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Lord of War - I feel kind of bad ranking this so low, because I do really like it a lot. The problem I'm having is that I consider it more of an "opening title sequence" rather than an actual "opening scene", if that makes sense. This would score very well in the other category!

Touch of Evil - Technically well done, especially for the time period, but does it draw me in and make me want to watch the movie? Not really. Even though we know there's a bomb in the car, I never feel any real tension here. Between the music choice and the cringey dialogue, the scene just feels corny to me.

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Ok so I pretty much detest musicals. This is clearly a very well-crafted scene, and the animation is great, but the song just annoys me. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but there ya go.

2001: A Space Odyssey - Everybody knows this scene. It is one of (if not the) most iconic opening scenes of all time, and has been parodied to death. But watching a bunch of apes fart around in the dirt for 10 minutes just doesn't really do it for me, sorry. Fantastic use of music tho.

Back to the Future - I've never really thought of this scene as being particularly memorable in any way, but it admittedly does do a great job of setting up the rest of the film. I dunno, I've just never been a big BttF fan, so it's hard for me to get too excited about it.

Saving Private Ryan - I had trouble ranking this because the scene itself would definitely win this category, but I just can't get past the fact that it's not technically the first scene of the movie. Putting it either first or last feels slightly unfair, so I'm plonking it here. I realise that might feel like a cop out, and it is, but shrug.

The Matrix - Very good opening. We don't really know what's going on or who these people are, but we definitely want to see where this is going. This was also the birth of what we now know as 'bullet time'. I still remember seeing this in the theater as a teenager and being blown away.

Drive - Just before we started this draft, I happened to rewatch this movie. I saw it when it first came out and didn't remember being too impressed by it, but this time around, I loved it. The opening scene really hooked me, and was also the catalyst for me choosing this category for the draft.

Inglourious Basterds - We get treated to Tarantino's trademark great dialogue, and a creeping sense of tension for what's about to come. Christoph Waltz goes from charming to terrifying in the blink of an eye in what is a truly great performance. And let's not forget that hilariously oversized pipe!

Raiders of the Lost Ark - Great scene. We've never met Indy before, and we're just thrown right in the middle of one of his adventures. By the end of the scene, we know exactly who this guy is and what this movie is gonna be - a damn fun ride.

Tron

typical of disney films, this one actually made more money from merchandise than it did from the poor results i had at the box office and while it made money, the film was considered a financial disapointment

i want to be clear that all these submissions were excellent, so I thus really need to nitpick heavily so things like "box office disappointment" are definitely going to be held against it in judgement

i never heard of this film until college when i saw it get spoofed by family guy and when i didn't get the reference all my high friends were like "omg you haven't seen tron, tron is awesome" well... they were clearly both high as balls when they said that and also thinking about their memories of it - because i finally watched tron a few years ago to see what it was all about and my god did it suck - every single inch of that film sucked

yes it had some people who loved it and become something people clung onto for so long they made a sequel much later, but the film still sucked and if you take away all the newfangled gimmicky cgi then it really falls flat on its own merits

fun fact i discovered while doing my research for this, the academy refused to consider tron for any
special effect awards because they considered using computers cheating 😀

the film is groundbreaking as well, they invented 3d rendering technologies in the process of making the film and this film is what inspired the man who founded pixar just what they could do with computer animation

also working against the film is that some still view it highly, Boston Globe ranked it as the 13th best cult film in 2010 and AFI put it in their top 10 all time scifi list (which is insane in my opinion the film isn't even top 100 best scifi - i'd rather watch ice pirates than tron again

Revenge of the Nerds - this is a great entry, when it first came in I thought it'd be an easy winner.

This movie was considered so tame that it was one of the first films not intended for children I recall watching which wasn't one my parents owned nor rented. How did I come across it? Why it was available for rent at my local school library. A film with rape and spying on naked women was in a high school library and when a young kid of about 11ish rents it nobody bats an eye and the movie didn't have any sinister reputation so my parents saw me get the film and had no idea that perhaps they may not want me watching it.

I loved it. Amazing film. Carried very fond memories of it and referenced it regularly throughout life. Reading up on the wiki just now as a refresher I got somewhat jealous to learn that some enterprising students at Uconn founded their own tri lamb fraternity in 2006 and that's something I wish I had done when I was in school.

It got me thinking more and more take away basic plot points of rape and spying and it kind of sticks out there as just another cheap comedy of its era. It wasn't even in the top 10 grossing films of its time. Never held a #1 spot in the box office nor received any award nominations - nobody really took it that seriously at the time.

