One of the things that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been introducing into their little oeuvre is the many-worlds theory, with divergent timelines. After hints of it in Doctor Strange, we got a major use of it in Avengers: Endgame, it played a role in Spider-Man: Far from Home, and the next Strange film has “multiverse” in the subtitle, so it may come up again—not to mention What If…? being one of Marvel’s upcoming offerings on Disney+.
I mention this only because somewhere there’s a divergent timeline where Wesley Snipes starred as the Black Panther in the 1990s.
The future Blade actor was connected to a Panther film starting in 1992 and continuing all the way into the mid-2000s. It was a passion project for longtime comics fan Snipes, who—after decades of stereotypical portrayals of the so-called “dark continent”—wanted a film that would show the majesty and grandeur of Africa.
However, the film languished in development hell throughout the final decade of the old millennium and the first decade of the new one. Supposedly one of the issues was that people were confused by the name, thinking it was about the political organization, the Black Panther Party. Mario van Peebles and John Singleton were both connected to direct at various times.
By the time Marvel Studios got on track following the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Snipes was convicted of failing to file tax returns and imprisoned, which made it difficult for him to be involved.
The backstory of the various Black Panther comics started showing up in the MCU as early as Captain America: The First Avenger. The Panther’s home of Wakanda has always been the home of vibranium—that has been the source of Wakanda’s economy and technological prowess going back to the character’s first appearance in Fantastic Four #52-53 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby in 1966. The First Avenger introduced vibranium to the MCU, as Captain America’s shield was made from it. Wakanda itself was introduced as a seemingly minor African nation in Avengers: Age of Ultron, where we also met Ulysses Klaue, who was selling vibranium he’d stolen from Wakanda to Ultron (who cut off Klaue’s left hand for his trouble).
Kevin Feige announced Black Panther as part of Phase 3 of the MCU in 2014. With Snipes out of the picture, Chadwick Boseman was announced as playing the lead, to be introduced in Captain America: Civil War. After an exhaustive process—one that included Ava DuVernay being seriously considered before the director herself pulled out—Ryan Coogler was hired to direct, fresh off his success with Creed. Coogler is a longtime fan of comics in general and the Panther in particular.
The script, by Coogler and Marvel Studios’s John Robert Cole, included elements from all throughout the Panther’s comics history: the heart-shaped herb that gives the Panther his strength and agility, which goes back to the 1960s; the Dora Milaje, the female protectors of Wakanda, as well as Nakia and Everett K. Ross, all introduced during Christopher Priest’s run on Black Panther at the turn of the millennium, a run that also focused significantly on the Panther’s role as a world leader, not just a superhero; Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, from Reginald Hudlin’s run in the early 2000s; and in general, the three main bad guys in the Panther’s oeuvre are all here: Klaue (Klaw in the comics, complete with prosthetic hand that’s a sonic weapon, created in the 1960s by Lee & Kirby), Killmonger (created in the 1970s by Don McGregor during his historic run writing the character for Jungle Action), and “Man-Ape” (with that name thankfully removed, and simply referred to by his given name of M’Baku, created by Roy Thomas in Avengers when the Panther was an active member of the team).
Back from Civil War are Boseman as T’Challa, John Kani as T’Chaka (with Atwanda Kani, the actor’s son, playing T’Chaka as a younger man in 1992), Martin Freeman as Ross, and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the post-credits scene. Back from Age of Ultron is Andy Serkis as Klaue. Introduced in this film are Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, T’Challa’s on-again, off-again love interest and a covert operative for Wakanda; Danai Gurira as Okoye, the leader of the Dora Milaje; Letitia Wright as Shuri, T’Challa’s sister and the biggest genius in the MCU (yes, I said it); Daniel Kaluuya as W’Kabi, who guards Wakanda from outside attack; Winston Duke as M’Baku, head of the Jabari tribe, one of the five tribes that make up Wakanda, and the one that remains outside the day-to-day of the nation; Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, T’Chaka’s widow and the mother of T’Challa and Shuri; Forest Whitaker as Zuri, with Denzel Whitaker (no relation) as the younger Zuri in 1992; Michael B. Jordan as N’Jadaka, a.k.a. Killmonger, T’Challa’s cousin; and Sterling K. Brown as N’Jobu, Killmonger’s father and T’Chaka’s brother.
Boseman, Stan, Gurira, Wright, and Duke will next appear in Avengers: Infinity War. Bassett will next appear in Avengers: Endgame. Nyong’o and Freeman are scheduled to next appear in the sequel to this film, which is currently scheduled for May 2022, and one hopes that Kaluuya will be in that one as well.
“I never freeze”
Black Panther
Written by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: February 16, 2018
A little boy asks his father about Wakanda (this is presumably T’Challa as a child asking his father T’Chaka). Thousands of years ago, a meteorite containing vibranium crashed in Africa, and five tribes fought over it. One warrior, who ingested a heart-shaped herb infused with vibranium, saw a vision of the goddess Bast and became the Black Panther, who united the five tribes. Four of the tribes still rule Wakanda, with only the Mountain Tribe withdrawing. Wakanda has stayed hidden from the outside world, keeping their advanced technology away from the wars of the rest of the Earth, protecting their nation.
In 1992 Oakland, we meet a man who goes by Stevens, but who is really a “war dog,” an undercover Wakandan operative, named N’Jobu, who is also the brother to King T’Chaka. However, his aide turns out to also be Zuri, a Wakandan spy, to N’Jobu’s shock. N’Jobu has gone native, and wants to help their fellow Africans in the U.S. To that end, he gave the location of one of their vibranium stores to Ulysses Klaue, who stole it, killing many Wakandans, in exchange for weapons. T’Chaka wants to bring N’Jobu back home to answer for his crimes, but he takes up arms against his brother, who is then forced to kill him. His body is left behind, as are the wife he took in California and their son Eric, all to protect Wakanda’s anonymity.
In the present day (actually a week after Civil War, so really still in 2016, but whatever), T’Challa is ready to take the throne after his father T’Chaka’s death in Vienna. First, though, he and the leader of the Dora Milaje, General Okoye, go to extract Nakia, T’Challa’s sometime lover, who is on a deep-cover mission to save people from Boko Haram slavers. Nakia had not heard about T’Chaka’s death, and T’Challa wants her by his side when he is crowned.
They return to Wakanda, flying past W’Kabi and the farms and agrarian society that most of the world thinks is all there is to Wakanda, then through the rainforest that is actually a hologram hiding a futuristic city that is nonetheless patterned after the archeology of ancient Africa.
T’Challa, Nakia, and Okoye are greeted by Queen Ramonda and T’Challa’s sister Shuri, who has created some new pieces of technology for him.
The coronation ritual is held on a mountainside, led by Zuri, now a Wakandan elder. Each of the four tribes is given the chance to challenge T’Challa for the throne, as are members of his family. (Shuri raises her hand, but it’s mostly to ask that they move along with this, as the corset she’s wearing is uncomfortable.)
But then, to everyone’s shock and dismay, the Jabari Tribe from the mountains arrive. M’Baku challenges T’Challa, on the grounds that he couldn’t protect his father, and that his sister doesn’t follow the old ways, and just generally that he sucks.
They fight, with a group of Dora Milaje and a group of Jabari each forming a half circle to keep the fight contained. The circle gets ever-smaller, and eventually, T’Challa—who has been given a drug that removes the effects of the heart-shaped herb that gives him his extranormal abilities—is victorious. He urges M’Baku to yield—”Your people need you,” are the words that convince him.
T’Challa then once again takes the heart-shaped herb, after which he is buried and visits the Ancestral Plains. He visits the spirit of his father, and then returns to Wakanda.
In London, N’Jobu’s son, Eric “Killmonger” Stevens visits a museum’s African art exhibit. He makes some acid comments to one of the museum staff about how the artifacts were stolen right before she collapses in pain from the poison in her coffee, put there by Killmonger’s girlfriend, who got a job in the museum as a barista. They’re working with Klaue, and they steal a vibranium artifact, as well as a mask.
Okoye gets word of the theft of the vibranium by Klaue, and also learns that he’s going to sell it in Busan, South Korea. T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia travel to Busan capture Klaue and bring him to justice for his thirty-year-old theft. (W’Kabi wishes to go also, as Klaue killed his father, but T’Challa says he needs W’Kabi to protect Wakanda itself.)
They arrive at the casino where the transaction is to take place. There are several Americans, including CIA Agent Everett K. Ross, whom T’Challa met in Europe after his father’s death. Ross tells T’Challa in no uncertain terms to buzz off, reminding him that Ross kept the secret of the Black Panther outfit (which was not what you’d expect the prince of an agrarian society to own). T’Challa retorts that he is taking Klaue back to Wakanda, period.
Klaue himself arrives with a massive entourage, one of whom makes Okoye (despite the fact that the normally bald general is wearing a wig; she later uses that wig as a weapon). A fight breaks out, and Klaue escapes with the vibranium, and without the diamonds Ross was going to pay him with.
Klaue and his people escape and drive into Busan, but the Wakandans give chase, Nakia and Okoye in one car, Shuri remotely driving the other car from Wakanda. Klaue manages to blow up both cars with his shiny new prosthetic hand, which includes a sonic cannon, but T’Challa captures him nonetheless.
Ross interrogates Klaue, who insists that there’s more to Wakanda than meets the eye. Ross is skeptical. Okoye just wants to take Klaue back with no regard for the CIA, but T’Challa is more diplomatic than that.
Then Killmonger shows up and breaks Klaue out. Ross takes a bullet to the spine for Nakia, and T’Challa orders him brought to Wakanda. (Okoye objects, but neither Nakia nor T’Challa will just let him die, especially after an act of heroism.)
When they arrive at Wakanda, W’Kabi is furious that they failed to capture Klaue. He had hoped that T’Challa would be more effective than T’Chaka was in capturing the murderer of his father, but apparently not.
T’Challa is more concerned with the fact that one of the people who broke Klaue out was wearing the ring belonging to N’Jobu. Zuri sadly tells the whole story, including that T’Chaka left his brother’s body as well as N’Jobu’s wife and son behind. Killmonger must be N’Jobu’s son grown up.
Killmonger turns on Klaue, killing one of his cohorts in cold blood. Klaue takes Killmonger’s girlfriend hostage, so he shoots her in the head so he can get to Klaue. He then takes Klaue’s body to Wakanda as an offering by way of getting an audience with the council.
Ross—who is rather stunned by the true face of Wakanda—recognizes Killmonger as a CIA wet work operative, and a damned talented one, too. Killmonger himself claims the throne as the son of N’Jobu. He also is less than impressed with Wakanda itself, disgusted that they’ve sat safe in the fake rainforest while their people the world over have been oppressed.
The four tribes reluctantly agree to his challenge. The fight at the mountain is brutal. At one point, Zuri tries to stop Killmonger from killing T’Challa, saying that it was Zuri’s fault that N’Jobu died. Killmonger kills Zuri, then throws T’Challa over the waterfall.
Claiming the throne as his, Killmonger takes the heart-shaped herb and then visits the Ancestral Plains. Where for T’Challa it was an African plain, for Killmonger it’s the apartment he grew up in in Oakland. We see that Killmonger learned of Wakanda from his father’s notebooks, which he hid behind a false panel in the wall. N’Jobu’s spirit speaks to him, telling him that Wakanda has the most beautiful sunsets, and he hopes to take his son there some day.
Waking up screaming, Killmonger orders the heart-shaped herbs all burned. When the priests point out that they need them for the next king, Killmonger threatens them, obviously not liking the idea of a next king.
Nakia manages to sneak one herb off before the conflagration. She, Ramonda, Shuri, and Ross are in hiding. Nakia tries to convince Okoye to join them to overthrow Killmonger, but Okoye refuses—she is sworn to protect the throne, and Killmonger won the challenge. The throne is his, and that is who she is loyal to.
The four refugees go to the mountains to M’Baku’s throne, pleading with him. Nakia offers him the heart-shaped herb, but M’Baku has something better: T’Challa. One of his fishermen found him in a coma. They put him in snow to keep him cool, but the minute they take him out of that (say, to go to Shuri’s lab to save him), he’ll die.
So they feed him the heart-shaped herb and bury him.
This time, on the Ancestral Plains, T’Challa has no kind words for his father. He is disgusted by Killmonger’s words—both the fact that he was abandoned as a child, and by the fact that he’s right about Wakanda’s isolationism.
T’Challa wakes up and asks for a blanket. He asks M’Baku for help, which M’Baku refuses at first—as far as he’s concerned, he saved T’Challa, which repays the debt M’Baku owed him for sparing his life during the challenge. But T’Challa points out that Killmonger isn’t likely to leave the Jabari alone…
Killmonger is sending vibranium weapons to the war dogs around the world to start the revolution that will make Wakanda the largest empire in the world. While he initially has the support of both the Dora Milaje (out of loyalty to the rightful ruler of Wakanda) and W’Kabi and his people (because he brought Klaue to justice), when T’Challa reappears, the Dora Milaje reverse course. T’Challa is still alive and has not yielded, so the challenge is not yet over, and Killmonger is not yet king.
The Dora Milaje, aided by Shuri and Nakia—and eventually by the Jabari—fight against W’Kabi’s people as well as their cavalry, to wit, armored rhinos. Meanwhile, T’Challa and Killmonger fight directly, while Ross (a former Air Force pilot) remote pilots a Wakandan ship and uses it to take down the ships that are bringing vibranium weapons to the war dogs in the outside world.
Eventually, W’Kabi yields to Okoye (who is also his lover; plus his attack rhino knows and likes Okoye, and licks her face rather than attack her). T’Challa defeats Killmonger by stabbing him. T’Challa offers to save him, but he refuses—he’d rather die than be imprisoned, and wishes to be buried in the Atlantic Ocean with all the people who escaped being sold into slavery by jumping overboard and drowning. T’Challa does allow him to see a Wakandan sunset, which is as beautiful as N’Jobu had promised.
