For the first of our series of short comments on memorable scenes, we want to talk about one of the most memorable scenes in Black Panther (to us at least) — it’s honestly a great example of effective cinematography and scoring! This scene is where Killmonger takes the Wakandan throne, having apparently killed T’Challa in a fight for power.
The camera movement here is obvious — we start looking at the throne room upside down, and the camera rotates, slowly, clearly deliberately, until Killmonger takes his seat. This is camera movement that wants to be noticed, wants us to read it into it, while still showing instead of telling. From this, there are 2 ways we can read it: first, that Killmonger is quite literally turning the Wakandan world on its head. His rise to power threatens the legacy of all Wakandan leaders before him, in that he wants to be aggressive, wants to arm their spies, and make things like “where (he) comes from”, where “black people started revolutions”. However, taking the movie as a whole, and its characterisation of Killmonger’s motives, there’s another way to see this: that this scene is Killmonger’s perspective of him righting the wrongs of the past, seizing power when he had none before, to carry out justice. The scene starts with the world upside down, and as he takes his seat it rights itself, and he presents his plans to free the oppressed, all over the world. With both interpretations in mind, the cinematography of this one scene can represent everything we perceive Killmonger’s character to be: a villain, aggressive and power-hungry, going against Wakandan principles; but also, a man fuelled by injustice, doing what he believes is right, and setting the world right.
(also we dk anything abt music but) For scoring, this scene one of Killmonger taking power, and if you turn the volume up you can hear the soundtrack changing: it starts out with African traditional music (the singing ?) and shifts, as we enter the throne room, to a raw hip hop drum track. It isn’t only that Killmonger is violating tradition; the hip hop beat hails back to “where (he) comes from”, where “black people started revolutions”, and hip hop and rap was their artistic expression of it. Honestly, this isn’t the only example, the drum tracks are literally everywhere in the Black Panther score, which is rlly amazing — Ludwig Göransson (the composer) actually made T’Challa’s theme out of both traditional African drums and 808 beats of hip hop music, combining tradition and modernity just like Wakanda. (if you’re interested you can google for it / comment and we can send the link to you?)
Yes, so these are our thoughts on this short scene from Black Panther! Was it interesting in any way? HAHAH if u have thoughts feel free to comment/dm us on insta!
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