Seeing Black Panther was an experience. It’s a gorgeous film, with a strong storyline and probably the tightest narrative I’ve yet seen in a superhero film.* The Afrofuturism of the setting—technology so advanced it may as well be magic, tied to what’s clearly a long historical tradition—is a glittering vision** of possibility, undercut with the tension between Wakanda’s technologically advanced isolationism and the scars of colonial imperialism that affect the rest of African history.
[Note: Possible spoilers ahead for Black Panther.]
It’s also a film that, while it centres on a man—and on questions of kingship, legitimacy, and responsibility—is the first superhero film I’ve ever seen to surround its main male character with women who are in many ways equally powerful, and who don’t depend on him for purpose or characterisation. No, seriously: this is the first superhero film I’ve ever seen—maybe the first SFF film I’ve ever seen—where pretty much the hero’s entire back-up team, his entire support network, were women. Women who teased him and challenged him and demanded he do better.
Black women, which is an important point. (The delight on the faces of the girls pouring out of the cinema when it was over was something, for damn sure. I live in a town where a significant proportion of the residents are of West African extraction, either first or second generation immigrants, and I really hope they enjoyed themselves as much as it looked like they did.)
We first see T’Challa in this film as General Okoye (Danai Gurira) gives him advice and tells him not to freeze when he encounters his ex again during his “rescue” of her from a military convoy. At least, as viewers, we’re cued to see it in terms of a rescue, but it turns out his ex, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) doesn’t need a rescue and is ready to read him the riot act for interfering in her undercover mission. But T’Challa’s father is dead, and he’s come to invite her to the funeral and his coronation—it’s more “hey, I’ve come to give you a lift home” than a rescue, in the end, despite the excellent action sequence.
In Wakanda, we meet T’Challa’s irreverent younger sister, genius inventor Shuri (Letitia Wright), who’s head of the Wakandan research programme. Gleefully willing to make fun of her older brother (and also deeply invested in making really cool things work) we later see a more serious side to her, when the film reaches its darkest hour and throughout the climax and conclusion.
In Wakanda, too, we meet Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) whose understated, powerful presence is compelling even in her handful of scenes. When disaster strikes and it appears T’Challa is dead, it is in part her determination to protect her country and its traditions—as well as her family—alongside Shuri and Nakia, that determines Wakanda’s future.
Nakia and Okoye are, to me, the most interesting pair of characters in the film. Okoye’s affection and loyalty for T’Challa is plain, but her loyalty to her country and its laws is stronger yet. Her principles divide her from the people she cares for most: first from T’Challa and, later in the film, her lover/partner. (I’m really—look, Okoye is fantastic and I want the collectible figure.)
Nakia is T’Challa’s ex, and it is clear that one of the reasons their relationship ended is because Nakia’s principles put her at odds with Wakanda’s isolationist policies, and her desire to do something out in the world would have had to be put away as the partner of the heir apparent. Her character is, in a way, Okoye’s mirror: her principles, too, divide her from the people she loves, but she chooses people over abstract loyalty to her country, when circumstances put her to the test.
Between them, Okoye and Nakia are presented as the right and left hands of their prince—later their king—T’Challa, whose sister is a James Bond Q-type inventor and whose mother is an elder stateswoman. And I’ve never in my life seen a tentpole action film give me so many different kinds of competent women.
Also, bloody hell, in the action scenes the women are in together?
It’s just amazing.
Black Panther: for a superhero film about inheritance, power, and responsibility, it’s got a strong feminist side. Also, it’s awesome.
*Captain America: The Winter Soldier may come close, but while I love Wonder Woman, it’s nowhere near this tightly plotted, with the theme of the beginning returning at the end in a way that feels like an inevitable echo.
**Though I can’t help wondering how Wakanda has an open invitation to the U.N., if it doesn’t do reciprocal diplomacy with the world. Maybe there’s a whole fake capital that they keep foreign embassies in?
Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, is out now from Aqueduct Press. Find her at her blog, where she’s been known to talk about even more books thanks to her Patreon supporters. Or find her at her Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council and the Abortion Rights Campaign.
Though I can’t help wondering how Wakanda has an open invitation to the U.N., if it doesn’t do reciprocal diplomacy with the world. Maybe there’s a whole fake capital that they keep foreign embassies in?
I think they do. A complete Potemkin Village of a capital. Now there’s a story–of the people who have to *run* that fake capital
Many poorer nations have “embassies” in countries which are really just a paid local employee doing what little actually needs to be done in that country. The richer the nation, the more “real” embassies, but all nations prioritize. If everyone “knows” that Wakanda is the most backwater country on the planet, perhaps every nation has just written it off as not being worth sending an ambassador. (And the paid local employee is a government plant…)
As for the UN, it wouldn’t surprise me if Wakanda had an office with some local employee sitting there with an easy job. And since Wakanda is so poor, no one is surprised that no one ever actually sits in the Wakanda chair.
