10 Greatest Opening Scenes In Sci-Fi Movie History

Often imitated but never even remotely close to duplicated, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey contains an opening scene so iconic, memories of it can be elicited with just five simple notes.

After spending a rather uncomfortable three minutes in complete darkness as the flick gradually glues you to your seat with its intense overture, "Also sprach Zarathustra" booms through the speakers as a tremendous sunrise over planet earth emerges.

And this all sets the fascinating stage for the legendary "Dawn of Man" sequence - one most recently seen inspiring the folks behind the Barbie flick.

Over the course of a bold, dialogue-less ten minute opening spell, Kubrick then takes us through the evolution of man as apes collide with big cats and their own kind before an alien monolith eventually arrives on the scene.

Not long after this eerie monolith interaction, these apes figure out how to use bones as weapons, with this world-changing discovery inevitably leading to said weapons being used against a rival tribe.

Bringing an endlessly captivating scene to its epic conclusion, one of the hominins then chucks said bone high up into the sky, with that weapon then majestically transitioning into a satellite floating through space.

And speaking of space...