Black Panther - AfroFuturism takes on Broadway!!

[GloatingSwine]

Spoiler: Other Commentary

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My main plot-related point of "hm, what?" is this: why did Killmonger choose the moment he did to go from working with Klaue for profit to double-crossing him and enacting his plan? Why not much sooner -- perhaps before the guy who murdered his father died, so as to get some proper direct revenge instead of proxy revenge?

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They actually explain that in the film. He's not actually after revenge as anything other than a secondary motivation, he's striking in order to destabilise Wakanda and thereby control its politics, and that means attacking at the point of a power transition whilst the current leader is less established and secure in his position.

.what? When did Reed Richards ever use power armor?

I get he's super smart, but he doesnt use power armor.

He's built power suits to fight Galactus with before. He also built a power armour suit for Ben to use when he lost his powers. He might not use it himself, but he was in the power armour building game before Tony even got started.

[Malimar]

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They actually explain that in the film. He's not actually after revenge as anything other than a secondary motivation, he's striking in order to destabilise Wakanda and thereby control its politics, and that means attacking at the point of a power transition whilst the current leader is less established and secure in his position.

Right, they did make a point of saying that! I didn't get the significance at the time. Very good point.

[Vinyadan]

I am always surprised when people use "Futurism" as part of their movement's name. The original Futurist movement did create some great works of art and literature, but it also explicitly glorified war as the only way to cleanse the world, while promulgating not just anti-feminism, but outspoken contempt towards women.

[Dr.Samurai]

A quick skim of the Wikipedia entry for afrofuturism indicates that it is a vehicle for feminism and female empowerment, so perhaps this particular brand of futurism is different.

[Vinyadan]

Yea, it probably has no relationship with the original one, which is why I find that the name causes some confusion.

[warty goblin]

Watched it last night, and loved it.

Spoiler: Spoilers of Spoilerage

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For one thing everything about the movie was just beautiful. The people, the locations, about 99% of the cinematography, the music, just damn.

For another, it's the first piece of movie sci-fi - and the only superhero movie - I've ever seen that just feels so imaginative. Like it isn't just another take on an idea I've seen a zillion times before, this felt fresh and vital and like everybody involved in it really cared.

Also Michael B. Jordan can act. Wow. And as a bonus, a Marvel movie with a villain who had an intelligible and honestly rather sympathetic motivation, and a plan that actually made some level of sense!

The fight choreography was also generally better/more interesting than the comic book movie standard, although I felt this sort of went downhill at the climax. But the two ceremonial duels were really well done; possibly because they were fought between explicitly non superpowered individuals with edged weapons, so hits actually mattered. The climax fight between Black Panther and Killmonger was a letdown, because it fell into the usual comic book movie fight hole of a couple dudes in costumes punching each other ineffectually and grunting. Nobody has ever made that an interesting fight, and this was no exception.

But overall I really liked basically everything about the movie. It's the first Marvel movie I've seen that I'd say hits being legitimately good and exciting, rather than just a bit of rather bland fluff most everybody can enjoy but leaves no lasting impression. It's definitely a step up from Civil War, which I thought was just a bad movie.

[Lethologica]

Yea, it probably has no relationship with the original one, which is why I find that the name causes some confusion.

Futurism is a great word. It'd be a shame to let such an ugly movement claim all associations with it in perpetuity.

[deuterio12]

Watched it last night, and loved it.

Spoiler: Spoilers of Spoilerage

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For one thing everything about the movie was just beautiful. The people, the locations, about 99% of the cinematography, the music, just damn.

For another, it's the first piece of movie sci-fi - and the only superhero movie - I've ever seen that just feels so imaginative. Like it isn't just another take on an idea I've seen a zillion times before, this felt fresh and vital and like everybody involved in it really cared.

Also Michael B. Jordan can act. Wow. And as a bonus, a Marvel movie with a villain who had an intelligible and honestly rather sympathetic motivation, and a plan that actually made some level of sense!

