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I want to talk about some of the failures of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
First, let me say that I thought they handled the death of their main actor about as respectfully and deftly as any blockbuster movie made by Disney could be expected to. The emotional through line of grief and dealing with the death of a loved one rang true, and I found myself tearing up a bit towards the end.
However, I feel like this movie is very messy and a lot of it comes from their unwillingness to be as daring politically or aesthetically as the original Black Panther.
My biggest complaints circle around Talokan and Namor.
Whatever else one might say about the concept of Wakanda, the idea of asking what Africa would look like without colonization, and the imagination behind its Afro-futurism is interesting and compelling. On top of that, the political questions at the core of the first movie, while not Citizen Cane, are fundamentally interesting: What responsibility do the powerful have to those weaker than them? Is a gradualist or revolutionary approach to change better? Isolation or conquest? Isolation or outreach?
It is also helped along by the fact that Killmonger managed to be a villain with a point - as a descendant of royalty and African slaves, a Wakandan who has seen the plight of African Americans and come away with a more revolutionary Black nationalist mindset as a result. He manages to be grounded up until the point they decide to make him just enough of an asshole to justify stopping him for trying to change things the wrong way.
But all of this falls apart with Namor. He is old enough to have personally been oppressed by Spanish colonists 400 years ago, and he even attacked a Spanish hacienda while burying his mother. He says he will "never forget what he saw." And yet... he just sort of let the rest of Spanish colonization and Mesoamerican history play or more or less the way it did in our world after that? He saw the rise and fall of Fascism and Communism in the 20th century, and he didn't lift a finger, but as soon as the surface world is on the brink of discovering Talokan, it suddenly becomes imperative to preemptively conquer the surface, since the system of White European dominance that American hegemony is the latest instance of would be all too happy to use neo-colonial policies against these two new superpowers.
However, the passage of 400 years really makes Namor feel way less justified in his crusade. Killmonger personally experienced life as a poor black kid in contemporary America, and learned the broader context of his suffering and the oppression of his people. Meanwhile, Talokan has been isolationist for the last 400 years and clearly hasn't bothered to stop oppression anywhere else. (He says his enemies call him "Namor", but who are his enemies? Aside from burning one Spanish plantation to the ground 400 years ago, what did he do for the Mayan people since then?) The passage of time has also made things more complicated. Namor would be most justified if his crusade was against the Spanish - but of course they haven't been a world power for a long time, so instead the movie uses America and, strangely, France as its two examples of White European colonizers in the modern world. (I suspect they wanted to do more with the Haiti-France connection in the original script, but it got cut for being too spicy.)
But in Namor's conversations with Shuri, he talks about how "you know how they treat people like us", and I have to ask whether the movie actually manages to say anything about race relations or the history of colonialism at all, rather than lazily referencing it. Like, sure small pox and Spanish conquista was horrible for many of the natives, and it sucks that Namor's tribe had to go through that, but none of that would really justify attacking the countries today, the people alive today. The time to act would have been 400 years ago, and it seems like the Talokanian people had the power and ability to fight back against the Spanish, and they did nothing really substantive to do so. They gave up after one plantation.
As an aside, I think it is simple realpolitik that America and every other halfway competent nation would be trying to get their hands on vibranium in the MCU. I don't actually think the hints of neocolonial critique really get off the ground here. MCU America doesn't want vibranium because Wakanda is a black nation, and wouldn't want it because Talokan is a Mayan nation. They want it because there are aliens and demons and gods in the MCU, and vibranium is one of the better tools for fighting back against them. As well as being responsible for miraculous advancements in medical and other technologies.
Overall, this just seems like another instance of Marvel not doing a great job with Hispanic countries and cultures, even as I tend to be fairly impressed with how they handle the African American experience. For a good example of the former, look at the Eternals. What exactly makes Druig stop his mind control scheme to bring peace between the Indians and the Spanish at a single city? Why didn't he do that to all the Spanish? For an example of the latter, see The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Black Panther is alt-history (like Inglorious Basterds) for blacks. The actual story isn't as important as the message, which is: look how awesome a black society could be, had things gone a little differently. My favourite detail in the world building is that they pretend to be a third world country, which adds a little escape hatch from our current reality. Wow, what if the Central African Republic just wants us to think they lack the capacity to operate a state! This is a totally reasonable thing to do, because those dastardly whites would never allow a black society to flourish.
