HBO Used To Have The Coolest Movie Intro

There has been a lot of chatter about HBO MAX changing to MAX. You can go on pretty much any form of social media to get those takes but I wanted to bring up something else.

HBO has always been awesome. Even before The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. In the 1980's they used have this amazing intro that would lead into a new movie airing for the first time. I was captivated by it when I was a little kid and I'd be lying if I still didn't think it was fucking awesome today.

Every element of this is just perfect. The city street going into suburbia as the music builds. The camera points to the sky where a light beckons us. It all seems mysterious until we see the giant HBO logo hurtling towards us and the familiar HBO theme in the background. If that's not good enough, the camera stops at the O where neon lights await us and that we are about to watch a world premiere presentation. 

It's the perfect intro. It gets you excited. You may see it with each premiere but it never gets old because there are so many cool details with the miniatures. Not only that but the music is so great. Back in the 1980's, HBO had a very limited movie library so when they got a new movie it was a big fucking deal. Match that with this legendary open and you wouldn't dare think of changing the channel. 

By the way, this is what my cable remote looked like when I was kid in the mid-80's.

You'd have to move that knob on the left to decide which (top, middle, bottom) channel of the group of three you pressed down. Looking at this now it's almost hard to believe this was considered technology but I swear to God, we were perfectly happy with this remote in 1986.

HBO tried to re-capture the intro magic in 2017. It fails miserably. 

The CGI is lame and it all feels like forced happiness. It exactly why so many Marvel movies don't really connect. There is no humanity with all the CGI. I also don't like that we as people make up the HBO logo. In the first clip, we go to HBO. We are not HBO. We enjoy HBO. 

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HONORABLE MENTION: If we are talking great old intros, I have to give CBS some respect. It doesn't come close to the greatness of the old HBO one but the CBS intro for specials was always quick but very effective.