The fight choreography was also generally better/more interesting than the comic book movie standard, although I felt this sort of went downhill at the climax. But the two ceremonial duels were really well done; possibly because they were fought between explicitly non superpowered individuals with edged weapons, so hits actually mattered. The climax fight between Black Panther and Killmonger was a letdown, because it fell into the usual comic book movie fight hole of a couple dudes in costumes punching each other ineffectually and grunting. Nobody has ever made that an interesting fight, and this was no exception.

But overall I really liked basically everything about the movie. It's the first Marvel movie I've seen that I'd say hits being legitimately good and exciting, rather than just a bit of rather bland fluff most everybody can enjoy but leaves no lasting impression. It's definitely a step up from Civil War, which I thought was just a bad movie.

Just to say I basically agree with all your words.

In particular

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The "villain with the "a villain who had an intelligible and honestly rather sympathetic motivation, and a plan that actually made some level of sense!". Become king, get b****** royal guard, gift super tech to the people that share your agenda.

Closest thing to a fault was Killmonger throwing off a still breathing black panther down a waterfall instead of chopping off his head in the place or otherwise confirm the kill, but can't really blame Killmonger since in the real world that would've been a kill too, with the extra insult of there not being a body left to bury.

But of course in any work of fiction, a named character being thrown off a waterfall while heavily wounded is just a minor setback.

[warty goblin]

Just to say I basically agree with all your words.

In particular

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The "villain with the "a villain who had an intelligible and honestly rather sympathetic motivation, and a plan that actually made some level of sense!". Become king, get b****** royal guard, gift super tech to the people that share your agenda.

Closest thing to a fault was Killmonger throwing off a still breathing black panther down a waterfall instead of chopping off his head in the place or otherwise confirm the kill, but can't really blame Killmonger since in the real world that would've been a kill too, with the extra insult of there not being a body left to bury.

But of course in any work of fiction, a named character being thrown off a waterfall while heavily wounded is just a minor setback.

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Yeah, it was an odd case of a lot of the movie's beats being very predictable tropes if one paused to think about it for a moment, and me not actually caring all that much. About the only thing I guessed wrong was that in the intro I figured the tribe that isolated themselves in the mountains would be the bad guys; I much preferred them as people who just weren't that impressed by the hero and had their own thing going without being explicitly antagonists.

It may also have helped that a lot of the movie felt closer to a more traditional story about kingship than a superhero story. King dies, new king is uncertain and challenged by a powerful evil prince, drama ensues. No secret identities or learning about powers or weird suspension of disbelief about why this dude is so important. He's important because he's king, the fight over who's king matters because if the bad guy is king there'll be a lot of war. The whole being super-powered thing was honestly sort of just irrelevant to the plot and drama. I mean take that that out and does the movie lose anything but the staging of like two fight scenes?

Which, to be clear, is something I very much like about the movie.

[Xyril]

I am always surprised when people use "Futurism" as part of their movement's name. The original Futurist movement did create some great works of art and literature, but it also explicitly glorified war as the only way to cleanse the world, while promulgating not just anti-feminism, but outspoken contempt towards women.

People tend to focus on either the literal meaning of a name or the best parts of a movement while disregarding the rest. YMMV as to whether the result is an offensive and myopic whitewash or a laudable attempt to correct or to transcend flaws, or perhaps to "purify" a movement that you see as corrupted by bad elements. Consider for example how you feel about the relationship between people who believe in natural selection as a framework for understanding biology and ecology versus people who believed in social Darwinism and eugenics as a basis for guiding public policy. Or how people might try to reconcile a love of, well, probably a half dozen or so major art movements that implicitly or explicitly endorsed theocratic authoritarianism with modern sensibilities that reject either of those things. Or how movies often glorify the "good parts" of the antebellum South or Westward expansion without really addressing whether or not they're also glorifying the institutional slavery or genocide that were also indispensable parts of that history.

It's all shades of grey for most people, depending on their personal beliefs and experiences, and Nazis are pretty much the only (close to) universal hard no.

[Xyril]

He's built power suits to fight Galactus with before. He also built a power armour suit for Ben to use when he lost his powers. He might not use it himself, but he was in the power armour building game before Tony even got started.