(Did I see it correctly at the end of the movie? In the MCU the UN has moved out of NYC? Did that happen in a previous movie and I just didn’t notice?)
It’s funny you should mention Winter Soldier, because when I left the theater I said to my husband I wasn’t sure which of the two I liked better. They are very different movies, and in them both the characters would work without any superhero powers at all. Killmonger was an excellent villian and we were sorry we didn’t get to see more of him.
This middle aged white woman got a jolt of energy from so many fabulous women characters. They were a master class in portraying sexy women without sexualizing them.
I have many questions about the economy of Wakanda and how it interacts with the outside world, how it maintains the illusion of a poor country and its population. BUT I don’t care about any of that because your review is spot on. It is a good film for black men, but it is a great film for women, especially black women but even for white women. Shuri is totally my most adored character not only because she is the engineer, the scientist. Okoye is spectacular, her backbone and strength in the face of personal pain, Nakia is heart itself in the film. While the Queen Mother is grace and elegance personified. I like T’Challa a lot. I really do. And M’Baku for all that he is in this film. And I even have great sympathy and understanding on Killmonger here. But these women. Oh, these women!
fcoulter, the UN met in Vienna in Winter Soldier, too.
What I am curious about is when (and how) Wales became a separate member of the UN..
I agree with the review, though. Wonderful film, and I really enjoyed seeing so many women in central roles, and with real, complex characters. (although I can’t help but feel that there must have been at least one who could have flown the ship and would have had actual knowledge and training of how to do so, without needing a token white guy to do it…)
@5,
Wales became a member the same time as Wakanda did.
@2,
Even the US doesn’t have embassies in every country. The Ambassador we have in Barbados covers for the rest of the eastern Caribbean as well. And several countries in Africa and the Pacific share US ambassadors as well.
One story that I find particularly interesting vis a vis embassies is the Ecuadoran Embassy in London is actually a few rented rooms in an apartment building. Colombia’s Embassy shares the same building but has more rooms.
@5, the “token” white guy was Agent Ross, who has a fairly large role in the Marvel Comic Universe as a CIA agent and ally/friend of the Black Panther. I think his presence was necessary to the development of the MCU as a whole and the Black Panther in specific.
@5 In terms of plot, I felt like Ross had to pilot the ship because there simply wasn’t anyone else to do so. Keep in mind at that point most of the Royal Guard were still loyal to Killmonger (until T’Challa showed up) so they had to sneak in. The “team” at the time was T’Challa, Nakia and Shuri (and Ross). And Nakia and Shuri had more important things to do (and were more competent fighters).
The fact that he was a decorated Air Force combat pilot helped out as well…
Edit: Not sure if anyone on this site has pointed it out, but Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis being the only two white people with any substantial presence in the movie, combined with the fact that Freeman was Bilbo and Serkis was Gollum, has been pointed out on other sites as making them the two Tolkien White Guys of this movie.
@9KalvinKingsley, I made the same pun on Emily’s Black Panther post.
Nicely done. Electronic fist bump.
Kato
PS – Thanks to the mods for letting such a ‘great’ pun slide. ;-)
@10 KatoCrossesTheCourtyard
Dang, didn’t see your post (I read Emily’s almost right away, nearly no comments at that point). Thanks for not calling me a punthief.
PS I love your username (iunderstoodthatreference.gif)
@@.-@
I’d say the economy of Wakanda is about as plausible as the biology of Captain America, or the technology of Iron Man. The highest density of brilliant inventions is always going to be found in the best connected parts of the world, because they know most about the discoveries of everyone else, and are in the best position to put them all together. Hence ancient Athens, medieval Arabs, 19th-century Britain and so on.
A secretive, cut-off part of the world is always going to be behind the times, because that is the place everyone else’s discoveries reach last. Africas big problem for the last couple of thousand years has always been that disease, wind patterns, rivers systems etc tended to cut it apart, and cut it off from the rest of the Old World.
But this is a superhero movie. Who cares about reality!
@@@@@ ad, Exactly what I was thinking! It’s a superhero movie, forget the dismal science and political realities!
Replying to Paul Weimer @1:
I think they do. A complete Potemkin Village of a capital. Now there’s a story–of the people who have to *run* that fake capital.
