10 Movies That Peaked In Their Opening Scene

8. Watchmen

The Movie

Zack Snyder's Watchmen is certainly one of the more divisive movies on this list, but whatever you make of it, it's tough deny Snyder's ambitions in attempting to adapt Alan Moore's "unfilmable" graphic novel to the big screen.

Though privy to most of the pros and cons of any Snyder joint - it's visually lavish and well-cast, but also overlong and a bit tone-deaf - Watchmen offers up a unique spin on the superhero movie formula, warts and all.

The Opening Scene

Watchmen begins with The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) watching a series of news reports which cement the socio-political climate of the film's alternate universe, after which his home is broken into by a masked assailant.

A brutal fight scene follows, concluding with the former superhero being thrown to his death, which dovetails seamlessly into a riveting opening title sequence set to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin."

The titles chronicle the evolution of superheroes throughout the 20th century, while further crystallising the film's fundamentally altered politics (namely JFK being assassinated by none other than The Comedian himself).

It gets the movie off to one hell of a start, and one that, sadly, the rest of it hasn't got a hope in hell of matching.

Watchmen is certainly a good movie, but its strongest ideas, both stylistically and thematically, are largely crammed into the first 11 minutes of Snyder's 163-minute epic.