4. Watchmen
There have been few films in recent years that have been as divisive as 2009s Watchmen. Some argue that it is a brilliant adaption of one of the most famous comic books of all time, other argue that it was too faithful and the movie suffered for it. Most people however, tend to agree that it started off with a bang. Following on from the very well done death of The Comedian, the Bob Dylan classic The Times They Are a-Changin' starts up and we are treated to a credit sequence in the form of a montage, which does a fine job of setting up the world that the film is set in. The montage shows an alternate history of the United States of America, in a world populated by superheroes. We see this stories version of the golden age of heroes, in the form of The Minutemen who are celebrated as heroes by the public until the culmination of the Second World War, at which point things begin to take a turn for the worse. This is the point at which things get really interesting and the viewer can truly begin to understand how the world ends up like it did. The heroes begin to scatter for various reason some through death, other lose their sanity or choose to retire.
As the years go by and the Bob Dylan song suggest things are changing and we can see how the presence of super powered beings affects this alternate world; Kennedys assassination, the victor of the Vietnam war and Nixons final fate as the president all go differently in one way or another but all these changes still result in tensions with the Russians, vigilantes are outlawed and the golden age is well and truly over. This montage was a masterstroke; it successfully managed to tell a substantial amount of story in the space of a few minutes and I find it hard to imagine it would have worked with another choice of song. Say what you want about the rest of the film but the first 10 minutes are pure cinematic gold.