10 Worst Opening Scenes In Otherwise Perfect Movies

3. The Wedding - License To Kill

The Hateful Eight
Eon Productions

As a general rule, the pre-title sequence of a given Bond movie usually signals how good the movie is going to be overall. Quantum of Solace's opening scene is a incoherently-edited mess, just like the film itself, whilst Diamonds Are Forever - a very bad Bond movie - involves a goofy fight scene and a horrible moment of franchise misogyny.

License to Kill's opening scene is an exception to this rule, however: the film has a really naff beginning, but the rest of the movie is still great.

The scene in question has Bond and his buddy Felix Leiter on their way to the latter's wedding ceremony, only to find themselves caught in a major alteration on route. After an action sequence, the pair end up arriving to the wedding on-time - via parachute, no less. Cue the admittedly awesome opening titles.

The way the whole thing plays is really goofy and - when compared to the rest of the film, which is actually kind of dark - it feels like the start of a film in totally different franchise. Naked Gun or something. I'm all for crazy opening sequences, but something about Timothy Dalton arriving from out of the sky with a big grin on his face makes me really angry.

Contributor

Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.