10 Best Opening Credits Sequences In Movie History

8. Batman (1989)

Nobody really talks about the opening credits of Tim Burton's 1989 Bat-flick, but their importance to the rest of the film cannot be understated. Besides serving as an introduction to that epic Danny Elfman score, this sequence introduced audiences to a much darker tone and a much darker Batman universe, setting itself far, far apart from the camp, vibrant Adam West outings of the 1960's.

Without these credits, we'd have been flung right into a Batman movie that - at the time - would've felt incredibly jarring and unusual. The titles gave audiences a few minutes to adjust to an unfamiliar, sombre superhero-tone, using slow, swooping camera movements and shadowed environments to reflect the way this new Batman stalks his prey and strikes fear into the hearts of Gotham's criminals.

The sequence concludes by zooming out and revealing that the structure we've been gliding through is a Bat-symbol, with Elfman's accompanying score swelling to a grand conclusion - a perfect illustration of Burton's movie as a whole, which was both a personal tale detailing Batman's vendetta against crime and an epic, sweeping story about an entire city coming under fire.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!