This article contrasts the opening sequences of cinematic serial narratives from the 1930s to the 21st century, taking a particular interest in their specific ‘politics of engagement,’ that is, in the ways these opening sequences articulate a film’s preferred mode of reception. These opening sequences establish the following films as parts of both chronologically told serial narratives and of more widely sprawling, ‘non-linear’ transmedial clusters, referencing comics or other media and making use of their particular aesthetics to self-identify as fragments of a larger series and to delineate trajectories for further serial engagement.