Some super cool fantasy openings!

The opening to a fantasy film has to be extremely engaging. The audience has to be introduced to the setting and narrative world in the opening, since the genre implies that there are elements in the film's narrative world that doesn't match with ours. These are a couple of films with openings that immediately grab the viewers' attention.

The Avengers

This movie opening does a great job of alluding to conflict. The beginning already shows the audience a glimpse of this magical resource that is clearly being coveted by many. Through the immediate showing of the Tesseract, the audience can assume that there will be a lot of focus on this, and that it will probably be fought over. It's pretty obvious, considering its a glowing blue box of sparkly gas. In the rest of the scene, the power of the Tesseract is enforced through all the security we see around it. This opening really shows the audience a glimpse of whats going to happen, and the state of emergency thrusts the audience into it very quickly.

Star Wars

The iconic yellow text crawl in this opening establishes the context of the film, as it does in every other one in the series. Because the audience is immersed in such a fantastical, different universe, it is important that we are told some information in order to get a general knowledge of what we are about to see. The ships flying through space dazzles the audience and we then see Darth Vader. Through his impactful entrance, we can already tell that not only is he the villain, but he has a lot of power. This scene sets the basis for not only the entire movie, but the rest of them as well.

Shrek

The storybook portion of the scene explains to the audience, again, the background of the film. We are told about the curse placed on the princess, which alludes to the conflict that will be addressed shortly after. Then, we meet Shrek. In going through his disgusting, solitary swamp and watching him in what we can assume is a regular day in the life, the audience very quickly gets a firm understanding of who this ogre is. 

Coco

This beautiful opening not only establishes the background, main character, and conflict, it also is a great portrayal of the culture of the film. Miguel explains his family history and the main conflict, which is his passion for music amidst his family's hatred for it. The use of storytelling through the hung decorations in the beginning make for a more interesting way of showing the past, and further enforce a 'story' theme to it. Then, as we see Miguel go throughout his neighborhood, we get a feel of  a typical Mexican community and its' people.