T’Challa retakes the throne, and swears that Wakanda will no longer be isolationist. To that end, he buys the Oakland building that Killmonger grew up in, as well as the buildings on either side of it. They will become the first Wakandan Outreach Centers. Nakia agrees to help run them, with Shuri helping as well. T’Challa speaks before the UN in Vienna—the same site where his father died—and declares his intentions to the world.
Shuri has also taken the Winter Soldier out of stasis, telling him there is much to learn.
“Wakanda forever!”
I teach a couple of afterschool karate programs at schools and facilities here in New York, and at one location, when the weather’s nice, I’ll sometimes do the class outside in the playground behind the school. One time, in the spring of 2018, I did a class outside and had the kids running a race. One boy, after winning his race, raised his arms and shouted, “WAKANDA FOREVER!”
I mention that mainly to point out how incredibly influential and pervasive this movie was, not just in the nerd community, but also in the African-American community. Afrofuturism has become an increasingly powerful subgenre in science fiction, and this is one the first mainstream movies to really play around in that genre, and it’s glorious.
The feel of the movie is delightful as it’s true to multiple African cultures, and indeed represents the entirety of the continent—not just the nations and communities represented in some way or other by the five tribes, but also the Boko Haram at the top of the movie and Klaue’s Afrikaans accent. But in addition to that, it is true both to the style of the different aspects of Africa, but also to Jack Kirby’s original designs for Wakanda in 1966. Just as I wish the King had lived to see his Asgard realized in the Thor movies, I also wish he’d lived to see this movie for the same reason.
That’s not the only link between this movie and Thor, though. When this movie came out, there was a lot of ink spilled (pixels lit?) about how Killmonger was the first really complex villain in the MCU, or possibly the second if they credit Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes. As I’ve pointed out several times in this rewatch, the MCU’s reputation for weak villains is entirely an artifact of Phase 2, notably the very mediocre Aldrich Killian, Malekith, Yellowjacket, and Ronan the Accuser. (Ultron tends to get thrown in there, too, but I liked Ultron, and besides, the real villain of that movie is Tony Stark…) It ignores the greatness of Obadiah Stane, General Thaddeus Ross, and the Red Skull.
Plus, of course, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, which is especially hilarious given that Killmonger and Loki are basically the same character.
That’s not a dis on Killmonger, either. Loki has been the breakout character of the MCU, and it’s because he’s allowed to be understandable and at least a little bit sympathetic. Both Loki and Killmonger are legitimate heirs to a throne, both are children of two separate worlds, both use the techniques of one world to put themselves in a position of power in the other, and actually do get what they want, at least temporarily. Having said that, neither the Thor movies, nor Avengers, nor Black Panther lose sight of the fact that we’re talking about a villain here. This has not stopped people from talking about both characters in terms of how you almost want to root for them, the actors’ respective charisma masking the horrible things their characters do. Killmonger, in case folks might have forgotten, shot his girlfriend in the head without a moment’s thought or hesitation because she was standing between him and Klaue. Not to mention his role in killing the museum employees who were just working stiffs doing their job. Plus the whole starting-a-civil-war thing. But that charisma is hard to ignore; Michael B. Jordan gives us a character who is smart, ruthless, cunning, and certain, his casual fuck-you-I’m-right attitude lending him urgency and purpose.
That’s not the only element Black Panther shares with the Thor films, but again, not a bad thing. Both deal with issues of monarchy, with our heroes discovering that their beloved fathers were not the noble figures they had made them out to be. More to the point, they couldn’t be, because being a ruler means making awful, horrible decisions that don’t always turn out right. (It’s not a coincidence that both Black Panther and Thor: The Dark World have their title characters being presented with the disconnect between being a monarch and being a hero.) Odin set one potential heir against another, was capricious, hot-tempered, and vicious. T’Chaka abandoned his nephew, refusing him his heritage and birthright. Worse, from the way the 1992 scenes were shot, T’Chaka had no intention of bringing young Eric along back to Wakanda. The airship was above the building with nobody on the ground watching Eric. It looked like T’Chaka’s only plan was to bring N’Jobu along and leave the kid behind, which is, bluntly, horrible of him.
One reason why Killmonger comes across as sympathetic up to a point is that he’s actually right. In fact, T’Challa himself agrees with his larger point, as seen by his actions at the end of the film. Ryan Coogler addresses full on the major issue with a “hidden nation” of technological marvels, particularly in Africa, and particularly one that’s supposed to be run by a heroic character. Wakanda stood by and stayed hidden with their hoard of vibranium while all around them other Africans were exploited, the continent itself mined for resources both monetary and human for centuries. And the Wakandans did nothing to help their fellows. That’s seriously problematic, and while Killmonger’s solution goes too far in the other direction—as T’Challa himself says, he’s becoming the thing he despises—that doesn’t change that this is a major wrong that must be put right. Coogler provides a subtle but strong message, sometimes just by picking his locations both physical and temporal—it’s not a coincidence that the first scene in the movie takes place in the year of the Rodney King riots and in the city where the Black Panther Party got started.
Chadwick Boseman was the heart and soul of Civil War as T’Challa, and he’s even better here when given the lead. What’s especially nice is that he finally breaks the Marvel hero template, and it’s long overdue. While there are minor variations, pretty much every male Marvel protagonist is a snarky dude—Tony Stark’s snark is leavened by narcissistic arrogance, ditto Stephen Strange’s, Steve Rogers’s is leavened by earnestness, Nick Fury’s by badassitude, Peter Parker’s by youthful jibber-jabber, Scott Lang’s by his being totally out of his depth most of the time, Peter Quill’s and Rocket’s by the pain of their pasts, and so on.
But T’Challa isn’t snarky! He’s dignified and reserved and noble and it’s such a welcome fucking change. He’s not stiff, either—he lets his guard down with Shuri, as the pair of them devolve into sibling banter every time they’re together—but the snark is reserved for other characters for whom it’s a better fit. (Would that the makers of Doctor Strange heeded this lesson.)
The rest of the cast is beyond stellar. Winston Duke practically steals the movie as M’Baku (and in this movie, that is a very difficult theft to accomplish), while Daniel Kaluuya brings a powerful intensity to W’Kabi. (It’s a shame that most of the relationship between W’Kabi and Okoye was left on the cutting room floor.) Andy Serkis brings the same delightful case of the manic I-don’t-give-a-fucks to the role of Klaue that he did in Age of Ultron. Angela Bassett is radiant in the mostly thankless role of Queen Ramonda, while the always-magnificent Martin Freeman brings a quiet heroism to the role of Ross, who winds up being the quintessential ally; he doesn’t try to take over the fight, he just asks what he can do to assist, and does so without (too much) fuss.
And then we have the three rock stars of the movie in Lupita Nyong’o, Letitia Wright, and the amazing Danai Gurira. Nyong’o is a powerful helpmeet as Nakia, who puts helping people above even her own country. Wright is the face of STEM in the MCU as Shuri (and I hate that she never got to meet Tony Stark, though I can’t imagine T’Challa would want the two of them anywhere near each other—still, I dreamt of a scene in Endgame where just as Stark is about to offer Shuri an internship at Stark Enterprises, Shuri instead offers Stark an internship in Wakanda). Gurira’s Okoye is the single scariest person in the MCU (teaming her with the Black Widow in Infinity War was a masterstroke), and a brilliantly realized creature of duty. The three of them are T’Challa’s primary support, and I love that the movie never once draws attention to the fact that all three of them are female.
Having said that, an issue I have with the movie is the treatment of women. Yes, the three main women are fantastic. But when T’Chaka died, why is it that T’Challa takes over running the kingdom? There’s a queen right there, yet Ramonda is never mentioned as a possible person to rule Wakanda. Since she appears to be younger than T’Chaka, it can’t be her age. So why isn’t she allowed to be queen in this theoretically progressive Wakanda?
More fundamentally, where is Killmonger’s mother? Where’s the consideration for Killmonger’s mother? It’s bad enough that T’Chaka killed N’Jobu, but he intended to bring him home without his wife (who never even gets the dignity of a name) and kid behind. Just another single black woman stuck raising a kid after the father dies or disappears. But what role does she play in his life? (To jump once again back to Loki, one of the trickster’s redeeming qualities was his love for Frigga.)
These are minor problems, overall, however. The film is beautiful, the film is powerful, and the film is important. On top of that, it beautifully embodies every era of its title character, from his earliest days in Fantastic Four and elsewhere by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby in the 1960s, to the seminal work done with the character by Don McGregor and Kirby in the 1970s, Christopher Priest in the 1990s, and Reginald Hudlin and Ta-Nehisi Coates in the 2000s.
Wakanda forever, dammit.
Next week, the last of the Civil War fallout trilogy, as we see look in on Scott Lang and the aftermath of his taking Cap’s side.
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges all and sundry to support his Patreon, where he posts cat pictures, excerpts from his works in progress, and TV and movie reviews, including most recently Dolemite is My Name and Snowfall, and exclusive vignettes featuring his original characters. Check it out!
What I want is a story that deals with how Wakanda is a huge challenge to the global status quo. I mean, the most advanced country in the world is (apparently) not Christian nor Capitalist nor White nor Democratic. Its supremacy is clearly based on mineral wealth but it still overturns a lot of the foundational excuses for colonialism and imperialism.
My favourite accent to Killmonger is that his errors are rooted in Western imperialism. The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire indeed. However correct his impulses were, he couldn’t see a way to fix things without repeating the mistakes of his oppressors.
I think it’s N’Jobu telling N’Jadaka – the narrator sounds very much like Sterling K Brown.
Wakanda may be the only monarchy in history to adopt a legal system where you are allowed to murder your relatives to seize the throne. Most other royal families might have internal power struggles, but they don’t have a formal system where the best murderer in the family is allowed to kill anyone who gets in their way.
The obvious outcome of this is to elevate kings who are both very good at killing people personally and very willing to kill their relatives for power. It’s honestly surprising that Wakanda hasn’t had more kings like Killmonger, especially since there seem to be no checks and balances on the monarch’s power. They go from “total isolationism” to “preparing for war with everyone” in a remarkably short time.
While they’re exporting vibranium technology to the rest of the world, maybe the Wakandans can research better systems of government. It won’t be hard, since every system of government is better than Wakanda’s murder contest.
I’m pretty sure the opening narration is actually a response by N’Jobu to a question by Killmonger. Edit: I see @2 snowcrash beat me to it.
As for why Ramonda isn’t considered for King – it’s probably as simple as the ruler also takes the mantle of the Black Panther, and the whole trial by combat thing. I don’t think she would be fighting anybody soon. Beyond that, isn’t it pretty standard fare for monarchies to pass to the heir when the current ruler dies and skip the consort?
Anyway, good movie. I like the comparison between it and Aquaman. Very similar situation, just in one the current ruler is the hero and the other the outcast is the hero. And, in both cases, the villain wants to use the country’s power to make a worldwide empire. Aquaman had the better CGI, but Black Panther was the better movie, I thought.
@3 Hi dptullos! For once we agree on something :)
ETA: The whole succession by combat is comic book logic applied to politics and makes no sense.
@@@@@ 3
You should check out something called “The Ottoman Empire” from 1200 to 1600. There was no written law about it, but it was expected for a new sultan to kill all his brothers to get to the throne, and this is usually what happened once a sultan died.
I agree that it’s an odd choice to skip over Ramonda with no explanation. If the next ruler had to be of a particular bloodline or if Ramonda was declining to fight, they should have shown that. It might seem obvious that she wouldn’t want to fight for this job, but it’s respectful to at least ask.
I was going to say, as much as I enjoy this movie and the points it raises about isolationism, conquest, etc, @3 brings up a point that for me sticks in my craw. When your whole system is based on ‘trial by combat’, it leaves you pretty vulnerable to bad actors.
IS Wakanda progressive? One of M’Baku’s complaints is about Shuri not following the old ways…is he just especially hidebound, or is Shuri herself an anamoly? (I’ve only seen the movie once so I don’t remember all the worldbuilding details).
I think it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the splendor of the movie and forget how good it is. It really brings together what works best about these movies. If you want an answer to all the nonsense recently about whether MCU movies are really films, all you have to do is look to this movie.
Killmonger really is instructive today though, because it’s easy to be so angry at the injustice in the world that the solution seems to burn everything down. Even Wakandans are so seduced by his anger that they don’t realize they’re his tools. It’s a lot harder to seek justice.
This movie raises a lot of questions about how Wakanda really works though, and outreach really seems like it addresses only part of the problem. The conflict between heroism and kingship seem so strong that I feel like they have to move Wakanda toward a more democratic system to relieve that pressure.
One thing that was very poignant for me was how sad N’Jobu is as he speaks to his son. Whether he regrets his actions or sees where the actions of his son are taking him, that says a lot. Furthermore, that Killmonger was largely unmoved at seeing his dad (a few tears aside) seemed to prove his goals were no longer about helping people or realizing his father’s dreams and he was pretty disconnected from humanity.
Everyone has also mentioned the thing I disliked intensely about an otherwise excellent piece of cinema (Take That! Scorsese and Coppola), to wit:
How on EARTH does a technologically advanced nation like Wakanda remain an absolute monarchy, let alone one whose succession is a combination of oligarchic paternalism (only tribal heads can challenge?) as filtered through ritual combat, potentially to the death?!?!?
My blog review:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/thoughts-on-black-panther-spoilers/
In short, I loved it. The part I most want to quote is this:
When people like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese say that superhero films aren’t meaningful or socially relevant, they’re speaking from within a bubble of white entitlement. Black Panther is a highly socially relevant and important film for African-Americans, and for the rest of us if we’re willing to pay attention, because it’s possibly the first major American motion picture to celebrate African heritage and culture this way, and to comment on the issues faced by the African diaspora. This may turn out to be one of the most culturally influential films of our age.