Black Panther is not supposed to be about wielding power but not being mean or colonial or whatever, it's "imagine a powerful civilization, but they are black". It's not a contradiction when Wakanda does something that progressives might criticize whites for doing, because in the MCU they are the captain now.
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Hold up a minute, you can tell it's been decades since I read the comics, but they're ret-conning Namor? He's no longer Prince of Atlantis, he's ruler of some
HispanicIndigenous South American underwater realm called Talokan?Good lord, is nothing sacred anymore? I caught a glimpse of a trailer for "Wakanda Forever" and thought I saw Namor out of the corner of my eye, then went "Nah, what would Atlantis be doing in the story of the isolated futuristic African realm?" So it looks like I was right both ways - it's not Atlantis, but it was Namor.
Y'know, all this talk about making this movie for Black people, but this kind of choice just tells me it and the preceding one was made mainly for white liberals to go "Oh yah, colonisation so bad, White privilege awful!" about, especially when told by black activists going on social media about "white people don't go to this movie the opening weekend, let black people enjoy it".
Well to be fair switching it from Atlantis, given that Aquaman beat them to the punch movie wise (though Namor was first in the comics) is not a bad idea. Half human- half Atlantean dickish prince of Atlantis is already out there in the DCEU. You're already having to cope with the daft wings on his ankles and his switches between hero, anti-hero and outright villain, let's not make him have to climb too high a mountain
And Namor and Wakanda did have a war in the comics as well so they are pulling from that storyline pretty much whole cloth. Talokan is Atlantis just with a rebranding. Exact same storylines, war on the surface world etc. But it differentiates them a bit with DC Atantlis. I thought that part actually worked pretty well.
Yes, the wings on his ankles are stupid. Deal with it, kids. They made Aquaman cool (which, to be fair, he badly needed: a 'superhero' whose defining trait was that he could only stay out of water an hour was less than whelming), now I want my dumb 70s "everybody was on drugs and boy can you tell" comic book stories told straight (as straight as they can be, which isn't much).
Part of Namor's 'charm' was that he was a snob and a jerk a lot of the time (though he could rise above it at times). Why give him a ret-conned Pathetic Kicked Puppy Backstory? Original Real Namor would sneer this pretender into oblivion at the very notion that the Prince of Atlantis was ever reduced to such a state!
Original Namor has one card in his deck. Attack the surface world. Celestials attack earth and damage Atlantis - attack the surface world. Pollution - attack the surface world, Mind wiped - attack the surface world, mind restored - make peace.. no sorry I mean attack the surface world. Possessed - you guessed it. Someone stops his pet piranhas eating innocent civilians - attack the surface world. Dark Elves attack Atlantis - attack the surface world.
The most ludicrous thing about Namor wasn't his ankle wings, it was that every five minutes people would team up with him, despite him being the Atlantean equivalent of a badly trained attack dog. Even the Atlanteans finally realized that and rebelled and overthrew him. If anything he needs a troubled back story for some sympathy and to be softened a little to explain why his own people actually follow him.
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I have no idea but I wish it would spot. It reeks of the "bullies really just have low self-esteem" non-sense everyone was spouting off in the 90s.
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I found it pretty hard to suspend my disbelief for the movie, which made it feel really empty to me. Particularly disbelievable:
Like you said, a 400-year-old man who, as far as we know, has been very passive and lived under-the-radar suddenly decides that he needs to preemptively conquer the world even though there doesn't seem to be a tangible threat to him or his people. I usually expect centuries-old elders in fantasy fiction to have a more cool and level-headed approach to these sorts of things, considering they have so much experience and have seen empires come and go etc.
Given the many similarities between Wakanda and Talokan it also seemed like there was significant opportunity for diplomatic cooperation between the two of them, why dive into negotiations with a heavy-handed threat of war?
Namor seemed to want to both have Talokan remain a hidden isolated nation and initiate global war for conquest and/or deterrence; these goals seem at odds with each other and made it hard to understand his motives.
The power balancing seemed off in the movie. Wakanda has always been known as a highly advanced global superpower with defence systems and technology sufficient to take on Thanos' armies. Why is it that the Talokans seemed capable of just swimming right into their capital city and waterbombing the hell out of it, even prior to Namor joining in? The projectiles they were firing at Namor didn't even seem to have any homing capabilities considering he wasn't particularly fast at dodging.
