10 Best Opening Movie Scenes Of All Time (According To Reddit)

7. Back To The Future

Heath Ledger Joker The Dark Knight bank heist opening
Universal Pictures

Sticking with Spielberg (who's on producing duties here) but with a significant shift in tone, the intro sequence in the original Back To The Future is a textbook example of smart visual storytelling.

Though it's just a single shot that pans across a room, the amount of information it conveys is remarkable. For starters, all the clocks and crazy inventions tell us that Doc is a bit of a nutter, but that's not even the half of it: there's the newscaster describing the stolen plutonium, when is then revealed to be in this very room; there's the shot of Marty putting Doc's key back underneath the rug, establishing that the two of them have a very close relationship; there's the homemade dog feeder, which is just bloody cool; and that's not to mention the slew of minor details, like the newspaper cutout describing Brown Mansion's destruction, or the sight of a man hanging off a clock's arms... foreshadowing alert.

And who could forget Marty blowing up that giant speaker, before uttering one of the cheesiest, yet most fitting quips of all time: "Whoa... rock 'n' roll."

This one is far from an obvious choice when discussing the best movie openings, and though it might not be showy or action-packed, it lays a lot of foundations for the movie's story in a creative, efficient way.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.