@3/dptullos: I got the impression that the loser yielding like M’Baku did was the usual practice in these challenges, that it was rarely taken to the extreme of actual killing — and indeed, that challenges were rarely made at all.
This movie was excellent and it’s biggest flaw is killing Killmonger before he could have a scene with Heimdall. S’up, String.
I do want to add to my comment in the rewatch itself about Everett Ross being an ally: Ross’s role as one of the only white guys in the cast who helps the heroes in a small way is the one that’s usually given to one of the only black people in the cast of an all-white movie. It was a nice little inversion.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I wondered if the wig bit was a reference to Walking Dead, where Danai wears a heavy dreadlock wig in the awful, awful Georgian heat.
I really loved how Ross did not fall into the White Savior roll. As a former soldier, he knows how to take orders, and lets the Wakandans control the battle. It’s their land, and he’s willing to help.
Serkis looked like he was having the time of his life as Klaue.
Amazing performances all around, and such a fantastic movie. I loved the use of bright colors, with each tribe having its own unique style. And the armored rhinos were absolutely the best. Brings new meaning to heavy cavalry. While M’Baku was terrific, it was Suri that stole the movie for me. I hope she and Spider-Man get to play off each other sometime; the snarky nerdy technobabble will be awesome.
Waiting for the spin-off TV show: Shuri, the Princess of Power Tools.
Didn’t Shuri have a scene in Avengers: Infinity War where she, Stark, and Banner were kibitzing about how to separate Vision from the Mind Stone? Or am I mis-remembering?
“Killmonger, in case folks might have forgotten, shot his girlfriend in the head without a moment’s thought or hesitation because she was standing between him and Klaue.”
This is probably my biggest critique of Black Panther in that they didn’t show Killmonger’s reaction to this.
Before she dies, Killmonger is a smooth and clever operator. My favorite scene of his is the one in the museum.
After she dies, he goes off the rails and is just a wrecking ball. He’s going to burn the world to the ground, Wakanda included.
@12: That’s pretty much the same impression that I got – that the other tribes (not including the Jabari) are basically there to be acknowledged, not to seek power.
@18/Megaduck: They did show Killmonger’s reaction — namely, that he had no reaction, that he didn’t hesitate to murder his own girlfriend in order to advance his goals. He was only using her as a means to an end, and he discarded her when her purpose had been served.
You talk about his “smooth” behavior and his destructive plans as if they were contradictory, but they aren’t. He’s a highly experienced professional assassin and mercenary. His violence is not emotional or erratic; it’s calm, calculated, and controlled, and he feels no regret or ambivalence about it, because he’s trained to kill casually and without remorse.
@17, no, Tony was off-world.
Crœsos: You’re misremembering — Stark wasn’t in that scene, it was just Banner and Shuri. (That’s one of my favorite scenes in the history of the MCU, BTW, when Shuri basically owns Banner and Stark’s asses in science with one sentence.) By that point in the film, Stark had gone into space with Strange and Spidey, and didn’t make it back to Earth until Endgame. Stark has never set foot in Wakanda, as far as we know.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@15 Serkis is like that in half his roles and I love it.
The first monarchy-by-combat scene looked like a cheerful party being interrupted by somebody who was taking things too seriously. Like a priest saying “speak now or forever hold your peace” and a wedding guest actually standing up.
That does leave the issue, though, that among their other qualifications, the monarch of Wakanda has to be able and willing to fight hand to hand, because even if people generally don’t challenge at the ceremony, they are allowed to. So has there been a case where the better candidate could not succeed to the throne, because they had bad knees and somebody who was able to fight didn’t agree with their policies?
Maybe they had to have trial-by-combat because the next ruler would also be the next Black Panther, and it was a requirement for him (or her!) to be a great fighter in order to defend the Wakandans from their enemies.
Always love your reviews, Keith. This movie was good, in my opinion. I never thought it was nearly as good as all the praise it gets, though. But I’m not really the target demographic for the outstanding praise of it, so I’m fine with that.
I’m a little surprised you didn’t call out the fact that Freeman and Serkis are the Tolkien white guys in this movie.
KalvinKingsley: Oh, I was tempted to make the token/Tolkien pun, but I decided to take the high road. Just, y’know, for something different….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@17 Stark was not there, he was on Titan with Spiderman, Dr. Strange and the remaining Guardians.
@27 Keith Ouch. I resemble that remark.
Overall really enjoyed this movie; I think Shuri is my favourite MCU character and they did a shockingly good translation of Man-Ape, a thing I didn’t believe was possible.
But I felt the CGI was worse than average and this hurt the ending. The battle between Killmonger and the Black Panther inside the mine looked terrible to me. The characters were too obviously computer generated, and the machinery had zero verisimilitude. I would have really liked to see an epic hand to hand combat between these characters; that’s what their powers are after all.
This also applies to the battle between armies, but I expected it there.
Excellent movie.
One plot thing I had trouble understanding is why Killmonger was working with Klaue or how Klaue figured into his plan. There was some implication that Klaue could help him to get into Wakanda, but it was never really explained how that worked and it seemed like in the end he just walked across the border (after flying a small slow plane from Korea to Africa, but that’s a separate question). Or did he need to work with Klaue so he could kill him and show off his dead body to gain support? Not sure if I missed something.
How on EARTH does a technologically advanced nation like Wakanda remain an absolute monarchy, let alone one whose succession is a combination of oligarchic paternalism (only tribal heads can challenge?) as filtered through ritual combat, potentially to the death?!?!?
To me, this is representative of the power and influence that tradition holds over society. There are those who would hold on to those old ideals, despite other advancements.
It’s not an unfeasible situation, and I’d argue we see plenty of examples in the real world. Saudi Arabia and most of its neighbors are technological marvels financed by oil money, and yet they are still inhabited by societies that treat women as second class citizens, if not worse.
And if we’re going for the monarchy angle, last I recall Japan was still one, despite being at the forefront of technological development.
And even if that weren’t the case, I’d argue that any writer who creates a fictional world has the freedom to shape that world in any way he or she sees fit, as long as that world holds itself together in a logical fashion. I don’t see why Wakanda being an oligarchy determined by deadly combat is any different from, say, a Queen in Star Wars being elected by her people. Because it’s different, and it’s dramatically interesting.
That was meant to @11/Rdclark53217, by the way.
@31, killing Klaue was probably always on his agenda, needing him to buy his way in. Taking him in dead was the easiest way.
@31 & 34
I think he had a grudge against Klaue anyway. He stole from and killed the Wakandan people & betrayed N’Jobu. No way he wasn’t on the hit list. Given Killmonger’s MO, he probably would rank his personal vengeance on an individual as lesser than taking over Wakanda, but he got both in one go.
Re Trial by Combat: I didn’t get the impression that happened often. People were shocked when M’Baku shows up.
I would guess that if there are two known candidates before the trial by combat, there’s some behind the scenes debate and discussion to try to avoid having one kill the other.
@32/Eduardo Jencarelli: Japan is a monarchy in the same sense in which Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and the UK are monarchies. It’s a democracy adorned with a king.
@31/bmac: “One plot thing I had trouble understanding is why Killmonger was working with Klaue or how Klaue figured into his plan. …Or did he need to work with Klaue so he could kill him and show off his dead body to gain support?”
That’s part of it, but maybe he also needed Klaue’s resources. And I think maybe he was using Klaue as a decoy, a stalking horse to distract T’Challa and the Dora Milaje and the CIA from what Killmonger was up to.
@32/Eduardo: “And if we’re going for the monarchy angle, last I recall Japan was still one, despite being at the forefront of technological development.”
Less so than the United Kingdom is. Since 1947, Japan has been a constitutional monarchy where the Emperor is a strictly ceremonial figurehead with zero political power.
For that matter, the movie showed that the King of Wakanda is the leader of the Tribal Council, and it seems like he needs their consensus on his decisions.
KRAD wrote:
Is that so implausible, really? As Americans we might tend to lump all of Africa into one group with uniform aspirations (and that’s precisely Killmonger’s POV, with his plan to invert the global social order), but historically speaking, they’re riven by just as many divisions as any adjacent human tribes. During the European sovereign debt crisis of a few years ago, how much empathy did the creditor northern countries show for their indebted southern neighbors? –They’re both white and European, aren’t they?
@krad: Not sure I’d throw in Steve Rogers in with the other Snarks. (citation needed)
Excellent point about why no Queens of Wakanda. Maybe they will take up that question when they adapt more recent comics where Shuri took over as Black Panther. This would go along with the Jane Foster Thor, plus the Morgan Stark Irongirl I assume is forthcoming. (Imagine Shuri as mentor to Morgan.) Also add Barton’s daughter as the new Hawkeye in the Disney series.
One solution would be to make the Panther the Protector of Wakanda as distinct from its ruler/head of state.
It doesn’t seem implausible to me that Wakanda, having been fanatically isolationist for centuries or millennia, might maintain their very odd traditional governance system or that it might have mostly worked (I mean, not any more implausible than the other goofy things we’ve seen in the MCU.) And it’s not that different from how monarchies worked before the modern era–Wakanda was just blessed enough in resources that there wasn’t much reason for infighting. It seems like T’Challa’s family had been reigning mostly due to popularity for at least a few generations and that no one other than the Jabari were interested in challenging them–and the Jabari are traditionalist enough to be invested in the system. It’s only when an outsider arrived that the system’s weakness became obvious.
@@.-@ I live in a recently liberalised constitutional monarchy where the royal line now passes to the first-born child of either gender, but there has NEVER been any suggestion of spousal inheritance. If the Queen of England dies, the Duke of Edinburgh doesn’t get to be King. Inheritance proceeds through bloodline. Queen Victoria fought parliament for Prince Albert to have the title of King, and she lost.
There’s only one case in British History where spousal inheritance occurred, in the muddle following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when James II was declared to have abdicated in absentia. William III and Mary II ascended the throne as the only joint monarchs in British history, and after the death of Mary, William ruled alone until his death, when he was succeeded by Mary’s sister Anne.
TL;DR: In this case, Queen is a courtesy title that does not reflect a claim to the line of succession. On T’Chaka’s death, Ramonda technically becomes a Dowager Queen, the formal title for the King’s widow.
#12
It remains to be seen how socially relevant Black Panther is in the long term. If we see a slew of copycats, no pun intended, with African themes in the next few years across multiple genres, as the works of Melvin Van Peebles and later Spike Lee influenced cinema, then it deserves all the praise it gets. But if it simply spawns more Black Panther movies, then it really is just one more product from Marvel; important as a standalone feature in the moment perhaps but still deserving of the criticism this studio and Disney gets for swallowing up cultures and selling them under one roof — the Walmart of cinema.
But if I had to guess, the works of Jordan Peele will have much more staying power.
The one moment in this movie I found impossible to believe was that Eric pointlessly shot his girlfriend. He clearly wasn’t going to be deterred by a threat to her, but that doesn’t mean he has no choice but to go along with the threat, either. There was no reason not to at least make the other guy do it. Everything else people did seemed reasonably in character, but that did not.
I thought Klaue was exceptionally well-drawn. His evil Falstaffian joie de vivre drew a stark contrast to Eric’s focused drive. I suspect I would’ve enjoyed meeting Klaue, preferably in Mombassa drinking gin.
What’s best for me about this movie is that, like Homecoming, the antagonist was motivated by crappy actions on the part of a putative hero, and that the protagonist got to become a better person as the result of the encounter. It’s sharper here than in Homecoming, because T’Challa learns to be a better man than T’Chaka, while Peter just learns to be better, period–though his turning down the invitation to join the Avengers did suggest he was a little better than Tony in at least one aspect.
I could be interpreting this wrong, but it seems to me that King and Black Panther are 2 separate offices, that occasionally can be held by the same person.
I say that because T’Challa had apparently already taken the heart-shaped herb and gotten the powers at the time of Civil War while his father was still alive, which is why it was necessary to remove his powers before the coronation fight. (Unless T’Challa just happened to have a canteen of Heart-Shaped Herb tea and a place to bury himself in between T’Chaka’s death and Bucky being located in Bucharest…)
Presumably, anybody can challenge for the mantle of Black Panther, but not everyone can be king. If, for instance, W’Kabi decided he was more worthy of being the Black Panther, he could challenge T’Challa, and if W’Kabi won, he would get to be the new Black Panther, but could not be king, even though he had defeated the current king, because he was not a Tribal Chief or a member of the Royal Family, making him ineligible for that position, in which case T’Challa would still be king, but no longer the Black Panther.
In N’Jadaka/Killmonger’s case, because he was of Royal Blood, the challenge was primarily for the throne, but because the current king was also Black Panther, by “defeating” T’Challa, he won that mantle, too.
Christopher L Bennett@12:
I think that’s too simplistic.
In their heyday, Scorsese and Coppola were pioneering for an ethnic group–the Italians–who’d only recently become white. Those movies they made showed people who hadn’t been shown realistically in American movies before.
And what they mean by “meaningful” has little to do with being “socially relevant”. Some movies give you insight into the human condition–Bergman’s Shame, for instance, which left me unable to speak for quite some time after watching it. The MCU movies are certainly rousingly emotional and I enjoy them a great deal. They touch on important social issues. That doesn’t mean they have oodles of psychological insight. Do The Right Thing did–Black Panther, not so much.
@41. Thomas: good point that a Queen Ramonda would have been spousal inheritance and usually inheriting a throne means generational change. But this is a fantasy kingdom with its own weird rules. In fantasy, we could get a mother becoming queen after the death of a husband and a son or two. (See Queen Cersei, generational rollback.)
