Opening Scenes - Analysis: 5 - Black Panther
The fifth opening sequence I'm going to look at and analyse is "Black Panther", a superhero film.
The opening sequence contains the following conventions:
The primary focus of this opening is of exposition, establishing a great deal of backstory which is necessary to understand the film. This is similar to "the Crawl" at the beginning of Star Wars, in that it takes a moment to deliver complex information about the world that it would be too time-consuming to explain through action.
However, even in a scene as exposition-heavy as this one, the filmmakers make sure to embed other information within the scene. In this case the exposition establishes a visual style and tells the audience straight away that this is a superhero film, but the most prominent thing established outside of the backstory is the theme. By introducing this information to us via a bedtime story, the filmmakers establish that the themes of family are going to play a large role in the film, and by using the imagery of war and conflict as a backdrop to this information, the filmmakers are letting us know that despite being in the superhero genre, this is going to be an explicitly political film.
The opening sequence contains the following conventions:
- Introduces the genre
- Establishes style
- Voiceover
- Introduces the setting
The primary focus of this opening is of exposition, establishing a great deal of backstory which is necessary to understand the film. This is similar to "the Crawl" at the beginning of Star Wars, in that it takes a moment to deliver complex information about the world that it would be too time-consuming to explain through action.
However, even in a scene as exposition-heavy as this one, the filmmakers make sure to embed other information within the scene. In this case the exposition establishes a visual style and tells the audience straight away that this is a superhero film, but the most prominent thing established outside of the backstory is the theme. By introducing this information to us via a bedtime story, the filmmakers establish that the themes of family are going to play a large role in the film, and by using the imagery of war and conflict as a backdrop to this information, the filmmakers are letting us know that despite being in the superhero genre, this is going to be an explicitly political film.
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