Favourite Opening Movie Theme Tune

In a recent poll conducted by The Radio Times 'Star Wars;A New Hope (1977)' has been voted as having 'the best opening movie theme tune of all time'.The top 5 films that topped the poll was as follows;

1)Star Wars;A New Hope (1977) by John Williams
2)Lord of the Rings;Fellowship of the Ring (2001) by Howard Shore
3)Harry Potter;The Philosopher's Stone (2001) by John Williams
4)Jurassic Park (1993) by John Williams
5)The Good,The Bad & The Ugly (1966) by Ennio Morricone

I've compiled a list of my Top 5 Favourite & most iconic opening movie theme tunes below & wondered what other people's favourites were.Remember I want to keep this strictly as movie (not tv series) opening theme tunes (when the starting credits are rolling) as there is another thread for favourite songs on movie soundtracks. What's yours.

1)Superman (1978) by John Williams
2)Terminator 2;Judgement Day (1991) by Brad Fiedel
3)Top Gun (1986) by H.Faltermeyer/S.Stevens
4)Back to the Future (1985) by Alan Silvestri
5)Rocky (1976) 'Gonna Fly Now' by Bill Conti

A few other crackers;

Jaws (1975) by John Williams
Indiana Jones;Raiders of Lost Ark (1981) by John Williams
Magnificent Seven (1960) by Elmer Bernstein
Halloween (1978) by John Carpenter
Rocky 3 (1982) 'Eye of the Tiger' by Survivor.

ill add The End by the Doors-used on my favourite movie Apocalypse Now

(01-03-2019 21:51 )Jack the Nipper Wrote:  Remember I want to keep this strictly as movie (not tv series) opening theme tunes (when the starting credits are rolling) as there is another thread for favourite songs on movie soundtracks. What's yours.

1)Superman (1978) by John Williams
2)Terminator 2;Judgement Day (1991) by Brad Fiedel
3)Top Gun (1986) by H.Faltermeyer/S.Stevens
4)Back to the Future (1985) by Alan Silvestri
5)Rocky (1976) 'Gonna Fly Now' by Bill Conti

A few other crackers;

Jaws (1975) by John Williams
Indiana Jones;Raiders of Lost Ark (1981) by John Williams
Magnificent Seven (1960) by Elmer Bernstein
Halloween (1978) by John Carpenter
Rocky 3 (1982) 'Eye of the Tiger' by Survivor.

"Where Eagles Dare" (1968) - as the aircraft taxis along the runway and zooms up over the camera: military snare drum beats getting louder and louder and then the orchestra kicks menacingly in to full gear as the plane climbs up over the snowy mountains.
I think John Williams might have borrowed a few lines from some of the pages in Ron Goodwin's book here ?
That theme pretty much plays through most of the ( ridiculous ? ) action scenes in the movie too - the stacatto orchestra stings seem to mimic machine-gun fire as Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood blaze away at German motorbikes and cars and blow them up with ease (but barely get a scratch themselves, just why were Nazis such very bad shots ? )

"Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan" - James Horner's theme is probably my favourite of the original movies, so good it was recycled with very little variation for the sequel "The Search For Spock"; Jerry Goldsmith's strident anthem from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture"(1979) is equally memorable but became a bit over-familiar for me, from its reuse as the "Next Generation" TV series theme tune.

(The less said about the music for "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" the better, not nearly good enough. I defy anyone to listen to the title music to the original (1978) cartoon movie version of "The Lord of The Rings" and tell me that the composer Leonard Rosenman wasn't recycling himself just a little bit ? The producers of "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" must have felt the same, as they reached for Jerry Goldsmith's theme again for that one )


I'm going to be a bit annoying and pedantic and point out that the opening music in Raiders of The Lost Ark is actually quite solemn, moody and subdued, while they're walking through the jungle towards the South American temple - it certainly isn't the famous Indiana Jones theme. It is, imho, amongst the least memorable bits of music in a film stuffed with good music ?
(It isn't even the creepy/haunting but slowly transforming into majestic theme that you get in the buried Egyptian temple when Indy is fiddling about with the staff and the crystal, which is superb.)

In fact, I don't think any of the Indiana Jones movies have the famous theme over their opening credits ? but they do over their closing credits.

I was going to nominate the music by Scottish band "Big Country" that's used in "Restless Natives" (1985) , with their patented "electric guitars imitating bagpipes" sound (shouldn't work, but it does) ; but then I just popped the DVD on to remind myself of it; only to discover that the sequence I'm thinking of - as the Clown and Wolfman walk up to their motorbike through the car park of their housing estate doesn't actually happen until about 10 minutes into the film and isn't over the titles at all. So that one's out the window.
(Still a good film though )

There's so many great tunes from opening scenes in movies and this is just a few that I'm trying to recollect:

Such an iconic tune - Escape From New York




Batman (1989) starring Micheal Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger....tho it does sound a bit dramatic, this particular music intro to any Batman movie has always stuck with me, great score imo.



....and finally this may seem like a lazy option but nevertheless she still sounds awesome

Moreso the entire intro credits sequence here than the music for Enter the Void. Pretty cool. Very visually intense movie, not necessarily an enjoyable watch and is needlessly long, but still worth seeing just for the visuals.





And Kavinsky from Drive's opening scene




Guess these aren't exactly theme songs, are they? Too late

(01-03-2019 21:51 )Jack the Nipper Wrote:  In a recent poll conducted by The Radio Times 'Star Wars;A New Hope (1977)' has been voted as having 'the best opening movie theme tune of all time'

I guess it's hard to imagine, in today's world where pretty much every single one of the rash of comic book/fantasy/sci-fi/superhero movies has a classical orchestral score as a standard, that in 1977 the default setting for sci-fi would probably still have been tuneless electronica, trying to sound futuristic.
John Williams's "retro" classical sound, harking back to classic Hollywood really was quite a mould-breaker at the time.
It is also supposedly the only part of the original version of the film that actually exceeded George Lucas's expectations.

(03-10-2019 20:41 )M-L-L Wrote:  I guess it's hard to imagine, in today's world where pretty much every single one of the rash of comic book/fantasy/sci-fi/superhero movies has a classical orchestral score as a standard, that in 1977 the default setting for sci-fi would probably still have been tuneless electronica, trying to sound futuristic.

Let's see... (starts about 3m20 in):

A good adrenaline blaster (and not too bad a film either):