The larger question is why there aren’t any queens at all. I don’t remember any women on the Ancestral Plain. Same holds if those ancestors only represent past Panthers, not rulers. This is odd considering that some of the best warriors in Wakanda (see Okoye) are women. Not sure if the comics have any female Panthers in the lineage before Shuri.
At least England and other monarchies have had Queens.
@44. Lazer: good observation that T’Challa was the Panther before he was King. Maybe the movie should’ve clarified that a bit.
I can’t speak for anything else about cultural impact, but this Halloween by far the most common costume I saw were Black Panther suits.
I must say, this movie features some of the absolute worst CGI in an allegedly big-budget movie I’ve ever seen. Some of the fight scenes look like video games. From a decade ago.
@48. Almuric: Counterpoint: Doomsday and Steppenwolf would rank lower, perhaps much lower. There are much better monsters (more detailed, more articulated, more facial expressions) in some video games. By far. Example: the Witcher expansion featuring vampires “Blood and Wine.”
@49. There’s nothing wrong with Doomsday. His body even changes in response to attacks, straight out of Hunter/Prey. Steppenwolf had a number of his scenes redone at the last minute and was redesigned either right before production or early in shooting, not entirely sure.
T’Challa vs. Killmonger looks like Mortal Kombat.
Perhaps not the place for it, but I wonder if there are any worldhoppers in Wakanda,, because dammit, if that isn’t Bridge Four salute … :)
Another magnificient movie, which I also love all the more for the reason that it feels on the lower scale, it isn’t the whole world or galaxy that needs saving and this makes it feel more intimate. I was so happy when it was nominated for the Best Picture, I think it totally deserved it. Also, so damn hard to hate the villain when you can totally see where he’s coming from, even if in the end he does go too far. I think everything has already been said in the article, or added in the comments, starting with the undercurrents and themes that sometimes cut deep and finishing with all the awesome characters played by awesome stars (and if not, then my brain is at the moment too sleepy to remember it), so I’ll just contend with supporting the notion that Shuri totally rocks! (“Another white boy for me to fix!”)
I was a little lukewarm on this particular film, for one main reason in particular. I agree that everything that’s great about the film is great, the themes, the afro-futurism, the costume and set designs, the supporting cast. The thing that hurt my enjoyment was T’Challa himself, and I do mean T’Challa and not Chadwick Boseman. He does an amazing job acting the part, but I just find T’Challa himself joyless and boring. He’s so proper it borders on unbelievable, and he doesn’t possess the capacity to surprise me in any way. When he got snapped in Infinity War but Okoye survived, I believe I audibly said “and nothing of value was lost”.
@almuric: Doomsday is a lumpy troll, even more generic than trolls in the LotR movies. Very disappointing. They should have gone for the very distinctive look in the comics. DC computer animation is generally on a par lower than anything in a Marvel movie. That’s just fact. (It isn’t. Just my opinion.) They also would’ve done better just mapping Hinds’ face onto Steppenwolf. Watching his lips misaligned with dialogue was just bad. It’s arguably even worse than what they do with Martian Manhunter on Supergirl. I won’t even go into the infamous removal of a certain mustache that cost many hundreds of thousands to remove (some say millions if you count the reshoots), while a fan working on a cheap comp did it for $500… and it looked better.
digitally-remove-henry-cavill-mustache
I don’t know the digital houses involved, maybe there’s some crossover, but in general, DC’s CGI is noticeably (maybe objectively) worse than Marvel’s. Cinematography and lighting is another matter…
@42/Nate: I said social relevance, not cinematic. It’s not about whether it sparks copycat movies. It’s about whether it inspires young black people to feel proud of their identity and their heritage and capable of achieving great things. It’s about whether it helps change the still-pervasive myth in the US that Africa consists of nothing but savannas and grass huts, and maybe help create a push for more African history education in schools.
@43/John: “The one moment in this movie I found impossible to believe was that Eric pointlessly shot his girlfriend.”
That’s assuming he actually saw her as his girlfriend. I assume he just made her think he cared for her so that he could manipulate her into taking that barista job and helping him break into the museum. After that, he didn’t need her anymore, and as a hardened assassin and sociopath, he didn’t hesitate to discard her. All that really mattered to him was his mission — getting to Wakanda and taking his revenge.
@45/John: “In their heyday, Scorsese and Coppola were pioneering for an ethnic group–the Italians–who’d only recently become white.”
Back then, yeah, sure. But people can get ossified in their views with age and forget the lessons of their pasts. And it’s depressingly common for people who’ve fought against oppression of their own group and won to be untroubled by the oppression of a different group, or even to participate in it.
“And what they mean by “meaningful” has little to do with being “socially relevant”.”
No, according to Coppola, that is precisely what he meant. “When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration.” There are many people out there who gained knowledge and inspiration from Black Panther. See what I said in my blog review — I’ve rarely been in a movie theater with an audience that was so deeply invested in a film.
Scorsese and Coppola are pretty pretentious don’t you think?
Scorsese and Coppola are pretty pretentious don’t you think?
@53/Sunspear: “They also would’ve done better just mapping Hinds’ face onto Steppenwolf. Watching his lips misaligned with dialogue was just bad.”
That wouldn’t have helped. It’s a common misconception that performance capture is just some automatic process that instantly and perfectly captures an actor’s performance. The captured data is just the starting point, with limitations in its fidelity because the computer is only tracking a finite number of points. The finished performance is created by human animators meticulously adjusting the captured image frame by frame to replicate the nuances of the live-action performance as closely as possible, something that human eyes and artistry still do better than computers alone. The difference between good CGI and bad CGI is largely a function of how much human labor, time, and skill went into perfecting it.
@CLB: Sure. Makes the animators in question sound even worse. I had in mind what they did with skinny Steve Rogers in the first Cap movie. Or further back, with Pitt in Benjamin Button. It’s what Marvel has perfected (and/or the contractors they use) far better than whoever DC uses, esp. regarding de-aging technology.
@roxana: add Spielberg to that bunch. He said last year that Roma wasn’t a real film because it premiered on Netflix. It’s more true cinema than anything he’s done lately. He was denigrating a film that had real artistic merit, while he delivered one of dubious quality, Ready Player One.
The Black Panther run by Ta-Nehisi Coates deals with the inconsistencies of a high-tech monarchy with ancient traditions. The traditions don’t hold up, and the rule of the king has to end, turning into a modern constitutional monarchy. I really hope they do this story for the next BP movie. They had the character Ayo, one of the Midnight Angels who lead a rebellion, as a minor Dora Milaje character in this movie. Let her be the main antagonist of the next movie.
@53. You’ll get no argument about the moustache removal. Not sure anyone could have made that look good. Should have just released the movie that was originally shot and not added $60 million to the budget trying to please people who would have hated it anyhow. But that’s for another comment section. ;-)
Marvel can indeed do good CGI. Rocket and Groot being the prime example. Thanos too, but he looks better armored up. Going bareheaded just highlights how much the Mad Titan resembles Joss Whedon. But with three and soon to be four MCU movies a year, the assembly line mentality is beginning to take its toll.
John Arkansawyer: As Christopher said, “social relevance” was exactly what Coppola in particular was saying the Marvel movies lack, and also who cares whether or not it inspires other movies? That’s a self-referential, solipsistic argument that might prompt some conversations in film schools around the world, but in terms of audience response, which is of far more moment, Black Panther is hugely influential and it, along with Captain Marvel, put the lie to Scorsese and Coppola’s statements.
And the point about Italian Americans you make is an excellent one. Having said that, 90% of Italians in cinema are still portrayed as either mobsters or comic relief (or both), despite — or perhaps even because of — the work of those two Italian American directors. (Trust me, as an Italian American myself, this is something I’ve paid very close attention to.) I’m still waiting for the Italian version of Black Panther. I am not, however, holding my breath.
(When I was in high school, I went through The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. The only Italians I found were either super-villains, mobsters, or comic relief. The only one who was remotely heroic was Frog Man, who was a comic relief hero.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@59. Almuric: “Going bareheaded just highlights how much the Mad Titan resembles Joss Whedon.”
Dammit! Now that you said it, I can’t unsee it.
@57/Sunspear: “I had in mind what they did with skinny Steve Rogers in the first Cap movie.”
Yes, exactly. That was not done by computer alone, but by human artists carefully manipulating footage of Chris Evans to change the shape of his body, or in other shots to superimpose his head onto his performance double (but even there I think they had to tweak the shape of Evans’s face to plausibly match Steve’s scrawnier build). The computer is not a magic box that does everything with the push of a button. It’s just an artist’s tool, no more responsible for the result than a paintbrush is. They say it’s a poor artist who blames one’s tools, so the reverse applies too — we shouldn’t give the tools the credit when artists do good work.
My point is, the difference between Marvel’s and DC’s results is not about the advancement of machines, it’s about the talent of the people using them, and the amount of time they have to do their work well. From what I hear, Justice League‘s FX work was rushed, and that was the problem more than the technology they were using.
An important point on the Challenge scene – the tribal leaders are represented by champions – Nakia is alsoone of them. The challenge is as much to determine which tribe will lead as who is king. If say the River Tribe challenged, then would Nakia be Queen, or would Old Plate Lips guy rule instead – he clearly speaks for the tribe.
The key exception is M’Baku, who is in his prime, so represents himself.
Killmonger and T’Challa are both eligible descendants of the previous king, it makes sense for them to be arguing over succession of leadership for their tribe. And also presumably because T’Challa has already gained the consent to rule from the other tribes, Killmonger doesn’t have to fight their champions as well.
Whether a physical challenge is appropriate for such a decision, and whether Killmonger should also have been granted the Panther powers are entirely different issues.
@CLB: “…that was the problem more than the technology they were using.”
Maybe that’s true of JL, but it’s an across the board problem in other DC movies. Don’t think there were time issues on Wonder Woman, where Ares was of similar quality to Steppenwolf’s look, i.e. underwhelming. They even hid Ares’ face under a helmet. Compare that to Thanos.
There are differences between the animation studios being used, whether that’s the talent of the animators or the quality of their software, or both. Hiring the studio in Poland who made the Witcher games would’ve garnered DC better results.
Lots of great content here, but I think we’re all overlooking a key aspect of T’Challa’s character, as seen in both Black Panther and Civil War: His inability to ride on the inside of a car. This could have major implications for him as a superhero, an Avenger, and a world leader.
@3 dptullos “Wakanda may be the only monarchy in history to adopt a legal system where you are allowed to murder your relatives to seize the throne.”
Not true (even apart from the fact that Wakanda isn’t historical). As #6 Ryamano points out:
“You should check out something called “The Ottoman Empire” from 1200 to 1600. There was no written law about it, but it was expected for a new sultan to kill all his brothers to get to the throne, and this is usually what happened once a sultan died.”
…except that’s not quite the whole truth either. According to Mehmed the Conqueror’s Law of Fratricide: “Whichever of my sons inherits the sultanate, it behooves him to kill his brothers in the interest of world order. Most jurists have approved this; let action be taken accordingly.” His descendant Mehmed III (d. 1603) executed 19 of his brothers and half brothers.
I’m not aware of any other civilization in which royal fratricide was explicitly written into its laws, but fighting one’s siblings and cousins for the throne was part of the essence of monarchy the world over for most of human history.
Personally, I don’t really see this film’s greatness. It’s not a bad film, certainly, but I thought it was actually one of the weaker MCU films, not just in terms of CGI, but in terms of directing and story as well.
While I wouldn’t say it was the worse CGI in a big budget film (it wasn’t), the CGI is very noticable on a number of occasions in the film. The MCU doesn’t have a perfect record when it comes to CGI, and last minute reshoots are always a problem, but generally speaking the overall bar for MCU CGI is much better than what we see in the fight scene for example. Screwing up the CGI is, while not good and should be avoided, is tolerable in short scenes such as Thor and Loki’s last talk with Odin. It’s much less acceptable when we’re talking about what is essentially the action set piece in your climax. It’s one of those places where you better be sure you’re getting things right, and for whatever reason the artists dropped the ball.
It probably wasn’t helped by the direction, which at times seemed to rely heavily on jump cuts and choppy action, something that MCU has usually (as far as I can tell) avoided, and has usually been much much better for it. I remember watching the car chase through Seoul scene and being completely lost because of this. This is, perhaps, the only time this has happened to me watching a MCU (perhaps once before, during the portaling scenes in Dark World).
But the real problem is with the plot. The whole conflict in the second part of the movie relies heavily on a plot that feels really contrived, if not outrightly plot-holely. Killmonger shows up after T’Challa has already been crowned and this leads to him accepting a challenge (nevermind the time frame for that had already past and let’s ignore the fundamental absurdity of a system of government built around Klingon Promotions). During this challenge, Killmonger kills a bystander, something I can only imagine is not generally an allowed move during a challenge. Somehow, this is never addressed or called out as far as I can remember. Building on this, he tells the priests to burn their whole crop of magic plant (I have the impression it’s the total sum of that species but perhaps its only a garden of the herb) and takes the Wakandian foreign policy and does a complete 180. Sure, there’s a token resistance, but not much. They’re apparently a society so wedded to their traditions that they’d let an outsider usper the throne of their country, while at the same time apparently not giving much of a damn about completely throwing out centuries of isolationist foreign policy, revealing their secrets to the world, and literally ordering the destruction of a plant that their society is largely built around.
MCU movies are not always perfectly coherent plots, but it’s kind of next level to have the premise work largely because of a society of people collectively holding an idiot ball.
Over all, it didn’t strike me as a particularly great film, even if the Wakanian designs were quite inspired.
@67 That’s 100% my beef with this movie too. The big emotional confrontation between Okoye and Nakia is almost laughable. Even if you try to justify it with “well Okoye knew T’Challa wasn’t really dead with mystical warrior powers” that really just serves to undercut the only redeeming factor the entire plotline has, which is that she (and the other guardians) is a woman of her convictions.
