zombie genre has become so saturated over the years it has become difficult for any one movie to truly stand out from the rest. Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later became popular back in 2002, though the sequel five years later fell more into obscurity.

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Disappointing, though not necessarily surprising. As the acclaimed director stepped away from the franchise, there was always going to be the risk of the shoes being just too big for Juan Carlos Frasnadillo to step into. Add to that a completely new cast of characters, and 28 Weeks Later fell short.

It didn't seem that would be the case at first, as the opening scenes depicted the sheer adrenaline-fueled rush of Don's escape from the zombies. The pulsating chase showed just how terrifying these attacks were, and what they could drive someone to do.

As a new character, audiences didn't know Don, but in just the opening minutes the movie offered just about everything that was needed to be known. The rest of the film did suffer for having no returning characters, but you wouldn't know it from just this scene.

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