This type of stuff has been discussed in the movie world before. But so what! We all know that the beginning of the movie is just as crucial as how the movie wraps itself up.
Summer blockbuster movies need to catch the audiences’ attention right from the start. With a bang! In a Blaze of Glory! The hero has to make a grand entrance! The opening scene determines whether or not the audience will be curious enough to want to see what’s going to happen next and stick around until the last part.
One of my favorite opening scenes of all time is from X-Men 2 where Nightcrawler attacks a bunch of Secret Service agents to get to the President. And who can forget the hilarious dialogue in the opening scene of Pulp Fiction?!
Last December in IMAX many of us saw the amazing 7 minutes of The Dark Night prologue (the bank robbery scene) before the prints of the movie I Am Legend. Now that THE DARK KNIGHT is opening tomorrow what do you think about other opening scenes from this summer’s blockbuster movies? Which one is your favorite?
Let me refresh your memory…
IRON MAN
The scene opens with Tony Stark in a military humvee. You can hear AC/DC music in the background and the soldiers with him wanted to take a picture with the playboy billionaire/weapons manufacturer. Then Boom, the humvee in front of them gets blown to pieces, a rocket launcher hits the one behind them too and the soldiers to his left and right are shot and killed. He gets out of the car and the next thing you know he’s laying on the ground with shrapnel as a souvenir.
SPEED RACER
You see Speed Racer in a locker room with his right foot itching to hit the gas pedal. Then it flashes back to when he was a kid in the classroom, distracted because all he could think about was racing against cartoon character race drivers. His brother Rex picked him up from school and off they go to drive on the race track. Just when they make the first jump, the scene goes back the present and Speed Racer finds himself in one of the most challenging tournaments of his career.
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN
Doctor Cornellius wakes Prince Caspian up from his sleep as danger is approaching. King Miraz’s wife just gave birth to a son, so he will have to kill the rightful heir. Prince Caspian goes into the closet and hides. The soldiers force their way into the room and he sees their failed attempt on his life. The closet leads to a secret tunnel which brings him outside the castle and he rides away into the forest while dodging arrows at the same time.
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
The opening scene takes us to Nevada in the 1950s. A bunch of free-spirited teenagers are in a car trying to entice military convoy to a quick race. Then the soldiers arrive at a secret base known as Area 51 where they shoot and kill all the guards posted at the entrance. They take a man out of the back of a vehicle. They throw him onto the ground; he stands up, walks, and picks up his big hat and puts it on his head. There he is; none other than the one and only, Indiana Jones.
THE INCREDIBLE HULK
It shows biological elements, cells and green mutations along with introducing credits of the main stars, the title and the director. You see blurred vision flashbacks of that fateful day when Bruce Banner tries his experiment that suddenly goes haywire. You see things through the eyes of Hulk. The laboratory gets wrecked and destroyed, General Thunderbolt gets hurt and Betty Ross is left unconscious as Hulk runs away.
WANTED
Mr. X visits an office and talks to the woman about an interesting bullet. The woman gets shot in the head and from across the street, on another building, a bunch of construction workers start firing at Mr. X, so he runs to the elevator. He prepares himself, counts his seconds, and bam! He runs as fast as lightning toward the window and jumps through the glass. Everything happens in slow-motion; he’s in mid-air and he shoots everybody on the other building. On target too I might add. He kills the last victim and receives a phone call from a stranger who reveals that this has all been a decoy. A bullet goes through Mr. X’s head and the sequence rewinds back to the shooter.
HANCOCK
Hobo Hancock is sleeping on a bench; drunk and careless. A kid is watching the TV screen, the news is showing a high speed chase between LAPD and a gang of Asian gangsters packing heat. The kid approaches Hancock and wakes him up. He points to the screen and implies that there are bad guys. Hancock makes fun of the kid by asking if he wants a cookie, so the kid calls him an A-hole. Hancock flies into the sky and heads toward where the action is. He hits some street signs and almost hits an airplane along the way. He lands in to the bad guys’ car and even though he politely asks them to give themselves up, they open fire and the bullets destroy his whiskey bottle. Furious, Hancock takes the car with him and flies all around Los Angeles to scare the hell out of them. He kicks the car and it lands on top of the Capitol Records tower.
My favorite opening scenes: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Hancock.
All work and no play makes the Young & Successful feel unbalanced! To rescue our overworked souls, YSN member and movie aficionado Rama Tampubolon discusses the latest hot topics and movie reviews every Thursday on Waste Time Wisely. He runs the movie review and discussion blog, Rama’s Screen, and was featured in “United 300,” which won for “Best Spoof” at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards.