@60. krad: “The only Italians I found were either super-villains, mobsters, or comic relief.”
Hell, even the Romanians have their own hero:
Sebastian Stan
That’s why Bucky was hiding out in Bucharest.
According to the Black Panther prelude comic, T’Challa became the Black Panther pretty much concurrently with the first Iron Man movie.
Also returning from Civil War was Florence Kasumba as Ayo (“Move. Or you will be moved”). Kasumba was also in Infinity War.
https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Ayo
@60: Isn’t the Punisher Italian-American, with an Anglicised surname ?
@71/Zenon: We may yet see advanced African nations. But they probably won’t get there by way of resources and seclusion.
So, is Wakanda actually run like the SCA, where the king wins his throne by combat but has no real power and can be deposed by the Corporation officers? :-)
@72/Dean: The Punisher is hardly a superhero, though. At best he’s a tragic antihero, and he’s often a villain in other characters’ books. His own creators have expressed dismay at police officers using his logo, since he was never intended to be a figure worthy of emulating or admiring.
@73/Jana: It’s a bad habit of Westerners to generalize about Africa as if it were all one monolithic land. In fact, it’s the single most diverse continent on Earth, whether ethnically, politically, climatologically, or economically. (It’s also the second-largest continent, a fact deliberately obscured by map projections designed to exaggerate the size of Northern Hemisphere countries; here’s a more proportional projection.) Africa currently has 54 different countries, more than any other continent, and they have widely varying levels of development and economic prosperity.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/most-developed-countries-in-africa/
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/richest-african-countries/
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/continent-with-the-most-countries/
And resources are an important factor — for instance, Botswana (the country just north of South Africa) is one of the most prosperous African countries because of its wealth in diamonds.
@75/Christopher: Yes, some African countries are headed in a good direction. That’s why I think we will see rich and developed African countries in our lifetime, not just compared to other African countries, but compared to the world. If we manage to dodge a major ecological collapse. (That’s a big “if”.)
Resources are a mixed blessing. Depending on the circumstances, they can help a country prosper or attract the greed of other, stronger countries.
@76/Jana: “Resources are a mixed blessing. Depending on the circumstances, they can help a country prosper or attract the greed of other, stronger countries.”
I think that’s implicit, and that’s why the link is listing the richest African countries — meaning the ones that use their resources for their own prosperity. If some other nation were taking their wealth, then it would be that other nation that was enriched. So the nations on the lists are the ones that are most successful at profiting from their own resources and using them to enhance their standards of living, education, etc.
In-story, though, what you’re saying is exactly why Wakanda chose isolation. Sure, they can be criticized for not helping their neighbors; but if they’d been out in the open back during the Scramble for Africa, then the European powers would’ve torn them apart for their resources the same way they tore apart the rest of the continent. Their vibranium and science would’ve given them an advantage, but they would’ve been overwhelmed by sheer numbers eventually, and then their superior tech would’ve been in the hands of the people slaughtering and enslaving other Africans, and that would’ve been far worse for Africa in the long run than isolating themselves. So I can’t blame the Wakandans of the time for that choice. As for modern Wakandans, I agree with T’Challa that their isolation should have ended before now, but colonialism left such deep scars on Africa that I can understand why they were slow to trust that it was safe to come out of hiding.
I recall from when Reginald Hudlin was writing Black Panther. At one point he casually mentions that Wakanda cured cancer. Which I’m sure he meant as a cool bit to show how advanced they were, but I thought about it. If that’s true, it means everybody who dies of cancer on Marvel Earth is dying because the Wakandans won’t share their medical science with the rest of humanity.
Of course, none of this was a problem when Lee and Kirby first invented Wakanda. Back then, it was an African nation which had only just began to use vibranium-based tech to modernize.
Another problem with Wakanda sharing its tech is that the tech is based on a limited resource. Opening it up to the whole world means the vibranium is going to be used up sooner.
@78. Almuric: ” everybody who dies of cancer on Marvel Earth is dying because the Wakandans won’t share their medical science with the rest of humanity.”
This is part of Jonathan Hickman’s setup for the new status quo for all Marvel mutants. Xavier and Magneto set up the new mutant nation of Krakoa. To ensure other nations accept their sovereignty they distribute a series a plant-based pharmaceuticals that cure major illnesses, both mental and physical. These plants are only grown on the island of Krakoa, so they control both supply and distribution. These flowers are similar to the heart-shaped flower of Wakanda.
House of X and Powers of X are both excellent, btw.
@77: The maps weren’t necessarily *designed* to exaggerate the size of extreme latitudes; the most notorious, the Mercator, was designed for true *angles* over everything else, for navigation at sea particularly. The size distortion was known, but a downside that was worth the cost and certainly not the point.
@1 As a technologically advanced authoritarian state, perhaps Wakanda would most naturally ally with the People’s Republic of China.
@80. I was reminded of that tidbit recently when Jane Foster was battling cancer. Couldn’t T’Challa help out a fellow Avenger in need?
I’d be in favor of retconning the cancer cure into an urban legend about Wakanda.
I had already lost interest in the MCU and skipped quite a lot of films not minding that much that I hadn’t seen them, but this was definitely the movie that convinced me that I had enough.
About half an hour into Black Panther, I fell asleep in the theater.
All these movies, they just keep coming and coming, but I really don’t see any point in them.
I’ ll watch them on TV whenever they are shown but that’s it.
@Verdant: you’ve reached Superhero Saturation.
@77: “In-story, though, what you’re saying is exactly why Wakanda chose isolation. Sure, they can be criticized for not helping their neighbors; but if they’d been out in the open back during the Scramble for Africa, then the European powers would’ve torn them apart for their resources the same way they tore apart the rest of the continent. Their vibranium and science would’ve given them an advantage, but they would’ve been overwhelmed by sheer numbers eventually, and then their superior tech would’ve been in the hands of the people slaughtering and enslaving other Africans, and that would’ve been far worse for Africa in the long run than isolating themselves”
The Wakandans appear to be technologically at least a generation maybe even two ahead of the rest of the world, and the technological gap might have been even greater in the past. (It’s stated in the movie that the rest of the world is starting to catch up, which means the technological gap is narrowing, which implies it was larger in the past.) But regardless even if the Wakandans were only one generation ahead of the rest of the world in the 19th century with that kind of technological edge over the colonizing powers there is no way the Europeans could have conquered Wakanda. And especially since any European invasion force would have to come by sea. You just can’t spam numbers to win a naval battle against a technologically superior foe because if the other side has faster ships and longer ranged, more accurate guns, they’ll just dance around your fleet, picking your ships off one by one with you powerless to stop it. (To say nothing of if the Wakandans had developed submarines or aircraft capable of carrying bombs by that point in which case they could probably wipe out an invading European fleet without the invaders even getting a shot off.)
@86/bguy: Uhhhhhhhh, Wakanda is a landlocked nation. It appears to correspond roughly to northwestern Kenya in the MCU. Also, I don’t think you understand that various European countries ruled nearly the entire African land mass by 1914. In just three and a half decades starting around 1880, various imperial European powers conquered almost the entire continent (save only Ethiopia, Liberia, and the Dervish state in modern Somalia) and divided it up among themselves with utter contempt for the rights or lives of the indigenous peoples — an act of conquest and genocide dwarfing even the colonization of the Americas in its rapacity.
So we’re not talking about a sovereign land mass being invaded by outsiders from a different land mass. We’re talking about a situation where Wakanda is surrounded on nearly every side by neighbor states that have already fallen under European rule, where it’s one of the last islands of independence on a continent that’s been brutally conquered. And the white rulers and military leaders of those surrounding nations would’ve been perfectly happy to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of indigenous African soldiers as cannon fodder in their assaults on Wakanda.
Granted, Ethiopia was able to maintain independence until Mussolini conquered it in the ’30s, but that was partly with French and Russian support. And while Wakanda’s vibranium would’ve given it a technological edge, it would also have made it a far more desirable target for the conquerors and motivated them to invade far more aggressively. And if they’d tried to form alliances like Ethiopia did, they might’ve been pressured to share their vibranium with those allies, which would still have ended up putting it in the hands of aggressive imperialist powers.
Verdant Parrot: “All these movies, they just keep coming and coming, but I really don’t see any point in them.”
Because people like them and because the people who make them continue to make money creating them — which, BTW, is the reason for all art. Art is meant to be consumed, and if art proves popular, the artist(s) produce more. That’s always been how it works.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
However valid Wakanda’s reasons for isolation I suspect other African nations may have trouble forgiving them for it.
I hadn’t realized just how similar both Black Panther and the first Thor really are. Obviously, when you tackle themes of leadership and responsibility, you’re bound to hit some of the same points.
To me, personally, Black Panther is the real live-action version of Disney’s The Lion King. Favreau’s recent attempt doesn’t even come close to hitting those emotional beats.
When I heard Ryan Coogler was attached to direct, my expectations soared. Getting Michael B. Jordan to play Killmonger was another major coup. The film is top tier MCU on every level. Every single scene works.
If I do have any complaints, they’re mostly relegated to the VFX. Coogler is clearly not comfortable staging action on that kind of scale. But the area where the VFX fails to deliver is during the ritual combat scenes. The battle arena feels like a soundstage. And that’s pretty much my only complaint.
Otherwise, this is an insanely poignant and enjoyable story. It helps we’ve had Civil War before this to get the origin story out of the way, so we could really delve into the real issues being tackled.
Krad is right that Killmonger is hardly the first memorable MCU villain. Not only he came after Toomes, but he also came after Zemo, both characters with understandable motivations. But Jordan is magnetic in the role, making him both vicious and tragic. I get teary eyed every time I see his death. I had the pleasure of following Jordan’s career over the past 20 years, since his humble beginnings on The Wire, stealing the spotlight in Friday Night Lights, and earning that sheer presence on Creed. He deserves every praise.
And within a single film, Danai Gurira skyrocketed to the top of my favorite MCU characters. Strong-willed, passionate, devoted. The epitome of a strong female hero (WD’s Michonne is pretty memorable too).
I could go on and on with praise for this film, but suffice to say it earned every single bit of applause.
@90/Eduardo: “But the area where the VFX fails to deliver is during the ritual combat scenes. The battle arena feels like a soundstage.”
That seems more like an issue of set design, lighting, and cinematography than VFX.
@91/Christopher: It could very well be the case, which is why I thought it had to be related to Coogler’s prior lack of experience in working with heavy duty effects.
But even accounting for poor choices in lighting, cinematography and set design, it’s pretty clear Panther is a case of VFX companies being overworked and overextended. A lot of the same companies pull triple duty in multiple MCU projects. Given the unchanging release dates, they end up bearing a massive load of work. It’s not surprising some of the CG isn’t always up to expectations.
@92/Eduardo: Well, it’s all based on stories that are told through drawings, and we’re okay with the obvious artificiality of it in that medium. So it doesn’t bother me too much if not everything in a superhero movie looks photoreal. Heck, I grew up in a time when visual effects shots were almost always obviously artificial, so it’s second nature to me to take them figuratively and imagine for myself what they’re meant to represent rather than complaining that they don’t do 100% of the work for me.
@87: I am familiar with the Scramble for Africa and a key factor in the European’s quick success was a massive technological advantage over the natives, something Europeans would very much not have in attacking Wakanda. (Quite the opposite in fact as it would be the Wakandans having a massive tech advantage against them.) If the Italians couldn’t conquer Ethiopia when the natives were equipped with comparable weaponry to them, how is any European nation possibly going to conquer a nation with much, much more advanced weaponry than they possess?
I’ll take your word for Wakanda being landlocked (though that also makes it much, much harder for European armies to get to it and keep those armies supplied). But even if Wakanda is landlocked, the Wakandans almost certainly had aircraft by the late 19th century, which European ships (or trains if they try to send an army overland) would have no defense against, so the Wakandans could still easily massacre any European invading force long before it ever reached Wakanda.
As for the Europeans sending hundreds of thousands of indigenous soldiers to conquer Wakanda, are you serious? First, it is very doubtful the Europeans would be willing to risk arming that many natives (even during World War 1, the King’s African Rifles only ever got to about 30,000 African troops, and you really think the Europeans would risk raising 5 to 10 times that many African troops? That seems… unlikely.) Second, even if the Europeans were willing to risk raising that many African troops, how are they going to sustain an army that big in the middle of Africa? (Eastern Africa was not exactly thick with railroads at that point in history, and you can be sure the Wakandas would knock out any existing railroads early in the campaign, so supplying an army of hundreds of thousands of troops in the middle of the continent would be extremely difficult.) And even if you handwave away all political and logistical difficulties of getting a massive African army to Wakanda, the attacking force is still going to be fighting with weaponry that is at least a generation if not two generations behind what the Wakandans have. Boer War era tech equipped soldiers are simply not going to defeat World War 2 era tech equipped soldiers fighting on their own ground, the technological gap is just too wide.
Wonder if ole’ Stan Lee knew about this posthumous novel by ER Burroughs where the natives were called Wakandas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man-Eater
Wakanda does have a vibe of some of those old ERB stories, and other pulp era ones, of Lost Cities or Nations, though they weren’t usually more advanced in tech or weaponry.
Movie is great, don’t get me wrong but a little overrated. The CGI is a little spotty in places, the greenscreen toards the end of the final battle is really noticeable and Daniel Kaluyas character doesn’t make a lot of sense.
As for why Ramonda is never considered to be the sole ruler of Wakanda, The answer is pretty simple. It’s not her movie.
‘Shuri, T’Challa’s sister and the biggest genius in the MCU’
Rocket: On Earth.
