Now here's one our friend Roger would approve of. He himself heralded it as a Great Movie.
There is a reason I have used this black frame as the first part of the opening shot. This opening shot was accompanied by a voiceover by Kiefer Sutherland that began with the words "First, there was darkness." As such, I assign a certain significance to the completely dark frame. However, the voiceover was a studio imposition that the director never wanted, and a Director's Cut is on its way. So from here on, let us pretend that the voiceover never existed.
A starry, nighttime sky. Music gives an air of trepidation.
And we move down slowly,
into the clouds, into uncertainty,
and we begin to see the details of a dark city.
Down, down, and further down, showing more details of the skyscrapers and other structures.
We begin to see ground-level objects, like a street lamp.
And now we see a man in a coat and a brimmed hat, a quintessential noir image. What sinister deeds will this man do?
He walks toward us with an uneven gate, and then we see a twisted face.
