9 Lame Opening Scenes In Otherwise Great Movies
Some opening scenes need a second draft.
Sometimes the beginning of things are very difficult. Not all movies can have an epic scroll like in Star Wars or a cool elf talking about war like in LOTR. There are a lot of lame movies out there and a much smaller amount of cool movies. But sometimes the two crash into each other, making a movie with a mix of good and bad things.
Luckily, a lot of times the film only sags in one small part, but that part is always the same -- the very beginning. Because, again, beginning things are hard, with endings being the only harder part.
It's like since the habit of putting credits before films disappeared directors have no idea what to do with their first five minutes. Uh, a scene from a different movie? A dream? Some boring infodump? Yes to all three - sometimes in the same flick. So we end up with an opening scene that would have been better off being left on the cutting room floor.
Maybe it's to give people time to get popcorn?
9. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Mission: Impossible Fallout manages to achieve the rare twofer of being a recent Tom Cruise movie that doesn't suck, and a Mission: Impossible film that doesn't make you want to go free climbing.
It also features more nuclear weapons than the Cold War. But the film doesn't even wait to start to dive into the nuclear explosions. Right at the top, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt has a dream about his hated enemy officiating a wedding between him and his old love interest, who he left to keep safe. During the dream, a huge nuclear explosion goes off, killing him and his love interest.
What makes this scene even weirder is that this baddie is the main enemy of this film and his major plot is to detonate a bomb that will kill Ethan Hunt and his ex-love interest. Does this mean Ethan Hunt is psychic? Yes, obviously.
This film's first scene is a terrible one-two of heavy-handed foreshadowing and ludicrious dream sequence. The rest of the movie is cool stunts, helicopter hijacking, and Simon Pegg jokes. But then there's this weird bit at the beginning.
It's like eating your vegetables before getting to see a rad Mission Impossible movie.