@94/bguy: Okay, I’ll concede that you have some points about the difficulty of conquering Wakanda. However, the question is, would the Wakandans be willing to take that chance? They would’ve seen how monstrously brutal and genocidal the white colonizers were toward their neighbors, especially in the Congo. I can understand why they would’ve been reluctant even to take the risk of letting such nations learn of their vibranium. Maybe they could’ve done more to help their neighbors clandestinely, but I can understand their reluctance to chance it.
However, it was actually quite normal for colonizing/conquering powers around the world to use large numbers of native troops as cannon fodder. That’s a large part of how empires have always worked — you take over the top of the existing authority structure so you can turn the indigenous labor force to work for you. That’s the whole point of building an empire, to use the resources and labor of the conquered/colonized states to benefit the central state. Yes, that creates the risk of the occasional revolt, but any nation has its own internal divisions and hierarchies, so there are always those that you can manipulate into siding with you against their neighbors. And by putting your own people on top of the existing, built-in authority structures, you can use those structures to maintain order the same way the local rulers did. For most of the lowest-ranked members of the society, the change from local leaders to foreign leaders will make little difference in their everyday lives, because they’re still as subordinate as they always were.
See, this movie may appeal greatly to Afro-Americans, but I have to wonder how well can actual Africans living in Africa connect to it beyond the mere escapist factor, as Wakanda really is nothing like a real African country and faces pretty much none of the same problems actual African countries do.
For comparison, I’m a Latino living in Latin America, and I can say we can’t really connect to the token Latino characters in most Hollywood movies any more than we can connect to Caucasian characters because they are characters living in the USA, leading an USA lifestyle, and are removed from what is actually going on in the parts of the world with the actual largest amounts of Latino people. That’s even without going into how Hollywood thinking seems to be Latinos are a general mass that can connect equally to characters who, more often than not, are of Mexican ascent (because that’s the part of Latin America the USA know the most) while ignoring a Mexican, much less one living in the USA, is as different from a Venezuelan, Argentinean or Colombian as a Spaniard would be from an Englishman or an Irishman.
It seems to me that the reason for Wakanda’s isolation probably was political stability. A monarchy steeped in traditional succession rites is going to be very vulnerable to outsider meddling. Even if foreign powers couldn’t match Wakanda militarily, it would have been irresistible for them to try to stage palace coups and get friendly monarchs on the throne.
As is, all it took was one member of the royal family who was raised outside Wakandan society to throw the entire nation into political upheaval and nearly push it into a war of conquest.
@99/J Bencomo: That’s kind of the point of the film, though, isn’t it? That Wakanda’s isolation has been a breach of its responsibility to help other Africans, both on the continent and abroad. It represents an alternative, utopian vision of what African culture could’ve become without colonialism, but it’s failed to share that vision with all who need it.
I’m reminded of a movie I saw recently, Latitude Zero from 1969. It was a Japanese-made film from Godzilla director Ishiro Honda, but made for US audiences and adapted from an obscure American radio adventure series by its creator, and starring a mixed US/Japanese cast headlined by Joseph Cotten and Cesar Romero. It was about a high-tech undersea utopia that had existed in secret for over a century, recruiting scientists from around the world to help advance its enlightened paradise still further, but keeping its miraculous tech and medicine secret from the rest of the world to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, which led to some ethical debates between Cotten’s Captain Nemo-like founder figure and Richard Jaeckel as the Ned Land surrogate. Although there, the secret was not revealed to the world at the end (in fact, the end didn’t make any damn sense at all).
@95/Sunspear, what? Stan Lee stole something? I’m shocked, just shocked!
@101: That’s a fair point, and indeed, a good remark on how, for all the harm the Europeans did to Africans, the African countries have also failed to support each other properly like good neighbors for the most part (and the same can be said about Arabic countries, South Asians, and us Latin Americans, too).
That being said, when creating foreign cultures I think it’s best not to mishmash different elements from several countries and cultures of the same region, either, as that tends to result in a tone deaf Mayaincatek or Chinesekoreanjapanese approach. I think Wakanda will always be kind of problematic one way or another in how it’s a high tech tribal based African fantasy land that can’t really share its advancements with the rest of Africa and keep a somewhat believable global setting (which is part of the whole Reed Richards Is Useless trope when it comes to superhero fiction), but there are ways to work around that while taking those themes for the story’s best, and I suppose this movie did a decent job at that (always with the caveat I’m no African myself and thus am not the best judge on the subject either).
@103/J Bencomo: Yeah, it seems weird to me that the Wakandans speak Xhosa but worship Bast. Those are from opposite ends of a huge continent.
Although, to be fair, Westerners aren’t the only ones who conflate foreign cultures together. I watch a lot of Japanese tokusatsu (live-action superhero) shows, and their portrayals of European characters sometimes treat French, Italian, and Spanish language/nationality as interchangeable. (E.g. one of the earliest Super Sentai series, Battle Fever J, had a “Battle France” character who danced flamenco.)
@105: Oh, yes. Then there’s something like the Fate franchise, which takes historical figures from all over the world under the command of mages, and has… often rather questionable choices in how they portray other cultures. Starting with the names. I wish I could say I am making these up, and I literally quote from TV Tropes to save me some effort:
Illyasviel von Einzbern, Luviagelita Edelfelt, Bazett Fraga McRemitz, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri, Kishur Zelretch Schweinorg, Sion Eltnam Atlasia, Riesbyfe Stridberg, and Celenike Icecolle Yggdmillenia.
I wonder if Wakanda tried to intervene during the scramble for africa and imperialism if it wouldn’t act or be seen like Japan was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of course, the Japanese were hypocrites, who talked about racial equality clauses at the Versailles Peace Conference while discriminating against Koreans who stuck to their culture and treating native Taiwanese very badly, not to mention how the Chinese were treated when they were forced to join the “Co Prosperity Sphere”. Nothing says that Wakandans would follow those imperialistic and discriminating behavior. But nothing says that they wouldn’t as well, they are perfectly fine not only with exploration of Africans by non-Africans, but also lots of very bloody inter-African conflicts, like Rwanda or Congolese civil war.
@@@@@ 104
It just seems weird because it’s making a composite of Western Europe (Southwestern Europe, but still Western Europe, the part most Westerners are familiar with).
With all other parts of the world there’s a stereotype mishmash fantasy land that is used from time to time by authors.
Eastern Europe has Ruritania
Latin America has many Banana Republics
The Middle East has Qurac
Africa has Bulungi
Southern Asia has this problem as well, but it gets a pass since there are less countries, so it’s possible (but not likely) for a mish-mash of cultures to appear in an area or family in a modern setting.
@107/Ryamano: Yeah, it can be weird to see another culture’s fiction portraying your own culture the way your culture portrays others. For instance, in the original Mothra, the villains were from a Western nation called Rolisica that was somehow a hybrid of the US and the USSR, and whose capital was New Kirk City. And then there are the Japanese stereotypes specifically about Americans; in tokusatsu shows, it seems they assume every American is a cowboy (much like Western media tend to assume every Japanese person is a ninja or samurai).
@108ChristopherLBennett
capital was New Kirk City
The other major cities being New Spock and New McCoy?
Hey, us Caucasians all look alike!
Years ago I was in a creative writing class with a lovely Taiwanese lady who wrote a short story about an Italian restaurant owned by a family named O’Reilly. When informed O’Reilly was an Irish name she asked what was the difference. I didn’t blame her. Why shouldn’t European nations be a big blur to her. How many of us can tell the difference between a Korean name and Chinese?
“Chadwick Boseman was the heart and soul of Civil War as T’Challa, and he’s even better here when given the lead.”
Say whaaaat? The T’Challa plot-line in Civil War was basically the definition of sideways energy, however interesting Boseman’s debut may’ve been. Hardly the “heart and soul” of that movie. When I think of Civil War, I often forget he’s even in it.
Black Panther was a perfectly fine movie, but other than maybe the cultural significance of a black superhero, I didn’t really get the hype. I actually really enjoy Michael B. Jordan as an actor but just can’t see what everyone else seems to see of him in this movie. I have no criticisms, but Killmonger didn’t strike me as anything too memorable. If anything, I remember wondering in the theater if he wasn’t just another “angry black man” trope to be derided.
matt: from my rewatch of Civil War on this very site a couple weeks ago:
“With all that, however, the heart and soul of this movie isn’t the guy whose movie it is, nor is it the “special guest star” who gets second billing. Yes, the Iron Man-Captain America fight is the spine of the film, but the theme is truly seen, not in Rogers or Stark, but in Prince T’Challa. Because in the end he sees that the endless cycle of vengeance accomplishes nothing except adding to the body count. It’s destroyed Zemo, it’s destroyed the Avengers, and he won’t let it destroy him. When it matters, T’Challa is a hero.”
T’Challa’s arguably the most important character in Civil War for that reason, because unlike Cap and Iron Man, he is able to reclaim his heroism despite the personal tragedy.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@109/mikeda: “The other major cities being New Spock and New McCoy?”
Doubtful, since it was a 1961 film.
@111/matt: T’Challa’s arc in Civil War is important to the themes of the film, since he’s the one who grows into a hero while Tony, Cap, and their partisans are losing their way. My first time seeing it, I expected T’Challa to show up during Cap & Tony’s final fight and knock some sense into both of them, verbally or otherwise.
“If anything, I remember wondering in the theater if he wasn’t just another “angry black man” trope to be derided.”
I wouldn’t say that. For one thing, he wasn’t angry in the sense of the stereotype — far from being savage and uncontrolled, he was calculating and intelligent in his application of violence. For another thing, the anger he did express was an entirely justifiable response to the wrongs inflicted on his family and his culture, even if his methods were not.
The character who came closest to that stereotype was M’Baku, who’s based on the very unfortunate “Man-Ape” character from the comics. The movie did an excellent job of sidestepping the potential negatives in how they portrayed that character.
@111/Matt: I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Civil War was a lot of things (Cap’s movie, an Avengers film, plus others), but it was also definitely T’Challa’s origin story. He grows past the need for revenge and becomes truly heroic. Then, Black Panther is given ample time to challenge T’Challa’s claim and turn his worldview upside down. It’s the perfect blending of two halves, as far as his story is concerned.
@112/krad
I like your point about T’Challa being outside the debate until then. That’s valid. I guess I didn’t really see him as a “new” hero at that point. It seemed to me he’d been kicking ass as the Panther for a while before those events. I guess Black Panther makes that more clear in retrospect.
@113/clb
You’re right about M’Baku. Killmonger’s story just struck me as close to the frequent trope of the villain being abandoned by one or both parents, being “failed by the system”, etc. The ruthless killing of the girlfriend seemingly makes him seem less human. That made it tough to sympathize with him, however right he might’ve been about isolationism.
@115/matt: The failure of the system was the whole point of Killmonger’s arc, really — both the Wakandan system and the American system. The difference from the “angry black man” trope is that said trope comes from a white perspective that (consciously or unconsciously) condescends toward black people and simplifies them, whereas this movie is told from a black perspective and shows why a black man’s anger is an understandable, even righteous response to centuries of horrific injustice. It’s coming from inside the anger rather than outside, and that makes all the difference.
@CLB: “it seems weird to me that the Wakandans speak Xhosa but worship Bast. Those are from opposite ends of a huge continent”
It’s no weirder than people in the US worshiping a Jewish prophet. At least Bast is practically next door.
@99. J Bencomo: “but I have to wonder how well can actual Africans living in Africa connect to it beyond the mere escapist factor”
It seems to have been received enthusiastically beyond just an escapist level.
I remember Anthony Bourdain talking in an interview about going to see the movie with W Kamau Bell and an African audience while they were filming their episode in Kenya. It was a hugely affirmative experience for that audience.
This is one of my favorite Marvel movies, and a joy to watch. I can’t really call out any actor for having a standout performance, as they were all excellent. I do find it amusing to see some people wondering how such a technologically advanced people could have such an archaic government, as in the real world, I see no indication that technological advancements drive political advancements. I wish they did, as the world would probably be a far better place.
In the defense of complex antagonists, I have read that other Marvel movies have left a lot of character development on the cutting room floor. For example, I would have liked to see more of Malekith in Thor: Dark World. I read that Christopher Eccleston, an actor I admire, was very disappointed that his best work was left out, and all that remained was the one-dimensional character that appeared on screen.
Black Panther definitely left me wanting more, and I look forward to the sequel with great anticipation.
Meanwhile, guess who’s joined Scorsese and Coppola in trashing Marvel movies: Roger Corman. Yes. Roger Corman is saying Marvel movies are too simplistic. Seriously??
Scorsese elaborates on his recent comments.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/opinion/martin-scorsese-marvel.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
He makes some good points. Not sure I agree with all of them. On the subject of individual artists making their voices heard, there have been some unique takes on superheroes, no doubt, but I think those have been few and far between. Much like anything else in the mainstream.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the continued dominance of superheroes, though. I believe we’re at the beginning of the gradual transition to some other mainstream obsession. Who knows what that may be. Perhaps some kind of VR experience that will supplant movies altogether. Whatever it is, it’s sure to happen eventually. Probably when the current generation of kids become teenagers and rebel against the things their parents enjoyed. And some occasional bursts of “art” will no doubt transpire then, too.
Scorsese’s article is a cranky old man making the same “in MY day things were better and didn’t suck like they do now” arguments that cranky old men have been making since the dawn time. And I say that as a huge fan and admirer of his work……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@122
I think that’s being overly simplistic. Yes, he does cite several examples of great movies from “his day,” but the fact is, as he points out, those kinds of movies, which are middle to low budget movies now, are having more difficulty finding their way to theaters, opting instead for places like Netflix and other streaming platforms. And that is a genuine concern for those who make and those who enjoy a variety of movies being shown in the shared experience of a movie theater.
Couple that with the recent news of Disney pulling a large number of older films from repertory theaters, and it all becomes disheartening. Inevitable, I suppose, but worthy of comment all the same.