The University girl wannabe iron man. Made a vibranium detector, something that literally every global superpower is trying to do, just for fun as a school project because her professor said she couldn't, in a car workshop, with (presumably) no vibranium in her possession to test and build it on, and probably little known research on the topic available for reference? Bullshit. Huge Mary Sue vibes. Built an iron man suit arguably better than the Mark I yet apparently is busy with schoolwork and needs to rush off to her Differential Equations class? Also bullshit; I could maybe believe she's some sort of prodigy but why would she bother wasting her time with trivial math classes in university then? Her just walking into the Wakandan workshop and making something comparable to iron man Mark III in the span of seemingly days is also ridiculous.
Whatever happened to the Talokans being seemingly immortal? On the bridge Shuri's bodyguard stabs several of them in the chest and they fall over dead, then they get up and walk it off. Later on a Talokan dies after a single gunshot.
Namor specifically said that he hadn't been passive, he had been preparing his people for war for centuries. The Vibranium detector - or, more specifically, T'Challa's decision to reveal it - revealed to Namor that their isolation was ending so it was now time to strike.
Also: Namor is supposed to be an asshole. He's been seen as a living god by his people for centuries and his formative experiences with humans were highly negative. He has less incentive to change than most "elders".
That's cause M'Baku was right: if you pay the danegeld you don't get rid of the Dane. Namor was never going to leave after getting what he wanted, he would just demand more. He explicitly tells Shuri that he knows killing the scientist won't permanently solve his problem.
Namor was testing the waters: if he can convince Wakanda to help him kill the scientist (essentially making them complicit in his act of war), he knows he can then pressure them for more long-range stuff. And, of course, if they get caught they're already at war with the US. Which is what happened.
As for why his opinion seemed to change: the obvious answer is that he had Shuri in his custody which a) gave him more leverage and b) a chance to convince her directly.
Which they lost. When they absolutely shouldn't have. Putting aside the outside-context tech Thanos brought (the massive drills), I honestly think the US Army would have done a better job because they have things like...artillery and rapid fire weapons. But the Wakandans were overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
If anything "Wakanda is technologically strong but has a very outdated military doctrine and very small numbers of people" is the best rationalization of the disconnect between what we're told and what they see.
Which would tie in nicely with this film...If they actually gave the Talokans the numbers Namor bragged about. I know they couldn't be there for the final battle but maybe an establishing shot would have helped here.
Ah, I must have missed that. Maybe it just didn't really materialize in my head because they didn't really show it; like you said, we only hear Namor brag about his numbers, there's never more than maybe 50 Talokans on screen at any given point in time except in Taloka itself, but that seemed like a peaceful and pleasant city so didn't really strike me as "preparing for centuries for war".
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I actually have a Grand Unifying Theory of Modern Mary Sues, which comes down to two principles: 1) audiences don't want to be taken on the exact same journey twice, and 2) modern film executives are more likely to make a new entry with a female protagonist.
It is absolutely true that if you compare, say, the time it takes for Rey in Star Wars to reach certain milestones, she does better than either Luke or Anakin with far less training. However, I also think it is true that if the sequel trilogies had instead been a brand new franchise, the fast speed at which Rey learned force techniques wouldn't actually be much of an issue. So her first confirmation of the Jedi being real and not just stories happened today, and she mastered the Jedi Mind Trick in like an afternoon while chained up? That's not much of an issue if the sequels are all that exists. Maybe being a space wizard is really easy or something? And she beats Kylo Ren in a lightsaber fight with essentially no training? Well, he wanted to capture her not kill her, and he was heavily injured, yadda yadda.
I think Ironheart in this movie, as well as characters like Rey in Star Wars or Korra and Avatar, often have the real world background that audiences have already seen how high power scaling can go in the universe, and are eager to get back up there again. It happens with male protagonists as well. I believe Boruto has advanced faster in some regards than his dad Naruto, and Gohan reaches Super Saiyan as a child while his dad had to train his whole life to do it. It just happens in long-running franchises. Audiences don't want to wait 200 episodes for Boruto to naturally reach the same point as his dad.
