10 Greatest Opening Shots From Recent Movies

No mere still image can even begin to convey the mesmerising brilliance of the opening shot to Steven Spielberg's masterfully crafted remake of West Side Story.

The film opens with a frankly insane 97-second tracking shot that cranes over the rubble of various bulldozed apartments and buildings in New York City, which a sign reveals has been carried out by the New York Housing Authority to make way for the now-iconic Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

But the shot doesn't end there - it continues to move upwards and pass over the various cranes excavating the wreckage of these former apartments, dropping down past several wrecking balls and finally stopping on a trap door, which opens as a member of the Jets emerges from it.

It's the first of several mind-melting tracking shots in the film, and an absolute "how did they do that?" technical marvel.

While it seems obvious that the shot was achieved by seamlessly combining crane shots and drone shots, the overall effect is so audacious and impressive that the technical impossibility of it is easy to forget.

For anyone doubtful that Spielberg could get even close to the meticulous craft of the 1961 original, this was a powerful rebuke from minute one, that we're in the hands of a veteran filmmaker with all the tools to improve upon a classic. And that he sure does.