@119/AlanBrown: “I do find it amusing to see some people wondering how such a technologically advanced people could have such an archaic government, as in the real world, I see no indication that technological advancements drive political advancements.”
Hmm, I’d say that technological advancement of the kind we’re talking about presupposes a certain extent of free thinking. An intellectual environment where creativity and ingeniosity are encouraged. And then, sooner or later, some people will turn this creativity and ingeniosity to questions of government. Of course, the people in power can fight back by imprisoning the thinkers in question, or cutting their right hands off, or killing them, or some such. Not sure if Wakandan kings are doing that.
@125/Jana: There have been monarchies that were centers of great progress and innovation, including a number in Africa. For instance, the Mali Empire in Northwest Africa was home to Timbuktu, which for centuries was the greatest center of learning and scholarship in the Islamic world if not the entire West, and established what’s often called the world’s first university.
Although what made Mali such a hub of learning and dynamism was that it was a prosperous trading empire with travelers and traders coming in from all over. Commerce drove innovation, as it did in the European Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, and the mix of ideas from all those diverse travelers contributed as well. The problem with the idea of Wakandan progress isn’t that it’s a monarchy, but that it’s isolated, keeping to itself. As a rule, the most innovative cultures in world history have been the cultural crossroads, the societies where diverse ideas mingled and synergized.
@126/Christopher: That, too.
And if it weren’t isolated, people might get ideas about other forms of government.
@126, Exactly right CLB! that’s the big problem with ALL isolated super civilizations. Isolation does not tend to encourage innovation. Quite the contrary.
Wakandans worshipping Bast is kinda easy to handwave -she’s from the same continent, technically. M’Baku worshipping Hanuman however….. bit more challenging. Best rationalisation I could come up with is that Wakandans are happy to adopt into their pantheon, and a Hindu monkey-god who has strength as one of his aspects is kind of a no-brainer for the Jabari to take on.
@129/snowcrash: Russia and India are on the same continent, but you wouldn’t expect an Eastern Orthodox priest to pray to Vishnu.
Scorsese’s article is a cranky old man making the same “in MY day things were better and didn’t suck like they do now” arguments that cranky old men have been making since the dawn time.
@122/Krad: I don’t think that’s necessarily what he meant. The way I see it, it’s an argument against blockbusters and the current studio business model that doesn’t leave a lot of space for different kinds of films. It’s just that superhero films just happen to be the most visible target of the rant, given their current high profile in the studio model. I have no doubt someone like Scorsese can find value in some superhero entries (even Black Panther), but he’d rather watch something new and different like Midesommar, which got a very narrow release.
There’s a pretty good thread that elaborates on this current shifting of trends, and how it affects people like Scorsese:
https://twitter.com/sternbergh/status/1191733232074670081
@131/Eduardo: Meaning something else doesn’t excuse expressing it in an unfair way. If the point is to criticize blockbusters in general, then it’s misaimed fire to say Marvel movies suck. As blockbusters go, they’re consistently among the best-made, classiest, and richest. That’s why they’re so visible.
@132/Christopher: I mostly agree, and you’re right that Marvel’s production output ranks as the most consistent quality run in recent memory. There’s no denying that even the weaker entries still qualify as solid productions made under the best intentions, with a noticeable attempt at reaching that level of quality and craftsmanship (which is a way of saying that nobody sets out to make a bad movie).
But I don’t think anyone is disputing that either. Any currently active filmmaker in the industry likely understands the current state of filmmaking of how a powerhouse like Marvel factors into that scene.
Scorsese’s choice of words may have been poor, but I still don’t think he meant disrespect in his criticism. Even Lucas and Spielberg, who fathered blockbuster cinema in the most literal sense, have had their own misgivings regarding the current direction taken by the studios with the relentness need to franchise everything. Both pictured an eventual implosion of the current model. The fact is studios and distributors have created a very unequal and hostile market. Any multiplex chain with 20 screens will have 90% of those screens playing some blockbusters, franchise or otherwise. The other 10% given to small arthouse films. That leaves zero room for the in-between films. That’s their point of contention, not the content itself.
@133/Eduardo: “But I don’t think anyone is disputing that either.”
They definitely are. Coppola said Marvel movies don’t say anything meaningful or inspiring. As I said, even Roger Corman is calling them “too simplistic,” which is rich coming from the master of B-movie schlock. They’re not just talking about cinema trends or distribution, they’re directly attacking the content and quality of Marvel movies in terms that make it clear they haven’t actually seen the movies and are just making assumptions. And that robs their criticisms of any legitimacy they might otherwise have had.
If I was fudging a reason for Hanuman to be worshipped in Wakanda, I’d say that early Wakandans made contact with early Buddhists monks who were carrying Indian traditions on Indian Ocean trade routes. It’s a big stretch though.
Scorcese and Coppola have earned the right to say whatever they want, and they’re not entirely wrong. If comic book movies are going to be treated as art they have to also face up to criticism. I think Scorcese’s most insightful criticism is this:
“Some say that Hitchcock’s pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that’s true — Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today’s franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.
They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.”
MCU movies are ultimately designed to please, not to challenge. There is tremendous craft going into what they do, but what they do is almost never take storytelling risks. They have occasionally reached in the direction of actually provoking interesting ideas or making bold statements, but they always pull back before going too far. Black Panther is one of the best of the group of movies, and it does have some things to say–but even its criticisms of America are couched so heavily in fantasy and at so great a distance that it doesn’t have a lot of bite.
On the plus side, these movies give their makers the freedom to make smaller, more intimate, and more daring movies. They provide with the money and the credibility to get projects made. But the future of mass entertainment, and the MCU, looks a bit bleak to me.
@134/Christopher: Putting Scorsese’s views aside for a moment, it’s worth noting Coppola’s always had a rather tumultous, contentuous and toxic relationship with Hollywood, going back to the Godfather days. One oozing with resentment. That’s nearly five decades. As far as he’s concerned, I wouldn’t expect a single positive word about anything regarding the industry’s current output, superhero or otherwise, from him.
@135/Colin R: “Scorcese and Coppola have earned the right to say whatever they want”
No. Nobody has the right to ignore the truth. Nobody has the right to insult others unfairly. If anything, their fame and success gives them a responsibility not to punch downward. To encourage the filmmakers who follow them rather than dismissing the value of their work sight unseen.
“If comic book movies are going to be treated as art they have to also face up to criticism.”
Valid, informed criticism, yes, of course. That does not include uninformed blanket dismissals.
Is Martin Scorsese criticizing the most profitable and popular films in history ‘punching down?’ I don’t even understand what that means in this context. And when I look at his most recent interview these are pretty gentle and fair criticisms, not attacks on people. Disliking or criticizing a movie is not the same thing as an attack on the people who made it. If it is, how can anybody have a discussion about movies?
Now, I think Scorsese is coming from a place where he and his contemporaries came of age in a cinematic era that really didn’t look anything like what came before or what followed; most directors have always had to take any job and churn out a lot of bad movies on behalf of studios. Very few directors before or since have had the chance to be auteurs like well, Martin Scorsese.
most directors have always had to take any job and churn out a lot of bad movies on behalf of studios. Very few directors before or since have had the chance to be auteurs like well, Martin Scorsese.
@138: At least, most MCU productions rank as either good or very good. The worst would be average or an early misstep, such as the Norton Hulk.
There’s another aspect of this debate worth bringing up. If the opportunity came to direct an MCU film, an auteur like Scorsese would reject it outright. He wouldn’t have final cut, for one. And he’d never even be considered by the Marvel executive branch because of that auteur status.
It’s not unlike the old phenonemenon of James Bond producers rejecting big name directors (Spielberg lobbied hard to do one, and was rebuffed several times).
The MCU employs directors in the same vein. People who can bring something to the table, but who aren’t too big a brand that would create friction or tension. Joss Whedon had a very clear vision with The Avengers and ended up burning himself out after making two films. Meanwhile, the Russos have kept their A-game, becoming de-facto ambassadors of the brand as well as being reliable at what they do. It’s very hard to keep with the demands of this kind of production, which is another reason why someone like Scorsese would never direct one of these.
Adding to the above, franchises like these are ultimately producer-driven. Could you imagine Scorsese having to defer to Kevin Feige? Not all are cut out for that kind of dynamic (I’m still impressed how Branagh pulled it off on the first Thor).
@133. Eduardo: “Even Lucas and Spielberg, who fathered blockbuster cinema in the most literal sense…”
I mentioned Spielberg’s truly ignorant take on Roma, which left a sour taste for me. The guy who helped form the modern blockbuster mentality complains about exactly the kind of artistic movie him and his cohort say are being squeezed out. Total hypocrisy. Now if Lucas pipes up and says something negative about current trends…
@135. Colin: “(Scorcese) They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit…”
I haven’t seen The Irishman, but does it by any chance feature another set of Italian-American gangsters? In a way, I get his complaint, because I got sick of such movies and avoided anything that once again tried to humanize career criminals, perhaps glorify them in some instances. I loved the deviations from this formula in his career, by the way. The Kafkaesque After Hours was brilliant.
Wonder what Scorcese makes of Joker basically blending and remaking two of his old films.
I should’ve added this Scorcese quote:”Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”
Concerning storytelling risk, maybe refer him to the discussion on this site about the Gamora problem. And as far as “variations on finite themes”… I wonder if he sees the reflection.
Everyone has the right to ignore the truth. It’s not a good idea, but it’s not a crime. Nor should it be. Scorcese and Coppola didn’t “earn” the right to criticize MCU movies by producing their own cinematic oeuvres. They were born with that right as citizens of a free society.
I just read Scorcese’s op-ed in the New York Times on the controversy. I didn’t agree with his every point, but it all still seemed perfectly “valid and informed” to me. At any rate, I don’t think I’ll ever understand how dismissing the globally ubiquitous, multi-billion dollar Marvel movie franchise amounts to “punching down.” Maybe that phrase doesn’t mean what I think it means.
@143/Skallagrimsen: “Everyone has the right to ignore the truth.”
Not if they do it in order to cast aspersions on others. That infringes on those others’ right to be judged fairly.
“At any rate, I don’t think I’ll ever understand how dismissing the globally ubiquitous, multi-billion dollar Marvel movie franchise amounts to “punching down.””
Because Scorsese is a legendary, iconic filmmaker whose place in cinematic history is assured, and he’s dismissing and demeaning the work of the younger, less established filmmakers following in his footsteps. I don’t care about “Marvel” as a corporate entity, I care about the actual human beings making these films, human beings who surely put just as much care and passion and artistry into their work as he does, regardless of the corporate mandates they work under.
Personally I’m all for movies that don’t leave the viewer depressed and miserable. Why are ‘artistic’ films always so gloomy?
@132.
Now you’re the one being unfair. Scorsese didn’t say Marvel movies “suck.” He said he’s seen some superhero movies and they didn’t work for him, then he explained why they didn’t. That’s not at all the harsh, mean-spirited thing you’re making it out to be. And don’t forget, he was originally asked his opinion on the matter. He wasn’t specifically going after the artists who make these movies.
You know, every time I see the slightest criticism thrown at comic book movies, I see these knee-jerk reactions, and they’re usually countered with name-calling, hyperbole, ageism and what have you. But how is this helpful to the movies you want to be taken seriously as a mature art form?
At the risk of introducing concrete evidence into the discussion, here are today’s showtimes for the suburban Cinemark theater nearest to me, where I see most of my movies nowadays.
Note that because the link incorporates a date, it may break after today. To summarize, here’s a (mostly) alphabetical list of the movies with number of screenings listed for each. I give the last three separately because they’re all non-English features; this theater evidently has a regular viewership for these and usually has at least two or three different such movies playing. Occasionally this will involve a particular movie being shown in two or three different languages on different screens.
5 – The Addams Family
5 – Arctic Dogs
4 – Black and Blue
5 – Countdown
5 – Harriet
2 – The Current War: Director’s Cut
5 – Joker
9 – Jojo Rabbit
5 – The Lighthouse
7 – Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
4 – Motherless Brooklyn
9 – Terminator: Dark Fate
1 – Western Stars
5 -Zombieland: Double Tap
2 – Bigil [Tamil w/English subtitles]
1 – Housefull 4 [Hindi w/English subtitles]
1 – Meeku Maathrame Cheptha [Telugu w/English subtitles]
That looks to me like a fairly diverse lineup….
@144 “Not if they do it in order to cast aspersions on others. That infringes on those others’ right to be judged fairly.”
No. Scorcese has every right to cast aspersions on others, and to judge them unfairly–even assuming that’s what he was doing in this case, which is doubtful. I believe the corporate model that underlies the production of these movies was the target of his criticism, not the people who happen to make them. And even if those people were his target–I’ve seen no evidence of that, but even if–the fact remains that MCU movies enjoy strongly positive reviews from the critical establishment and are viewed by appreciative billions worldwide. The opinion of one or two filmmakers, however “iconic,” seems unlikely to damage their careers. And if it did? Scorcese would still be entitled to his opinion.
Personally I’m all for movies that don’t leave the viewer depressed and miserable. Why are ‘artistic’ films always so gloomy?
@145: Now that’s an unfair generalization. There are plenty of artistic films with that provide varied moods and experiences. They’re not all geared towards misery.
Using one of the more recent Scorsese examples, The Wolf of Wall Street was pretty much an over-the-top comedy despite dealing with a morally corrupt protagonist completely driven by greed and an unhealthy life driven by drug abuse. I rewatch it every year just because of how fun it is to watch.
@147: You’re lucky you have a surprisingly diverse lineup on your area. Around here (in Rio), a multiplex would never have that much diversity. Around here, if we’re looking for european releases, chances are we’ll have to look up for some obscure or small-time movie theater.
@146/Nate: I’ll remind you that Coppola and Corman have also jumped on the bandwagon and said some pretty damn ridiculous things. It’s not just Scorsese.