Well he trained intensively with his dad, one of the few Super Saiyans in the universe, in the hyperbolic time chamber for the sole purpose of also reaching Super Saiyan status. He had also been alluded to have immense power deep inside when he was a child before his dad even went Super Saiyan. Goku on the other hand only really did goofy "training" with Master Roshi and Kami/Mister Popo, and only really made significant progress after training with King Kai and in the gravity chamber, which seemingly didn't take place over that much time, maybe a year, after which he transformed into a Super Saiyan with no guidance available. So I think Goku and Gohan, while they had slightly different arcs, are comparable and Gohan's transformation doesn't invalidate Goku's.
Goten and kid Trunks however are ridiculous with how quickly and effortlessly they managed it, but I think everyone agrees on that.
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This is a strange argument. You have taken the primary argument of Mary sue detractors (jamming an all powerful audience stand in into an established and popular franchise ruins both the popularity and the establishment of the franchise) and you are presenting it like a refutation.
Yeah there wouldn't be as much bitching if the ST was stand alone, but it's not stand alone! If it was just a random movie about space wizards no one would give a shit how the magic worked, but in star wars it works a particular way, specifically the star wars way, which established a requirement for training, which makes Rey's lack of training annoying jarring.
My idea isn't exactly a refutation of the concept of a Mary Sue - more like an explanation of why I think it happens. I think it also comes with the insight that this isn't a problem unique to female characters in established franchises. (I'm not convinced simple power creep is enough to explain Boruto and Gohan.)
I also think there might be some connection to the "5 minute courtship" problem some people see with old Disney movies. Virtually none of the old princess movies actually end with the couple getting married after short courtship periods - usually, there's a scene where the prince saves the princess, followed immediately by a scene where the couple gets married, but some unspecified amount of time probably passed between the two events. That's just not how audiences remember it, because we don't get to see a montage of all the time that passed.
I think the original Star Wars trilogy is affected by the same "offscreen action" effect. We don't see all of the time Luke spends training on screen (though we do see some of it), and by the third movie he's a fully fledged Jedi. Modern filmmakers trying to mirror his story arc, might be using the "onscreen" training time as their frame of reference instead of thinking about the story from an in-universe perspective. Doesn't mean they're not guilty of bad writing - I think it is just one of the many issues that can happen when fans get old enough to work on the franchises they love.
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In a brand new franchise, Rey would have the same problems, except she couldn't fly the Millennium Falcon because there would be no famous Millennium Falcon to impress the audience with piloting. The speed of on-screen learning isn't the same as the speed of in-character learning and it wouldn't be hard to have a couple of months of training in a new franchise.
Gohan has to do quite a bit of training, even on-screen training, before he becomes competent. Super-Saiyan comes earlier in the process, but that's power creep, which is a different sort of thing than what people are complaining about for Rey.
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Disclaimer: I haven't seen the movie.
Just from listening to your description I think I have a stronger, more workable premise for the movie:
Establish that at some point long ago in Wakanda's history, when we KNOW they were more aggressive and warlike, Wakanda invaded and briefly occupied Talokan to try to secure the competing vibranium resource. But then Wakandan forces abruptly withdrew (or were overthrown) when they chose to dissappear from the world stage. And have Namor actively remember and bear possibly literal scars from this event.
Then you justify why Talokan remained hidden even as other colonizers ravaged their continent. They were uncertain as to Wakanda's status and not wanting to attract their attention.
And Namor re-appears due to concern and distrust over Wakanda's emergence and perhaps wants to attempt a pre-emptive strike while they are in a more delicate position.
Now you've got an interesting new perspective with Wakanda having to grapple with its own brief history as colonizers. You can really dissect the concept of collective guilt and the bearing of grudges across long periods of time.
And then you can have Namor seemingly justified in personal animosity against the Wakandan Royal family since he was personally oppressed by their ancestors, and yet may be able to accept that he is dealing with people who had nothing to do with those previous actions and thus:
A) the sins of the father may not be justifiably repaid by their children's children's children's children's children's children, even if you can directly trace the bloodline.
B) They can become an overall force for good despite past misdeeds.
Surely he is owed reparations, though!
And this doesn't mean you have to drop the real-world race politics either, just have to make the Wakandans contend with their spotless image being a tad tarnished. Or if you want to absolve them, have it turn out that a rogue element of the Wakandan military actually carried out the occupation.
I dunno, seems to make for a more compelling narrative AND solves plot and character motivation issues.
Almost certainly would have made for a more interesting film. But of course, this would never happen because you're injecting even the lightest bit of nuance into the film's social message which is 'colonalism bad, western/white countries bad'. Having Wakanda actually be the one colonising another culture would never be allowed, let alone the message of 'let bygones be bygones'.