So I started this writeup with it in 1st place as a place holder, but then moved it back one spot to 2nd place because I recalled another which I favor for 1st in the initial pre-writeup rankings. But then I began to think that this wasn't about which films couldn't get made today but rather which haven't held up, and I'd argue that take away the metoo cultural shift, it's still very much the same low brow irreverent comedy today that it used to be

And what really, really penalized this one is that there is an active effort to remake it. There was previously an effort a few years back from the peopel who did workaholics and when that fell apart seth macfarlane has now decided to try to remake the film

so the fact they are actively people like seth macfarlane, who i love, who are going to probably spoof the stupid rape/spying plot of the 80s makes me think perhaps this does still hold up with a cultural shift

but, having said all of that, it's 100% an awful film based on actions of the characters - but we're not judging character morals, we're judging how the film stands up today vs when it first aired

also probably suffers a bit because i really enjoyed this film when i saw it as a kid

American Beauty - while I agree this film does not deserve the insanely high accolades it received it's still quite good - i think if you were to play it today in front of a new audience it'd get fairly well received

having said that, i vividly remember the hype that came attached to this film and how when i finally saw it, it did not disappoint

i also remember seeing again a few years back and thinking it wasn't quite what i thought it was at the time - this is a movie which if it came out today, i'm sure it'd make money, but I doubt it'd be talked about so widely and receive so much praise

Sixth Sense - another one which at first glance hard disagreed with

The writeup did not start well calling a beloved movie of mine a big pos. I really loved this movie and have watched it several times so I felt like it was a lot more than just a twist ending.

My instinct was to disqualify you from the draft based on this pick. Having said that, you've easily put in the most thought-out and researched picks for my category. And, you're frankly not wrong. The movie is dumb if you think about. It's incredibly stupid and very little makes sense under close scrutiny. But let me tell you mr booger, it's called movie magic for a reason.

Having said that, you're not wrong. Especially when you look at things like best picture nomination and then see the other films which didn't get nominated. This is only the second one I've reviewed thus far. I don't think it'll finish dead last, but that's where I'm leaving for now until i find some worse entries and we'll see where it finishes.

I almost put it at 6th but figured that would be too on the nose 😀

Birth of a Nation
This one perhaps I'm being too rough on, I haven't seen it

Having said that, this film was brought up and mentioned in both my history textbooks in high school and my film studies classes in college. So it was clearly a huge zeitgeist of its time.

But, as we established with the nerds, for judging this, this is not so much for cultural norms which have changed but on film itself. I feel like this one is extra difficult to judge due to its age and being a silent film, frankly, I don't think many silent films would hold up well today

and i watched some clips to get an idea of it

take away the monstrosity of it and it actually holds up very well, i found it very gripping and engrossed by it, something i did not expect

however, given how this was once considered by many to be the greatest film ever made during its time and grossing a predicted 50-100 million - it can't go anywhere but down - it took 25 years until gone with the wind came out before it lost its spot as highest grossing film of all time - it survived the first 12 years of talking films before finally getting overtaken

but what killed it for me was that the library of congress entered it into the archive as recently as 1994

just like with nerds, i agree with this is a heartbeat that this film in no shape nor form holds up today, but i think the quality of the product itself holds it up a bit

in theory i think this should finish last place because the horrible tropes of racism aside, it holds up well today

however, it still gets a near podium simply because omfg one of the biggest films in the history of the universe is about what that film is about and like... come one

Forest Gump - at first glance I thought this was a wild pick, even when searching for the post now to do a writeup i see it mentioned as evidence as for why 1994 was such a good year for movies.

But I think xander did a reasonably good job in his writeup defending the who what how and why it all and even says it's a decent movie. This was an instant last place for me the second i saw it but his writeup convinced me he is indeed correct that while a decent film - it in now way shape or form retains the insanely good reviews it had received at first airing. Especially today, where we live in a world of AI generative deepfakes and having holograms of dead singers perform on stage - i feel like if this film came out today it would receive a lot more negative reviews and mixed audience reception

i loved this when it came out but rewatched it a few years back all the mystique and allure was gone and it was just an awkwardly fumbled together set of scenes of historical people and places

Avatar

This was the big one where I was like, wait a second, that's a good film, how dare you. This is a draft of ration and logic and not a player haterz ball.

But then I thought more about it being the highest grossing film ever. Yet despite that, does not stay with you. I remember seeing the sequel recently and while that was another film that was very fun to watch, it too is not a film that stuck with me and the attempts at callbacks and references were all forced because i couldn't remember any of the original. In fact, what I recalled wasn't the original, but that how it basically followed the plot of Pocahontas in space - literally everything. Even the tree and all.

Like the original, seeing the sequel was an incredible treat and i loved watching it. But it doesn't hold up once you get past that initial wow factor.

there's plenty of films that did not enjoy while watching in theaters, this is not one of them, this one i loved watching and forgot about immediately after - others which i did not enjoy, like killers of the flower moon, which i couldn't wait to end, have stuck with me and stayed in my mind with regular mental thoughts and callbacks, that's how a film stands up

great movie, but does not hold up as a film

Porky's - unlike revenge of the nerds, this film was not just another moderately successful film but as aaronk mentioned, the 5th highest grossing film of the year, just below Rocky III and ahead of said well known films as Wrath of Kha, 48 Hours, Poltergeist, etc

*6th highest grossing by box office mojo which includes on golden pond which came out in december in their list but wiki doesn't

Porky's made more than double what Rambo First Blood and almost quadruple what tron and bladrunner earned

i never heard of tron until I was in college and only because of family guy spoofing it - i knew about porky's very early on in my life as it was one of the film's we'd try to get older brothers to acquire for us to watch on sleepovers

porky's was the #1 film in america for an astounding 8 weeks in 1982

i was born in 1982, so it was obviously not something i was there in the moment for, yet even a decade later it was still a hot commodity to view at sleepovers

like this was considered peak comedy at the time and watching it now it feels like satire

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