The 7 Best Opening Shots in Marvel Movies, Ranked

Image via Sony Pictures Animation Published Nov 2, 2026, 8:29 AM EST Sign in to your Collider account Marvel movies are often known for their massive third-act battles. Every Avengers movie has one. Civil War had the airport battle. No Way Home united 3 generations of Spider-Men against their rogues' gallery. Those finales are what people remember and talk about for years afterward. But the openings fly under the radar, when in reality, Marvel has delivered some of the greatest openings of all time. They just get overshadowed by the big finale fights. So today, we're going over the Marvel movies that have some of the greatest opening shots. 7 ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ (2014) Image via 20th Century Studios The movie opens in a dark, dystopian future where mutants and their human allies are hunted to near extinction by the Sentinels. Years of war have turned every mutant here into a master of their abilities, and it leads to the most inventive power usage in the entire franchise. Blink (Fan Bingbing) is the standout here. She links her portals with other X-Men's powers to chain attacks together in mind-bending ways, and it's top-tier X-Men stuff. It also did a phenomenal job of establishing the Sentinels as truly menacing villains. The scene is a harrowing bloodbath, where fans watch their favorite characters get massacred by giant robots that are using the mutants' own powers against them. The scene left such a mark on fans that the Russo Brothers had no choice but to bring the Sentinels back for round two in Avengers: Doomsday. 6 ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ (2017) Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opens in the most James Gunn way it possibly could. A huge battle rages against a multi-dimensional, eight-limbed space monster, set to Electric Light Orchestra’s "Mr. Blue Sky." But the camera isn't on the fight at all. It stays on Baby Groot, panning around him as he dances to the song while the rest of the team fights in the background, just slightly out of focus. The most dangerous thing in the galaxy is trying to eat the team, but the movie couldn’t care less, and neither could the audience. All eyes are on a tiny tree bopping along to the music, having the best time of his life. Mid-fight, Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) yells, “Groot, get out of the way, you’re going to get hurt!” and he turns around and just waves at her, with absolutely nothing going on in that little head of his except vibes. Then he fixates on a space bug flying around and tries to eat it. Rocket Raccoon rushes over, yells at him, and makes him spit it out in disgust. This entire sequence was pure, unadulterated joy, and did a phenomenal job of reintroducing the family dynamic of this team. 5 ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ (2018) Image via Disney Infinity War opens inside the decimated Asgardian refugee ship, which holds whatever was left of the Asgardians. Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) walks among the dead bodies and delivers a speech about salvation. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the strongest Avenger, lies defeated. Thanos (Josh Brolin) asks Loki (Tom Hiddleston) for the Tesseract in exchange for Thor's life. Loki tries an illusion to stab Thanos in one last heroic act, but Thanos sees right through it and snaps his neck. Then the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), the wildcard we all expected to be the best match for Thanos, bursts out and gets a few hits in. But Thanos easily overpowers him in hand-to-hand combat and beats him so badly that Hulk is scared to come out for the rest of the movie. Then, Thanos takes the Space Stone, kills Heimdall (Idris Elba), and teleports away while the ship gets obliterated. Those first few minutes paid off years of build-up and established Thanos as the strongest villain the MCU had ever seen. And it also set the grim tone for the rest of the movie, where for the first time it felt like anyone could die. 4 ‘Iron Man’ (2008) Image via Marvel Studios Iron Man opens on a desolate desert landscape, followed by a US military Humvee convoy kicking up dust while AC/DC's "Back in Black" plays. Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) sits in the back seat with a drink, cracking jokes with the soldiers escorting him. He brags about his lifestyle, takes pictures with them, and is completely unfazed by the war zone around him. Then the convoy is ambushed. The vehicles around them begin exploding, and their Humvee gets riddled with bullets and taken down. Tony tries to hide behind a rock, only for a Stark Industries missile to land right next to him and detonate. In mere minutes, Iron Man introduces the brash genius billionaire playboy fans knew from the comics and sets up the origin story. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which MCU Character Is Your Best Friend? Steve Rogers · Tony Stark · Peter Parker · Shuri Pick where you meet, what they text you at two in the morning, what they hand you on your birthday and what the two of you keep arguing about. Four very different people are waiting on the other side: the one who never leaves, the one who is exhausting and worth it, the one who replies in four seconds flat, and the one who will roast you and then fix your life. 