It makes sense that he doesn't, except for very specific situations. Defensively, his strength is in flexibility--while it's certainly possible to hand-wave a solution in which one of the five smartest minds in Marvel can devise protective armor that isn't inherently limiting of his powers, it's not so trivial for a writer or an artist to devise a way to do so that still looks cool and still sounds plausible to a reasonably intelligent audience that's largely familiar with the relevant tropes. Offensively, he also relies on his flexibility for when the solution is to stop crime by punching criminals until they stop committing crime. If he needs more raw firepower than he can provide without any augmentation, he can usually rely on pretty much any of his teammates. If a solution requires more cleverness than brute force, then he would benefit more from his flexibility or a specific-purpose gadget (or both) than he would from wearing a general-purpose suit of some sort.

[Lethologica]

People tend to focus on either the literal meaning of a name or the best parts of a movement while disregarding the rest. YMMV as to whether the result is an offensive and myopic whitewash or a laudable attempt to correct or to transcend flaws, or perhaps to "purify" a movement that you see as corrupted by bad elements. Consider for example how you feel about the relationship between people who believe in natural selection as a framework for understanding biology and ecology versus people who believed in social Darwinism and eugenics as a basis for guiding public policy. Or how people might try to reconcile a love of, well, probably a half dozen or so major art movements that implicitly or explicitly endorsed theocratic authoritarianism with modern sensibilities that reject either of those things. Or how movies often glorify the "good parts" of the antebellum South or Westward expansion without really addressing whether or not they're also glorifying the institutional slavery or genocide that were also indispensable parts of that history.

It's all shades of grey for most people, depending on their personal beliefs and experiences, and Nazis are pretty much the only (close to) universal hard no.

In this case it's not even that, just linguistic coincidence. There's no significant Futurist influence in Afrofuturism. Considering the nature of the two movements, if there were any influence, it would most likely take the form of the latter consciously rejecting the former.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Yea, it probably has no relationship with the original one, which is why I find that the name causes some confusion.

Treat the word like you (should? do?) treat the word "Gothic" - it means different things in different concepts, but still identifies cultural trends which have little or no actual relationship between them.

GW

[Ramza00]

Treat the word like you (should? do?) treat the word "Gothic" - it means different things in different concepts, but still identifies cultural trends which have little or no actual relationship between them.

GW

This is not ironic, considering the original etymology of the word gothic means "of the goths" but what was meant by this was at the time was "not classical" since the goth movement was multiple tribes (such as the visigoths and the ostrogoths) invading the roman empire. We do not know exactly where the goths came from, we have guesses though. Goth language back then (the language is now extinct) belongs to the germanic family of languages but when I say germaniac family of languages do not assume this means Germany as the location. No it just means structurally the language is similar to other languages where some of these people finally settled down in Germany and the nearby places.

But yeah Gothic is a word that is used to describe how it is different / contrasts from some other thing.

[deuterio12]

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Yeah, it was an odd case of a lot of the movie's beats being very predictable tropes if one paused to think about it for a moment, and me not actually caring all that much. About the only thing I guessed wrong was that in the intro I figured the tribe that isolated themselves in the mountains would be the bad guys; I much preferred them as people who just weren't that impressed by the hero and had their own thing going without being explicitly antagonists.

It may also have helped that a lot of the movie felt closer to a more traditional story about kingship than a superhero story. King dies, new king is uncertain and challenged by a powerful evil prince, drama ensues. No secret identities or learning about powers or weird suspension of disbelief about why this dude is so important. He's important because he's king, the fight over who's king matters because if the bad guy is king there'll be a lot of war. The whole being super-powered thing was honestly sort of just irrelevant to the plot and drama. I mean take that that out and does the movie lose anything but the staging of like two fight scenes?

Which, to be clear, is something I very much like about the movie.