And I don’t appreciate your attack on me. I’m not who you accuse me of being. I’m upset because I don’t think it’s good for this to become a fight at all. There’s no reason for all this negativity. People are entitled to like different kinds of movies, and it’s just insecure and needlessly divisive to judge other people’s tastes in movies. There’s room for all kinds of movies, and if the smaller, artier films are showing up on streaming rather than in multiplexes, that’s fine, because streaming is not an inferior format to theaters, just an evolution in how content is delivered.
@CLB: “if the smaller, artier films are showing up on streaming rather than in multiplexes, that’s fine, because streaming is not an inferior format to theaters, just an evolution in how content is delivered.”
This is the heart of what bugs me about what Scorcese said. The hypocrisy of it is glaring.
Irishman release
“It was a passion project for Scorsese… but languished without financing for seven years until Netflix came to the rescue. “Netflix came in and said they’d do it with complete financing and also give complete creative freedom,” Scorsese told the ABC.”
Netflix shows him respect, when no one else would fund another frickin’ Jimmy Hoffa and mobsters movie, gives him a theatrical release before streaming it, and he bites the hand that feeds. (Yeah, I know he thanks Netflix in the op-ed, but in context he sounds ungrateful.)
He chose to break “from the traditional 90-day window between a film going to cinemas and then being available for at-home entertainment,” himself hurting the very same theaters he says are necessary for the full cinematic experience.
My personal experience in recent years has been to only go to the movies for big spectacles, like Marvel and Star Wars movies. So he’s right about a segment of the viewing public. But I haven’t been to a theater in the last two years at all. There’s nothing wrong with controlling your viewing experience at home. If you have a big enough screen and good sound, it may be qualitatively better than a theater experience. I’ve had to watch movies in theaters out of focus and/or with bad sound. That’s not to mention the people coughing or sneezing on you; the bag checks going in; or having to wonder why there’s two cop cars parked outside.
So there seem to be two strains that he’s complaining about. Lack of access for his generation of filmmakers to theater distribution and the supposed lack of whatever aesthetic values they cultivated in an era that’s been gone for decades. The first is a sense of entitlement that I’m not willing to grant. The second is a matter of taste and preference that he is entitled to, but he should’ve stopped there. Going further to say certain films have no cinematic merit is simply condescension.
This bit from the op-ed: “cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.”
An argument could be made that Civil War qualifies on those terms. I have the sense that he hasn’t actually seen much of what he’s criticizing.
@151/Sunspear: Yeah, that’s why I can’t give credence to this sort of thing. The older generation has been bemoaning the inferiority of the younger generation’s theater and music and culture for as long as the written word has existed. There are surviving texts from ancient times with exactly the same kind of “culture is dead, these kids today” plaints that we’ve heard in every generation since. If it were ever true, then culture would long since have degenerated to animal grunts.
Culture changes from generation to generation. That doesn’t mean it gets worse. Sometimes there are declines in certain ways, but they’re eventually followed by upswings, or are paralleled by improvements in different areas. You just have to be willing to see what’s been gained, not just what’s been lost.
So true, CLB. Once upon a time it was novels that were going to destroy the moral fiber of the nation.
“Eh, the kids these days with their cave paintings, they’re destroying spoken word storytelling!” – some Neanderthal, probably.
@153 You touch upon an underappreciated fact. Novels were to the 18th century guardians of public morality what comic books were to the 20th.
@154 There were similar complaints recorded in ancient times about the written word, which was held to be destroying human mnemonic capacities by supplanting them. “People used to memorize the Iliad, but today’s lazy whippersnappers don’t bother!” And those complaints were accurate, as far as they went. The question is, not are we losing something precious, but are we gaining more than we’re losing?
Were not the Netflix Marvel characters part of the MCU, though quite loosely? I thought some of their villains were incredibly complex, and earlier than either of the two mentioned in the article. I loved the Stokes and Fisk and the Punisher, to name four of them.
@157/Kate, technically, yes they were. However, there was little mention of it in the shows (1st season of Daredevil & The Defenders referenced it directly, and others had oblique mentions; Agents of SHIELD had several references early on but mostly moved away from it other than everyone’s favorite Son of Coul & Fury) but the movies never connected back to the shows. I recall reading somewhere that Fiege was not pleased with including TV shows that Marvel/Disney/himself didn’t have control over..
The problem with the Scorsese op-ed as I see it is that he is essentially saying that he has a problem with the fact that people no longer want to see the sort of movies he makes. The audience votes with its wallet. He couches it in terms of “artistic merit” and “mysteries of the human condition” because – for whatever reason – he either cannot or chooses not to see these things represente in the Marvel films. I’ve got to be completely honest here and say that I often have a hard time seeing those things in Scorsese’s films.
Ultimately, it amounts to “they’re not the kind of movies I like.” Y’know what? I love me some westerns, but I don’t see horse-and-sixgun sagas dominating the box office the way they used to. Scorsese, Corman and Coppola are entitled to their opinion, but I think stating what the market SHOULD want is more than a little presumptuous. And someone seems to have thought this movie had “artistic merit” and said something about the “human condition.” Hence Black Panther’s Best Picture nomination. Just sayin’.
“If the smaller, artier films are showing up on streaming rather than in multiplexes, that’s fine, because streaming is not an inferior format to theaters, just an evolution in how content is delivered.”
Sorry, but unless you have an enormous television or a projector and a lot of people over to the house to watch, you don’t get the large collective experience of a theater from streaming. Hearing the screams or laughs from a crowd of strangers at a low-budget horror movie or comedy, respectively, have a magic all its own. That’s not to say that can’t be had in a mainstream blockbuster, but ideally we should have a variety of experiences available to us at the multiplex. Scorsese compared Marvel movies to theme park rides. Well, Disney World has a variety of rides. Even small educational stuff as well.
It’s not just about simply viewing content. The experience of a presentation counts, too.
@Nate: the last Scorcese film I saw in a theater was The Departed, which I liked quite a bit. I can’t say the presence of the audience affected my enjoyment in the slightest. There may have been a whoa reaction at the ending twist, but it wasn’t audible.
Most of the “audiovisual entertainment” I consume (to use his term of diminishment) looks just fine on my 1920 x 1080 computer monitor, when I choose not to watch on the big flatscreen. Don’t think I would’ve lost much seeing Departed at home as long as the aspect ratio is maintained.
The communal experience can indeed add to the fun, but it’s not for the types of movies he’s lamenting. They would fall into the mere entertainment category he’s deriding.
And lest we forget, the cost of going to the movies is simply too high these days. For the price of one single viewing you can own the damn thing later. If you throw in snacks it gets truly expensive. A night out for a family of four can easily exceed $100.
@161.
Notice that I pointed to horror movies and comedies, because those are two genres where the audience can add to the experience — the scream and the laugh. As for Scorsese, he did a lot of talking about a certain Mr. Hitchcock, who was no stranger to generating shocks to the audience. If you haven’t seen it, check out the biopic “Hitchcock” where the director (played by Anthony Hopkins) is shown outside a screening of Psycho “conducting” the screams.
As for the prices, that’s up to the consumer of course. We choose the experiences we want. Maybe if so many theaters hadn’t gotten lazy and unimaginative over the years, they could’ve added to the experience of the movie instead of taking away from it. But that’s another kettle of fish.
@Nate: I did notice. That’s why I said it’s not the kind of movie or experience he’s advocating for.
He lists Vertigo as one of his favorite films. I couldn’t agree more. It’s a masterpiece. The irony is that Hitchcock was making art while working in a genre format: mystery/thriller. And Scorcese has made art while making gangster pictures. If anyone should get the potential of genre, it’s him and his cohort.
My favorite Scorcese films are from the mid-80s: After Hours, The Color of Money, and The Last Temptation of Christ. Not coincidentally, those are all non-mobster movies. I never watched Wolf of Wall Street because I didn’t want to see yet another story about an asshole.
In the last decade he’s mostly made documentaries, of which I’ve only seen one. I’ll likely watch Irishman at some point, but not necessarily go out of my way. Apparently, it’s a meditation from someone closer to the end of their life than the beginning, which is appropriate.
But what he’s saying in interviews is classic late stage career griping about how the business and the current generation has moved on from what they used to consider good.
@160/Nate, personally, if I could get first run movies streamed to my house at the time of release to theaters, I would never go to another movie theater again. I’d much rather watch a movie in the comfort of my own home, with no one around to make noise or otherwise disturb me (I freely admit I’m a bit of a recluse). So the complaints about “not getting the movie theater experience” are meaningless to me. I see nothing “magical” in the experience.
Krad@60 : I’d say the Italian Black Panther is “They Call Me Jeeg / Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot”, although it is very much not a Marvel movie (or even DC) in the way it tackles superheroes.
Atrus: Never heard of it, but hey, look, it’s on Amazon Prime! It’s being added to the queue……….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I overall liked this movie and after worries about it tanking due to what seemed to be the mood of the country judging by the election of 2016, seeing this become a genuine phenomenon, was gratifying.
I do have quibbles with it. The action scenes are weak. As well, Killmonger is erratically played, going from shades of grey antagonist to being full-on cackling supervillain and back again. Still, I think it was due to the filmmakers realizing that Killmonger’s arc (modern man finds he is the heir to a fantasy kingdom) is more traditionally the hero than the actual hereditary king that’s the stoic protagonist in this tale. Combine that with Michael Jordan’s natural charisma, and I can see why certain scenes are more heavyhanded than others.
There’s another thread in this discussion, where I’ll say I’m closer to Scorsese’s thoughts on the matter than others here. I’ve enjoyed seeing these made, but they have had an observable impact on the film industry that gives me and quite clearly others pause.
This was in some supplemental I read, but Erik’s mother is in the jail N’Jobu is planning to assault at the start of the film.
And as far as Ramonda, I imagine that she’s queen because of marriage, not by birth of royal lineage. Just like Kate isn’t going to be queen of England when William passes, it will go to their oldest son.
Aeryl: would’ve been nice if the movie mentioned that. Or her. Ever.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Three points, barely related. First, the mix of African cultures might make more sense (e.g., Bast worship, Xhosa language) if we think of Wakanda as proto-African rather than pan-African. That is, the Egyptians borrowed the panther/cat goddess from Wakandans rather than the other way around. There is no reason to think that Wakanda has always been as isolationist as it currently is—or was, before the reign of T’Challa.
Re: the Scorsese discussion: Mr. Scorsese came of age professionally during a period when film directors were considered the primary auteurs of film. Prior to that was the idea that producers were the auteurs. Hence why the Oscar for Best Picture goes to the producers. The MCU represents a return to that producer-led production effort. While the studio system with a stable of actors is mostly dead, companies like Disney continue to employ producers to control their franchises. Scorsese can lament the lost era during which he cut his directorial teeth, but I agree with Christopher and KRAD that he comes off as ageist and dismissive toward the craftmanship of the people who have followed him. Just like we can recognize great films from the old Studio Era, great films can be made in today’s Studio Era.
Lastly, on the second or third (home) viewing, I realized that the history of Wakanda makes more sense as a bedtime tale told by N’Jobu to N’Jadaka than by T’Chaka to T’Challa. When I mentioned this to my wife, she was like, “Duh.” That was her take from her first viewing.
Unfortunately, we won’t get to see this King T’Challa again. Rest in Power, Chadwick Boseman.
@171: Yeah, just heard about it from the Toronto Star. Really sad situation.
@171 and @172:
Wakanda Forever. :(
@171/Sean K.: Yes, sad and shocking news indeed. However, according to Wikipedia, Chadwick will indeed return once more to the role of King T’Challa. Apparently he had already completed a voice-over role for the character (as well as for Star Lord!) in a yet to air Marvel animated anthology TV series called What If? that should come out next year. I’m sure it will serve as a nice final tribute to both the actor and the Black Panther character.
@174: That’s good news. What If? is one of the Marvel series I’m really looking forward to, and it will be nice to hear his voice again. I’m also curious to see what Marvel does with Black Panther 2 – perhaps the movie will center on Shuri?
@175/Sean K.: That seems to be the general consensus among the fans: the passing of the torch to Shuri despite it coming a lot sooner than it was probably intended in this movie series. But it seems the more agreeable option than recasting the role which is already tied so closely to the particular actor (say unlike Batman or Spider-Man who have had a revolving door of actors) and then of course due to the tragic nature of Boseman’s passing it would seem like a major slight if the role was recast.
@176:
But it seems the more agreeable option than recasting the role which is already tied so closely to the particular actor.
Yeah, while I don’t want the character retired, part of me also can’t help feeling this way.
You’re right. This isn’t like recasting Rhodey or Banner back in Phase One after Terrance Howard and Edward Norton parted ways with the MCU. Boseman was T’Challa. His performance in Civil War achieved instant iconography that was only enriched by his solo film and I can’t imagine anyone else playing the King of Wakanda now.
But I also certainty don’t envy Feige and the rest of the Marvel Studios leadership because there’s no easy solution for them moving forward, either. Recasting or retiring T’Challa will, one way or the other, mean re-calbriating or abandoning whatever plans they had for Wakanda’s role in the post-Endgame MCU. That in turn will have a ripple effect on the rest of the production slate in the same way postponing Guardians Vol. 3 did after Gunn’s falling out with Disney back in 2018.
@177 it’s a similar conundrum to Carrie Fisher’s passing which effed up the Rise of Skywalker plans even more than they may already have been effed (would the movie have been better/more coherent if they could go with their original plan? Who can say?). But recasting her would have been basically unthinkable.
I’m starting to see some interesting arguments that T’Challa should be recast rather than killed off. Novelist Steven Barnes in particular makes a compelling case that killing off the first leading black hero in the MCU, regardless of the reason, would be a bad thing in light of the history of movies’ — and specifically Marvel movies’ — treatment of black characters in the past.