Every Bond Movie Pre-Title Scene Ranked - Worst To Best
1. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
The ultimate aim for a James Bond opening scene is to shock, to thrill, and to inspire awe so that the title song begins to the sound of rapturous audience applause. The first scene of The Spy Who Loved Me has all these qualities in spades.
From one of the great bait-and-switch introductions of a Bond Girl in Agent XXX, the stage is set for a Cold War showdown as her lover Sergei Barsov tracks 007 to the snowy peaks of an Austrian mountain. There we find 007 in his natural habitat; locking lips with a bare blonde beauty.
M’s summon comes through, and the girl protests that she needs him. “So does England” is his reply; and was there ever a more perfect response for Her Majesty’s finest?
007 swiftly skis down the vertical tundra with grace and aplomb, darting and weaving across the pristine snow to evade the gunfire of his Russian attackers. Set to the low, thudding beats of Marvin Hamlisch’s disco-themed soundtrack, viewers collectively hold their breath as Bond approaches the perilous drop of the cliff’s end… but he has an ace up his sleeve.
This segment opens a bombastic Bond adventure in incredible style, with 007 cementing himself as a patriotic, cinematic superhero.
Best moment: The most expensive single movie stunt for the time concludes as Bond plummets through the open sky to nothing but the sound of the whispering wind… before his Union Jack parachute opens with the Bond Theme erupting to majestic fanfare. Nobody does it better.