Honestly Black Panther is a narrative mess anyway since like even ceding 'they were noninterventionalist' means that they've happily twiddled their thumbs through a boatload of fucked up happenings on the continent.
Without even getting into the whole 'Yes, Compton is the greatest scene of African suffering in the world' hilarity.
Virtually the entire MCU has this problem, since it is increasingly being revealed that various heroes and superpowered beings were in and around earth and either didn't intervene in or actually 'allowed' certain disasters to occur anyway.
At least Steve Rogers has the excuse of being frozen for decades.
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That is an interesting option. Especially if you timed the withdrawal to Wakanda's entry into isolation- as in, the reason the oppression/occupation ended was because the evil imperialist/oppressors, at least those on top, recanted/changed rulers to T'Chala's line/entered into their multi-century isolationism. IE, Shuri isn't the direct descendant of the oppressor per see, but the liberator/ones who ended the oppression, and thus create the point that not only are children not guilty of the sins of the fathers, but of course that hatred blinds to distinctions in the out-group.
Though, if you were going this sort of grudge-match, it might make sense that Wakanda is being deliberately framed as the geo-political conflict back drop, not Namor planning an invasion himself. Namor plotting to frame Wakanda, playing on Wakanda's own secrecy and mutual paranoia, would also work well as the set-up, as the backdrop could be a race for evidence before the Americans start a likely ruinous war... which Namor could be setting up to be the spoiler/decisive element in.
Let the surfacers kill eachother, yada yada yada.
Or just have it be HYDRA behind the scenes of everything... again.
That is the ongoing problem, Marvel always has to bring in the fundamentally silly elements of the universe even when trying to be "serious."
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I've made jokes in the past that Black Panther was a love-letter to American supremacy. For all it was supposed to be Strong African Country, the plot is basically that a small central-african country gets couped and counter-couped by the American government twice in about a week... as an accident. First as a rogue former agent, but second by a isolated agent cut off from the state. So great is the power of the CIA that it's agents on their own overthrow the most powerful African Country in the world, twice, before really knowing it exists, and so great is the power of America that Wakandan royalty defects from their civilizational mission of isolation and starts giving aid to that most needy African population there is... American citizens.
Black Panther (the film) always had its own unfortunate implications- steotyping 'authentic' africans as shoe-less tribals with animal motiffs, much use of the noble savage trope, but at it's heart it was also a personal story of a man coming to grips between the tension of the virtues and flaws of something he loves, but knows needs to change for the better. The set dressing is set dressing, because the core story is emotional conflict of ideology and overcoming flaws, and if that's enough to get people to give a pass to the Unfortuante Implications, who am I to say nay?
I don't get that feeling from Wakanda Forever.
As a story protagonist, Shuri works as a 'working through grief' story, but she doesn't actually address or grappel with any really character flaws. Shuri's flaw is that she is grieving, and her grieving is corrupting her otherwise unimpeachable nature, but this isn't an actual character flaw, or anything but the most blameless of guilts. Shuri feels bad for not being able to cure an incurable disease... not, say, refusing to be at her brother's side as a man on his deathbed, denying him a final request. Not for getting a bunch of American police killed in the midst of a coerced kidnapping attempt. Nor for anything else she did, but only for what she couldn't- and couldn't be expected to do- achieve.
This is closer to the suffering-Sue stereotype than an actual character challenge for her to overcome, and the same extends to Wakanda as a whole. T'Challa struggles with the fact that the father he loves is a hypocrite and his people need to change, that his nation's policy is fundamentally flawed, and that Wakanda isn't as good as it tells itself it is. T'Challa loves his people and his friends, but the 'we follow the throne, not you' dynamic is explicit and a major point of divergence where T'Challa, the warrior-king, has to give way to T'Challa, the hero, to save his people from themselves.
Shuri... does not address that her mother broke treaties and promises to share technology and resources, is returning to isolationism, and that the Wakandan foreign policy is being governed again by xenophobic distrust of the outside and secrecy that is threatening to turn the world against them. They can't tell the truth that they are in danger because... Wakanda is in danger? This would be an excellent context for Shuri to break the mold- to reach out for help, and going against her mother's well-meaning strength-in-isolationism- but no. The writing doesn't tie the hero's growth the nation's improvement, because there is no real growth here. There is a reversion to the unquestioned norm, and as an extension the state of Wakanda isn't changing either.