🛡️Steve Rogers(Captain America) 🛠️Tony Stark(Iron Man) 🕸️Peter Parker(Spider-Man) 🐆Shuri(Black Panther) FIND YOUR FRIEND → 01 Where do the two of you meet? Nobody in this universe makes a friend somewhere normal. AIn a gym at six in the morning, where the two of you are the only people awake. BAt a party you were not really invited to, where they talked to you for an hour. CQueuing for coffee in Queens while something loud happens six blocks away. DIn a lab you had no clearance for, and they decided to let you stay. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Your phone lights up at two in the morning. What does it say? You find out what kind of friend somebody is by what they send at that hour. ANothing at all, because they are already outside, having heard you had a rough week. BFour hundred words about an idea they just had, plus a schematic you cannot read. CAn apology for texting so late, followed by a question that could have waited. DA meme aimed directly at you, sent with no context and absolutely no mercy. NEXT QUESTION → 03 It is your birthday. What do they hand you? The present is never really about the present. ASomething small they made themselves, handed over slightly awkwardly. BSomething absurd and expensive that fixes a problem you mentioned once, months ago. CA gift that clearly took months of saving, wrapped badly, with a long note inside. DAn upgrade to something you already owned, installed without asking you first. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What does a good Saturday with them actually look like? Superheroes have days off, and this is how they spend them. AA long walk, an old diner and a conversation you had both been avoiding. BWhatever they decide at noon, which somehow ends with you in another country. CBad takeaway and an old film on their couch, interrupted about eleven times. DTwo hours in a workshop, arguing about whether your idea would even work. NEXT QUESTION → 05 You have your worst day in years. What do they do about it? This is the part of a friendship nobody puts in the trailer. AThey sit next to you and say almost nothing until you are ready to talk. BThey throw money, noise and three terrible plans at it until one of them helps. CThey turn up with food, refuse to leave, and then check on you every day for a month. DThey tell you the honest version of it, which nobody else was willing to say. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Every real friendship has one fight it keeps having. What is yours? The thing you argue about is usually the thing you like most about them. AThey take risks with their own life that they would never let me take with mine. BThey vanish into work for weeks and expect me to be completely fine about it. CThey keep apologising for things that were never even slightly their fault. DThey are three steps ahead of me and do not always bother explaining why. NEXT QUESTION → 07 The alarm goes off and you are both in the field. What is your job? You get one role on the team, and it says a lot about who you want next to you. AHolding the front line so that everybody behind me gets out of the building. BDoing the thing nobody has a plan for yet, at speed, and inventing the rest. CGetting people off the street quietly before anyone realises we were there. DRunning everything from a screen and talking the rest of them through it. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Ten years on, what do you want this friendship to be? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who picks up the phone. AExactly the same, because some people are simply permanent and that is the appeal. BLoud and complicated and worth every bit of the trouble it caused along the way. CStill the person I look out for, and still the first one who checks on me. DTwo people who keep each other sharp and never once get sentimental about it. REVEAL MY BEST FRIEND → The Line Is Ringing Your Best Friend Is…Four people, four completely different ideas of what it means to have somebody in your corner. Here is who picked up, what they would ask of you, and what you would get back. Steve RogersYou want the friend who does not leave. Steve is the one who turns up at the door without being asked, who remembers what you said you were worried about, and who has never once made you audition for his attention. His entire character is built on a single sentence, which is that he will not abandon somebody just because it has become expensive to keep them. He is far funnier than people give him credit for, and the joke is almost always at his own expense rather than yours. The friendship comes with a cost, since being close to Steve means being dragged into fights that were never yours and being glad about it later. You would get a friend who tells you the hard thing to your face and then defends you to everybody else in the room. Tony StarkYou want the friend who is genuinely exhausting and completely worth it. Tony will forget your birthday, then build you something at four in the morning that you did not know you needed, and hand it over as though it were nothing. He is bad at saying the warm thing out loud, so he says it in hardware instead, which is why everybody around him ends up with upgraded everything. Being his friend means