10 Movies That Should Have Started 5 Minutes Later
Movies that should have cut the first scene! Justice League, The Avengers & more!
Editing is arguably the most important part of the filmmaking process, because no movie really exists until it's been tirelessly shaped through hundreds of hours of meticulous fine-tuning in the edit bay.
But filmmakers don't always manage to strike the balance perfectly, sometimes proving unable to "kill their darlings" as it were and cut scenes which, ultimately, actually detract from the overall experience.
Case in point, these 10 films - whether beloved classics or crushing disappointments - all open with underwhelming or unnecessarily bloated establishing scenes, which by losing around five minutes would become immediately more interesting, if not also exciting.
There's a lot to be said for a film that doesn't waste the audience's time with tedious preambles, and by losing these sluggish opening minutes, each film would feel more urgent and entertaining from their very first moments.
If nothing else, the fact that these scenes remained in these elongated forms is a testament to just how challenging the editorial process is, and that not even extremely smart and talented filmmakers can get the balance right every single time...
10. Scream 3
It's no coincidence that Scream 3, markedly the worst of the series' four films to date, also features the single dud opening of the bunch.
The threequel kicks off with a painfully drawn-out, wholly un-cinematic opening where Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) is taunted over the phone by Ghostface, who is spying on his girlfriend Christine (Kelly Rutherford) at his home.
In a one-two punch of ridiculousness, Cotton speeds through traffic to race home - almost causing a pile-up - while Ghostface toys with Christine by... playing a Creed song over Cotton's stereo.
If you start the movie at the five-minute mark, we get to skip all this nonsense and the Scott Stapp needle-drop and kick things off with a far more concise, contained set-piece at the house.
Considering that the rest of the sequence is actually moderately suspenseful, culminating in the death of Cotton and Christine, Wes Craven could've got Scream 3 off to a far punchier start without all that plodding, pointless setup.