Wakanda, as a character, isn't exactly asserting itself either. No one expresses any opinions on the state of the monarchy's foreign policy, of the direction of the nation is going until it's an actual war council. The people of Wakanda are presented as generally conformist- not even the spark of rebelliousness that faced T'Challa in the challenge for the throne. The advisors are inconsequential early on, and literally dismissed later. Decisions are made for them more than by them as a people. Peasants are going by wooden boat while the royalty flies above them in tech-future spaceships. T'Challa is grieved by the people of Wakanda, but the people of Wakanda fleet their only real city after the first raid in modern memory which takes the queen. Wakanda is no longer an unquestioned superpower, the fundamentals of their assumed superiority dashed by an open an unequivicable defeat on their own home soil and then the deaths of many in a losing battle their princess took them to... but no one has any issues of the new losses, because Princess Shuri didn't let her grief drive revenge?
There are a lot of interesting things you could do here from a writing point. Wakanda is implicitly an incredibly stratified society. It's gone through a seminal moment of it's unquestioned supremacy not only being questioned, but overturned. They lost the battles, they lost their queen, and they've just lost the royal dynasty. It's isolated, and keeping the secrets that have murdered innocent citizens of other countries. You can make interesting stories with this.
But they won't, since that wasn't the goal here, and won't be the goal when the superhero teamup needs to happen.
If one thing is disappointing for me, it's this
Wakanda is a fairytale land so I guess there could be a worry that digging in too deep would undermine it's ability to function as such for everyone but it does feel very empty after two movies now.
A lot was made of the idea of a pristine, uncolonized African country but they haven't really explored it from the ground view.
I actually don't mind a deliberately archaizing nation with schizo-tech distribution...if you explore that concept*. There's lots to draw on there: Wakanda is one of the few left nations that actually seems to believe its supernatural founding myth (with good reason apparently) and apparently has had an unbroken continuous government longer than anyone else, despite what appears to be a highly rickety system of succession. This sort of thing could lead over-valuing of the past, a bunch of people who constantly LARP their ancestors' lives and have grown so indolent that they don't worry about the costs of this.
All of this is weird and absurd and would be fun to see an attempt to condense this into something that made sense.
But it's just sort of a potemkin country instead.
Oh well, this is why god made rational fanfiction.
* This is also my problem with their military. I don't mind that it's incredibly dumb; I mind that they don't explain this dumbness as a product of them being incredibly sheltered and coddled. Even worse: people keep telling us it isn't incredibly dumb.
These sound like heavily mistake theory descriptions.
If all that stuff was put in there for wokeness, outside the process of normal storytelling, you wouldn't expect the concepts to be explored seriously.
I'm not really a mistake theorist on this, but I think the reason is more that it's a Marvel movie and exploring stuff like that isn't really their point anyway.
After all: Asgard isn't that deep either and it isn't a particularly "woke" region like Wakanda and has had more screentime. Deeper, but still.
I don't think any part of the MCU answers the GRRM question of "what's Aragorn's tax policy?"
(Though, obviously, some things that are "unrealistic" are in service of wokeness. Like the need for Wakanda to be the premier nation in the world as opposed to just a bunch of smart, lucky isolationists)
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In the first film to feature Wakanda, the shepherds in poverty outside the invisible gates were actors as much as shepherds. It looks like the country has car-free cities and fast transit for people to get to their reed boat’s dock in the morning for work. They seem to deliberately have chosen a philosophy which eschews all the bad things about cities (anything which causes alienation) and embraces only the good: economic concentration and opportunity.
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To be fair here, I felt like Shuri not being at T'Challa's death bed had more to do with Marvel not wanting to use CGI to bring him back just to give him a death scene, and I think that was the right choice for the film. It would be a bit strange to fault Shuri for it, since I imagine if the character had died but the actor hadn't, Shuri absolutely would have been by her brother's side at the end.
There was a quick line at the beginning where someone relayed to Shuri that her brother was asking for her, and Shuri brushed it off to try to work on a cure. Yes, it makes sense from a Doyelist stand point, it's still interesting that they went out of their way to put that line in, then did nothing with it.