Spoiler

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I would say the super-powered thing fits here for several reasons:
a) It explains how the tribes were first united, the first king was super powered and could just beat everybody else into submission. I guess they added the de-powered challenge ritual later on so he wouldn't appear as a tyrant ruling by power. Either you can challenge him one on one depowered or try to gank the king while he's on super steroids, and he already showed that ganking the super powered version just won't work.
b) It allows for the king to not only be the head of state but also to personally go in dangerous missions without everybody getting too worried that he'll bite it. Like when Black panther goes after the Klaw nobody's too worried he may die or even get seriously hurt, just that the Klaw may escape him again.
c) When the evil prince rises to power and gets super powers too, then only the good prince can stop him with his super powers. Not even the elite royal guard could take down the powered up super evil king after all.

[Strigon]

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c) When the evil prince rises to power and gets super powers too, then only the good prince can stop him with his super powers. Not even the elite royal guard could take down the powered up super evil king after all.

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Don't know about that last one; didn't most of the royal guard end up fighting the... what were they, the army?
Anyway, point is, the general and two of the royal guard almost got his armour off, and presumably would have won from there. So, at best, we can say a few of the royal guard couldn't take down the powered up king while he was wearing his armour. Which isn't really saying a lot.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

This is not ironic

Err... did I give the impression of trying to be ironic? I was not: I meant it as I said it.

GW

[Ramza00]

Err... did I give the impression of trying to be ironic? I was not: I meant it as I said it.

GW

I am sorry, I meant what I said but let me retry rephrasing it.

I was trying to give you a hat tip Grey Wolf!



...because you were so right, and so right that I felt the need to explain to other people (not you Grey Wolf) for maybe other people did not see the insight of the comment you made. (But this need for me to explain things may be a *personal character flaw* of mine.)

Well done Grey Wolf was all I was trying to say, [claps] , bravo Grey Wolf.

[GloatingSwine]

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Yeah, it was an odd case of a lot of the movie's beats being very predictable tropes if one paused to think about it for a moment, and me not actually caring all that much. About the only thing I guessed wrong was that in the intro I figured the tribe that isolated themselves in the mountains would be the bad guys; I much preferred them as people who just weren't that impressed by the hero and had their own thing going without being explicitly antagonists.

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In the comics M'baku and the Jabari are more antagonistic. I hope they keep things as they are in this version though because Winston Duke was far too much fun to waste

[Cikomyr]

List of records set by Black Panther:

- Biggest February opening weekend
- Biggest non-sequel opening weekend
- biggest superhero launch of all time
- biggest Fri-Sun opening weekend for a long holiday
- Biggest Long holiday debut
- Biggest opening week-end by a non-white director
- Biggest pre-Summer opening weekend

201M$. Thats.. a lot

[Douglas]

List of records set by Black Panther:

- Biggest February opening weekend
- Biggest non-sequel opening weekend
- biggest superhero launch of all time
- biggest Fri-Sun opening weekend for a long holiday
- Biggest Long holiday debut
- Biggest opening week-end by a non-white director
- Biggest pre-Summer opening weekend

201M$. Thats.. a lot

And all that for a movie where nearly the entire cast, including the main protagonist, is black. Will Hollywood in general notice? Probably not.

[warty goblin]

Spoiler

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I would say the super-powered thing fits here for several reasons:
a) It explains how the tribes were first united, the first king was super powered and could just beat everybody else into submission. I guess they added the de-powered challenge ritual later on so he wouldn't appear as a tyrant ruling by power. Either you can challenge him one on one depowered or try to gank the king while he's on super steroids, and he already showed that ganking the super powered version just won't work.
b) It allows for the king to not only be the head of state but also to personally go in dangerous missions without everybody getting too worried that he'll bite it. Like when Black panther goes after the Klaw nobody's too worried he may die or even get seriously hurt, just that the Klaw may escape him again.
c) When the evil prince rises to power and gets super powers too, then only the good prince can stop him with his super powers. Not even the elite royal guard could take down the powered up super evil king after all.