putting up with the disappearing, the deflecting and the jokes that arrive about ninety seconds too early. What you get in return is somebody who will spend an unreasonable amount of money and effort on a problem the moment it becomes yours. He is the loudest person in the room and the one most likely to be quietly panicking about all of you. Peter ParkerYou want the friend who replies in four seconds and apologises for it. Peter is earnest in a way that is almost unfashionable, and he will take on far more than he can carry rather than admit that he is struggling. He is the only one on this list who needs looking after as much as he looks after you, and that balance is exactly what makes it a real friendship. Nobody in the MCU is better at the small stuff, from remembering the thing you were nervous about to showing up with food you did not ask for. Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrived in July 2026 and put him back where he works best, which is broke, local and carrying the weight on his own. You would get a friend who is sincerely, embarrassingly happy for you when something goes right, with no edge to it at all. ShuriYou want the friend who insults your shoes, fixes your phone and then quietly rearranges your entire life for the better. Shuri does not do soft reassurance, and that is the reason you would believe her when she says you are fine. She is the smartest person in almost any room she walks into and treats that as a reason to tease you rather than a reason to lecture you. The teasing is the affection. When Shuri stops making fun of you, something has gone seriously wrong and you should probably ask her about it. Her story is the one on this list that goes somewhere genuinely dark, which is what turned her from a scene stealer into the emotional centre of the films. You would get a friend who never pities you, never softens the truth, and never once lets you take yourself too seriously. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 ‘X2: X-Men United’ (2003) Image via 20th Century Studios Over two decades later, the opening of X2 remains one of the best action sequences in superhero movies. It starts with a recitation of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address from 1861: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies." From there, we see a mysterious man stalking his way through the halls of the White House, walking past portraits of former Presidents who all survived or fell to assassination attempts. The camera follows him through the POVs of security guards and security cameras. Then a guard asks what he's doing, and a forked tail rises from behind the man's back, and we find out it was Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) all along. He pounces on the guard, Mozart's "Requiem in D Minor" kicks in, and we're off on a wild ride. Nightcrawler teleports through the hallways of the West Wing like a demonic jackrabbit and takes out Secret Service agents one after another. He gets all the way to the President, but gets shot before he can finish the job and is forced to teleport away. He leaves behind a dagger that reads "Mutant Freedom Now." 2 ‘Blade’ (1998) Image via New Line Cinema Blade begins with a guy who is led into a secret underground nightclub hidden inside a meatpacking plant. It's a gothic party vibe, with strobe lights making it hard to see and a heavy techno track blasting in the background. While dancing, he feels a mysterious drop of liquid hit his hand, and it turns out to be blood. As the techno builds to its peak drop, the ceiling sprinklers go off and start spraying blood everywhere. The crowd erupts in ecstasy, and everyone shows off their fangs, revealing that everyone in the room is a vampire. It was an insane reveal that caught everyone off guard. And right after, Blade (Wesley Snipes) makes the coolest entrance ever, dressed in all black, and starts slicing vampires apart with razor-sharp precision. 1 ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ (2023) Image via Sony Pictures Releasing Into the Spider-Verse had a phenomenal comic book-style opening that recapped decades of Spidey history, from radioactive spiders to emo dance moves and so-so popsicles. That left Across the Spider-Verse with a tough act to follow, but it not only matched it, some might say it even surpassed it. The film begins with a hyper-stylized, colorful narration from Gwen, made to look like her thoughts while she drums. On visual quality alone, it tops the first movie. Then the words start landing. Miles was bitten by a radioactive spider, and he's not the only one. Now he's on his own, and he's not the only one. She didn't want to hurt him, but she did. If you're watching for the first time, you think she's talking about the end of Into the Spider-Verse, where they all leave him behind. Only after you've seen the full movie do you realize it wasn't a recap at all. It's actually from the end of this film, when she recruits her own Spider team, so the movie basically starts at the end. The sequence even shows off major plot points. You see Miguel explaining the Spider-Verse to Miles, Miles and Gwen upside down on the clock tower, and Miles cutting Gwen's web. You even see the fully powered-up Spot and all of the Captain deaths. All of it is right there in the opening sequence!