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I don't mind the decision, nor am I blaming Shuri. I mind/blame the writers who didn't do anything with the decision. What could have been an excellent theme-establishing line of dialogue- of Shuri's rejecting the counsel of others, to her own later regret, of establishing a character flaw to overcome ('I'm the smart one, I know better than everyone else')... this would be a good character arc that would support the general plot of the movie, while keeping the theme of grief.
This could have been the establishing character moment, of Shuri trying to solve everything herself without considering the consequences to those she ignores. T'Challa off-screen is one- and one that can give her something to bond over/reflect with T'Challa's ex-girlfriend (someone else who wasn't there at his death bed)- but it can be a reoccuring thematic touch point. Shuri ignoring bald-general's guidance, and getting American police killed- especially if the police are reframed as trying to protect/rescue Riri from a kidnapping, rather than being cast of the villians, in a chaotic three-way where Shuri is trying to 'solve' the problem of the mystery assassins against Riri but doesn't trust/talk with the CIA Liasion Ross dude. It could come across in the discussion with Namor, where rather than Shuri being 'charmed but unwilling to compromise her morals,' let Namor actually tempt/manipulate Shuri, playing the dark counselor and the person whose advice she shouldn't trust (because it appeals to her own ego). Let her think that she's in control, that she knows best and can solve this diplomatically... so that she brings him into Wakanda, against the advice/warnings of others, only to be faced with treachery, right after she appeals to her mother to trust her / let her in / becomes complicit in the tragedy of her mother's death. Then let it come again with Gorilla Tribe chieftan dude, who plays the mentor schtick in the later movie, and who deals with her in a crisis of guild/trust as she doesn't trust herself or know who else to trust. And, of course, let it come down to the thematic tension between Killmonger from the vision- another dark influence- and T'Challa's ex, who asks for her trust and to confidence. Let that culminating moment- of when Shuri truly listens to others over what she wants and rationalizes over what is right- be when she let's her late brother's counsel, and his words, come through the meaningful echo.
Shuri can have agency if she makes mistakes. She can overcome weaknesses, without fundamentally overhauling the plot. Let the twin themes of guilt and struggling to accept the advice of others (while being wary of those who would mislead her) be character themes.
As-is, Shuri (and to a different degree, Riri) is closer to a black female Tony Stark, only without the flaws and the charisma and the character conflicts internal and external that made him gripping.
I don't blame Shuri for that, but I do blame the writers for that. Shuri in Wakanda Forever is flat. Shuri in Wakanda Forever could have been incredibly interesting with the early set-up.
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I feel like I see this particular issue a lot in "message fiction". Like ok, you (the author/director/whomever) have come up with an interesting premise that invites the audience to look at [issue] from a new angle but then you shy away from actually leaning into this premise. I have two competing theories for why that might be. The first is simple lack of imagination and/or concern. The author got as far as "wouldn't it be cool if..." and stopped. The second is specific to message fiction and might uncharitably be described as "lack of respect for the audience". More charitably the issue is that if you actually follow through on your premise, the fictional world stops being a 1:1 analog of the real world and the changes might end up undermining "the message". The quintessential example of this in both comics and film being The X-Men. As much as they try drawing analogies between the mutants and various oppressed minorities. It becomes a lot harder to paint the baseline humans' paranoia and persecution of mutants as unreasonable when you actually start to think about what common knowledge of the existence of shapeshifters and mind-control could potentially do to a society. You see a similar trend in modern vampire movies like Twilight, True Blood, and Anne Rice's novels. They try to play the tragic romance and victim cards, it's humanity that's the real monster you see. But while I'm not without empathy, I can't help but notice that the baseline human is 100% justified in distrusting and fearing what is, in the most simple terms, their natural predator.
Babylon 5 did a decent job of this with their telepath problem. Sure, non teeps often felt sympathy for the telepaths. But they didn’t trust them for reasons that were obvious.
I really enjoyed the B5 episode from the perspective of the telepaths, The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father. But late in the show they promised to explore the Telepath War, which would have been a fantastic opportunity, and then they didn’t deliver. I wonder if it turned out to be harder than they thought.
Agreed. Season 5 generally fell flat. But I thought S1-S4 treatment of telepaths felt real and interesting (it wasn’t obvious how to deal with telepaths even if most people felt sympathy for the telepaths)
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...I agree, and Babylon 5 rightfully gets a lot of love from sci-fi fans for it's well-realized characters and world building which stand in stark contrast to it's special effects. ;-)
Edit: to be clear I say that with affection.
