10 Best Opening Credits Sequences In Movie History

4. Alien

If there's one thing that Ridley Scott's Alien is great at, it's building up a sense of dread, terror and foreboding. The entire movie is a perfect advocate for the effects of a slow burn, and this feel started right from the opening few minutes and never let up.

Just like Memento, the opening title sequence here is simple, yet hugely effective. The camera pans slowly across the vast, empty depths of space while an eerily transfixing score draws your attention and doesn't give it back. At the top of the screen, the title of the movie gradually reveals itself piece by piece, exactly like the monster does in the movie itself.

This opening shot was Scott's way of showing us just how massive space is and just how isolated, alone and vulnerable the crew of the Nostromo really are - and this, combined with the slow reveal of the word 'Alien', provided a feeling of uncertainty and plain stress - this terrifying, murderous beast could literally be anywhere out there and you'd never see it coming until it fully revealed itself.

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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!