I bet it’s a mild punishment detail. Like, they’re a post-scarcity economy, so there is no point to fines for speeding tickets or something; instead you get community service pretending to live in a third-world country for a week or whatever. Or maybe it’s run by their version of the SCA — people who cosplay as outsiders.
@14
Maybe it’s their equivalent of a dude ranch, where bored city people go off and pretend to be cowboys.
I’m betting we’ll be seeing two things, one of which is some great cosplay costumes.
The second is, alas, whining white guys
ad: Keep in mind that Wakanda has one other thing that nobody else has: vibranium. That’s the source of most of their innovation, remember. And they’re not isolated from the outside world, the rest of the world is isolated from them. Slight difference. (It’s not 100% realistic, but it’s not as impossible as you’re saying, I don’t think.)
fcoulter: As stated by Bagpuss, the UN met in Vienna in Civil War — that’s where T’Chaka was killed, which is why T’Challa opening up Wakanda there was so symbolically important. My guess is that the UN moved their headquarters there after the Chitauri invasion in Avengers, which happened in and around Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan, which is all of half a mile from the UN building.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The women in this film are amazing, particularly Shuri. I’m a grown white man, and I was proud and excited seeing this film, without sexually objectifying shots of the female characters, with strong, smart, independent female characters. I can barely begin to imagine how it feels to watch it being a young black woman.
One thing: I never saw T’Challa showing up at the same place as Nakia as a rescue; from the start I thought he was there as backup, or she was his advance scout.
As for the UN, Wakanda might be an observer member.
@2 – fcoulter: The UN headquarters are in NYC, but that’s not the only place they meet. They never actually said it was the General Assembly. But what krad says makes sense.
@5 – Bagpuss: Wales being a separate country is easy to explain in a Marvel Earth full of fake countries. :)
@7 – ragnarredbeard: That’s actually the norm for many countries; when you need an embassy, but don’t have enough resources or even people of your country in the host nation. The Icelandic consulate in my country is a tiny office in an unremarkable building, I once found it by chance.
@14 – Ian D Osmond: Being an SCA is more or less what the Border Tribe does, with their traditional-looking outfits, farms, etc.
@12 The idea that the continent of Africa was uniformly cut off and behind the times for the past couple thousand years is a persistent myth about history, though. The East Coast of Africa was a thriving hub of trade (both trade around the Indian Ocean and trade into the interior of the African continent) until the Portuguese showed up. I don’t know much about Marvel’s canon history of the past thousand years, but it makes sense to me that Wakanda, with vibranium under its control and connection to those networks, would have been a major trading power before it cut itself off from the world.
@14 Interesting–I had a different takeaway from the outfits of the Border Tribe! I thought it was meant to show that no matter how good the technology of Wakanda was, they were still deeply connected to and reliant on tradition. In other words, the clothes that look old-fashioned to us could have just been everyday wear to them.
Wakanda in the comics has been cut off and actually secret until a few years ago (the late 70s in the real world, but only a few years ago, 10 at max, in fiction), so it was never part of international trade. In the MCU, it’s not secret, but it’s said to trade only in textiles, keeping up the pretense of being a poor country, so it’s not likely it was part of international trade in a larger scale before either.
As for the Border Tribe, it’s both things. They’re soldiers (or a portion of them are), but they don’t dress like the Dora Milaje in more practical soldier attire; they pretend to be shepherds or farmers, while actually being a very effective and high tech combat force.
@18 Magnus I didn’t see it as a ‘rescue’ either (once it unfolded), but I didn’t see it as her being a scout for him either. She had her own agenda/mission/plan and him showing up clearly screwed that up.
It’s funny to me because it’s almost the exact same setup as Coulson/Black Widow in the Avengers. Ultra-competent female spy who at first appears to be in trouble in truth has everything well in hand, but something larger comes up and ends up derailing the initial (less important-to-the-plot) mission.
The key difference of course being that Nakia was much more in deep cover and couldn’t be contacted short of face-to-face.
At least Coulson was calling with a potential-end-of-the-world issue. T’Challa’s interference was much more personal in nature.
Woo, finally saw the movie so now I can read articles! Loveddddd it. I also loved that they kept a bit of the Storm/Black Panther dynamic (i.e. Nakia being reluctant to settle down as Queen when there is important work to do helping others/Storm being reluctant to settle down as Queen when there is important work to do helping others with the X-Men). And Okoye sticking to her principles! And the visuals! And the plot! And everything!
@9 What’s impressive to me, as I’ve said elsewhere, is that this Everett Ross is every bit the conventional movie badass (Air Force pilot, CIA agent, keeps his head in a fight, etc.) AND he totally channeled the Everett K. Ross that Christopher Priest wrote in his run of the Panter.