13 Awesome Opening Scenes In Otherwise Terrible Movies

Oh how promising X-Men Origins: Wolverine looked...

By Jack Pooley /

A great opening scene can set the tone for a moving going forward, assuring audiences that they're in for a wild ride...or not. Sometimes a screenwriter will come up with a fantastic hook of an opening scene, only for the rest of their screenplay to crumble to pieces, leaving a decent idea for a short film tacked in front of what is largely a terrible movie. It happens all the time, and it's incredibly frustrating, if at least slightly less dishearteningly than a 100% awful film from start to finish. Some of these films are bad enough that you might've forgotten that the first 10 minutes or so had any actual promise, but it's totally there: thanks to subversive reinventions of classic stories which promised so much more (but then betrayed that promise), to superb technical feats which gave way to a lackluster narrative, great plot set-ups which went nowhere and some of the most memorable deaths and one-liners in recent cinema history, these 13 scenes were all riveting and iconic in their own ways. Sadly each movie peaked far too early, and as such it was hard to feel much enthusiasm for what followed, a diluted series of events which couldn't possibly live up to that stellar opening, which was no doubt the material the screenwriter used to pitch their vision in the first place. Here are 13 awesome opening scenes in otherwise terrible movies...

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