The special effects aren’t great. But B5’s biggest problem is acting (with the exception of G’kar and Londo of course)
Most of the regular cast was at least decent. The guest cast was ... more flawed. Just the opposite flaws, too, weirdly. The worst of the regular cast were too flat / wooden, but some of the guest stars just egregiously hammed it up, like they'd just been yanked from stage acting to screen acting and couldn't stop themselves from overacting hard enough to make sure the cheap seats didn't miss anything.
I think B5's biggest problem is the combination of a consistent arcplot with inconsistent episode quality. You can recommend someone watch the best 60% of TNG and they'll get a really good show; with B5 you want to watch 95% of the episodes to get backstory and track plot threads, but still maybe only 60% of the episodes were really good, and worse, the weaker ones were disproportionately up front in season 1...
Straczynski kind of lost the run of himself in latter years, but I will always admire him for being able to stitch together anything coherent after the first season and his main lead dropping out of the show (God rest Michael O'Hare, I loved his Commander Sinclair), which torpedoed a lot of plot already written and some scenes that had been filmed, and he had to write a new male lead, cast them, rejig the plot, and incorporate the already shot and now redundant old plot with the former character into the new version of where the show was going. He really managed it extraordinarily well, all things considered.
I think the show got too successful for its own good, and ran at least one season too long. I liked the subtle development of how a cult of personality was developing around Sheridan, and how he was heading on a course that was a bit too "if you're not with me, I'll use my alliance with the Minbari to crush you into dust" at times, and there definitely was an element of fanservice that crept in (the character of Elizabeth Lockley was never quite fully developed to my mind). The funniest part about the run-up to the Telepath War, such as it was, was all the rogue telepaths had amazing hair and I could easily believe that the climactic (bathetic) explosion happened because all the hairspray they were using caught fire 😁
But it really was a great effort and a milestone in TV SF.
Dunno where you get "at least one season too long"; season 4 was the best.
The first half of season 5 was weak filler, but that's supposedly because they were expecting to get cancelled after Season 4 and had to push most of their original climactic material up. And yeah, the most impressive thing about JMS wasn't the story he wrote, it was the tree of stories he wrote just to have one that managed to coincide with the actors they lost and the regular threats of cancellation, in such permutations that he had to rewrite some of those branches on the fly and still mostly make them work. Even when thinking about final seasons, "You're not cancelled after all." was a much more mitigating surprise than GRRM's "a decade goes by so fast, doesn't it?", and JMS at least pulled out half a season of good material.
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There's nothing strange about the use of France, within the context of Africa.
Wakanda is in Africa. France still has strong links and influence on the continent, which is not always perceived positively by every African. Here is a famous Anglophone African laying out how she sees the relationship between France and Francophone Africa and she basically called it neocolonialism in a more eloquent way.
For better or worse, this is how many think
But Fracophonic Africa is almost exclusively west Africa, while Wakanda is depicted (in its culture and in the very brief glimpses of its location on a holographic map) as belonging to east-central Africa -- specifically near Kenya and Tanzania. I can't really complain, since at least the France angle is rooted in some sense of history, but it's another example of Hollywood and pop culture smearing and blurring the historical lines between different regions of the world. It's comparable to assuming that Cleopatra was black since Egypt is in Africa -- the Ptolemys were Greek, and Egypt has always been closer to Mediterranean culture than sub-Saharan African culture.
Funny things is, it appears Ancient Egyptians had darker skin than modern Egyptians but less Sub-Saharan African admixture. Apparently in last millenia people in Egypt were racist towards visible traits but otherwise fine mixing.
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The site of the conflict was an outreach centre in West Africa.
If Wakanda really is the most powerful nation on Earth - let's go with the film's logic despite the obvious problems with this - and it's moving deeper into Africa to help (or, more cynically, gain influence) tensions with France are pretty natural.
Location, yes. It's aesthetic and hell, even religious culture varies and has influences from everywhere.
This is a feature, not a bug. It's not that Coogler is unaware that worshiping Bast would be strange, even for Eastern Africans. It's not a Hotep thing where they legitimately believe Cleopatra is black.
Wakanda is a fairytale-land standing for an uncolonized, pristine (an incoherent concept but it appeals to people under someone else's cultural hegemony) Africa. As such you get a mix of West African music and clothing, Egyptian gods (since those are the most documented "African" gods), South African Xhosa and so on.
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