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It's not that the superpowers don't fit, so much as it doesn't rely on them to make the story interesting. Would I care about Iron Man if he didn't have a suit of super-armor? Not really, I can barely manage to care about Iron Man with the armor, without it he's just a whiny rich guy. The most interesting drama in Black Panther is centered around not only the characters, but some very topical and rather gnarly questions of history and injustice, and how the characters think about them. That's interesting, regardless of super-pajamas.

And super-powers are hardly necessary to unify people. Otherwise nobody on actual Earth would be remotely united.

[Lacuna Caster]

To understand the plot, you need to know that this country has been historically stable, secure, and prosperous. That's it. If you can't imagine an African nation being a nice place without us holding your hand and painting a picture in excruciating detail, maybe you should go watch the Passion sequel instead."

I don't have a problem with the idea of an African nation being a nice place. The problem is that the whole plot of the film tells you exactly why Wakanda's MO would fall apart in the real world- the only mystery is why it didn't happen thousands of years earlier.

Still, it's a fine movie. I'd rate it roughly on-par with the recent Wonder Woman movie- good with moments of great, mostly thanks to Killmonger's arc and some strong supporting performances.

[Malimar]

Another thing that occurred to me:

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The techy sister's panther-laser-blaster-fist-shooter-thingies were hyped up in all the stuff in advance of Black Panther. I've seen hardly any screenshots from the movie of her other than the scene where she uses them. But in the actual movie they were used on screen for all of thirty seconds and proved completely ineffectual. Those blasters are Boba Fett all over again.

(To be sure, they were only ineffectual because she only used them against the armor she herself had created, so she's definitely not really at Boba Fett levels of hype-screen awesomeness disparity.)

[Darth Ultron]

And all that for a movie where nearly the entire cast, including the main protagonist, is black. Will Hollywood in general notice? Probably not.

They won't notice. After all, it was just a super hero movie.

Though, like maybe, in the next couple years they might make Black Panther 2: Cat of Nine Tails and maybe, just, maybe one other ''black'' super hero movie. Maybe: Bishop: Rooks and Pawns? Storm: Change just like the Weather? Luke Cage:Uncaged?

[Apostrophe]

Just saw this movie on Sunday. Can't say enough good things about it!

Was anyone else blown away by the soundtrack? Man that thing is solid. Got me through my work day today.

[Kyberwulf]

Meh, the box office numbers are skewed.
If you make something political, then of course people are going to change what they would have done. That's what happen here. This wasn't a case of, this could be a good movie. This was a case of
. Let's show them how racist we can be by going to this movie. In the same vein as the Ghostbusters reboot.. It doesn't matter if this movie was good or not. The numbers would have artificially been inflated, just cause some people wanted to prove some political point.

Which is kind of sad. We don't know how well this movie could have done on its own merits. It was good enough to organically be a real blockbuster. Now it's just and overly politicized movie.

Also, the reason why Black Panther didn't make a big deal about Killmonger stealing his kill. It's because in some cultures, they don't make excuses. It doesn't matter why he failed. It just matters that he failed. Also, if Black Panther did make a big deal out of it. It could have backfired on him, showing that Killmonger was skilled enough too steal a kill from Black Panther.

[Cikomyr]

First of all, spoilers dude. Second, this:

This wasn't a case of, this could be a good movie. This was a case of
. Let's show them how racist we can be by going to this movie.

WTF dude?!?

[Anteros]

So putting aside the race aspect that everyone is focusing on, is this movie worth seeing? I typically skip the Marvel movies outside of the main Avengers team of Thor, Cap, and Iron Man. I do usually like Marvel movies, but I'm pretty burnt out on them lately. I didn't even enjoy the new Spiderman, and everyone else seems to love it. Will I need to see this before the new Avengers?

[Cikomyr]

So putting aside the race aspect that everyone is focusing on, is this movie worth seeing? I typically skip the Marvel movies outside of the main Avengers team of Thor, Cap, and Iron Man. I do usually like Marvel movies, but I'm pretty burnt out on them lately. I didn't even enjoy the new Spiderman, and everyone else seems to love it. Will I need to see this before the new Avengers?

Most people said that it was a great movie without mentioning anything about race.