Black Panther (2018), dir Ryan Coogler

A friend of mine wrote this review.

Now, before we proceed with the ugly part, let’s make a few things clear: no superhero movie needs to have good politics. In fact, none of them have, and probably none of them ever will, because the superhero genre does not lend itself to them easily. Vigilante action, power fantasy, and the idea that some people are just inherently superior are baked right into the recipe and extracted only with great effort and self-analysis; comics have attempted it only rarely and movies never. Furthermore, nobody ought to go into Black Panther — a multi-million-dollar product released by a mega-billion-dollar corporation — expecting it to be progressive, or woke, or even politically aware. That would be terribly naïve, and nobody should have done it; not before the movie was released, and not now.

And that’s good, because, folks, the politics of Black Panther are pretty goddamn terrible. I’m not the first person to point this out — I especially recommend Ricky Rawls and Leslie Lee’s Twitter posts — but the plot of the movie essentially involves a heredity monarchy built on ritual combat monopolizing a natural resource to maintain a nationalist, isolationist system. When a legitimate heir to the throne appears and decides to use that resource to arm and equip oppressed people of color all over the world, he instantly becomes the villain. Rather than participate in anti-imperialist revolution, the country’s leaders opt for a violent civil war; the revolutionary figure (who, to boot, is portrayed like a mad-dog ghetto thug straight out of a paranoid NRA fantasy) is killed and the newly aware monarch settles for teaching inner city kids to code. As Lee puts it, Black Panther “dangles the idea of global black liberation in front of you, paints it as villainous, and then ends in an orgy of the freest black people to ever walk the Earth slaughtering each other to protect whites.”

There’s all sorts of other problems with the movie politically. The presence of the Martin Freeman character, a CIA agent who literally blows black people out of the sky to prevent them from aiding the struggle against people exactly like him, is a huge mistake, particularly in light of the real CIA’s real history with real African leaders. The movie also tries to have its cake and eat it too, in an obvious dodge swallowed whole by way too many Marvel stans, by implying that the problem with Killmonger isn’t his revolutionary intentions, but his violent means.

First of all, I have bad news for you, folks: the question ‘Is violence bad?’ is deeply and profoundly dumb and boring. Yes, violence is bad. So is cancer. The question is what we’re supposed to do about it. A much more interesting question is ‘Is violence effective?’; another is ‘When is violence justified?’ But Black Panther isn’t very interested in those questions, so we’re left to somehow accept that it’s bad for Killmonger to use violence to overthrow oppressive governments that exploit entire countries and wipe out entire populations, but it’s fine for T’Challa and his people to use violence to beat Killmonger — or, for that matter, to fuck around with slavers and child soldiers in neighboring countries, as long as the people they kill are other Africans.

It’s a complete ducking of the issue, made even more absurd by the fact that it takes place in the context of a superhero movie, where the whole genre is built in the idea that it’s fine to use violence against bad people. Do you remember any other Marvel or DC movie that did so much hand-wringing over the concept of violence? Apparently it’s only a concern when the violence might be targeted at the ruling classes. Beyond all that, as Rawls argues, the whole notion is bogus from the premise up: Wakanda has had incredible technology for a thousand years that puts them light-years beyond any other country on Earth, but it’s never even occurred to them to have a system of government slightly more responsive to human needs than a bloodline monarchy predicated on whoever is the best at beating the shit out of people? These aren’t inherent qualities of the narrative. These are choices made by writers, and they’re bad ones.

Lol

Furthermore, nobody ought to go into Black Panther — a multi-million-dollar product released by a mega-billion-dollar corporation — expecting it to be progressive, or woke, or even politically aware. That would be terribly naïve, and nobody should have done it; not before the movie was released, and not now.

having said that, let me tell you why it is bad not good

this movie is like a political rorschach test

That third paragraph is pretty impressively incoherent and point-missing.

Next time just link or embed like most people do?

I can't imagine watching the movie and thinking that it doesn't have sympathy for Killmonger and his ideas.

I also can't imagine judging a movie by how much I agree with it, but whatever

I also can't imagine watching the movie and thinking that it's uninterested in the question of when violence is justified.

Next time just link or embed like most people do?

The first sentence is a link.

worth pointing out that the full review does also have some positive things to say about the movie too

Yeah, I had no problem with that review, in context. (And it's not the first to point out the weirdness of an advanced peaceful nation that is nonetheless something of a benign dictatorship with hereditary bloodline rule whose disputes are settled with traditional bare-chested waterfall beat-downs).

Killmonger and the Vulture might be the best Marvel movie villains. At the least, they want to do more than take over the world.

tbf queen elizabeth ii only ascended to the throne of great britain after triumphing in a famously brutal 110-minute cage-match against princess anne in trafalgar square

the chair leg which she used to finally subdue her upstart sister, still caked in dried blood and clumps of hair, is on display in the british museum

“You can’t have an advanced techno-tribal utopia without democracy” is the new “if you can just hyperspace kamikaze things why don’t they do it all the time” is the new “you can’t hear explosions in space”

princess anne was only 2 when E2R ascended the throne, which makes the 110 mins required all the more puzzling

she was a fucking badass toddler - this is basic british history ffs

elizabeth was of course hobbled by a catastrophic attack of diarrhea minutes into the battle - suspicions remain, of course, that a partisan footman spiked her pre-combat breakfast of larks' tongues

the image of her caked in shit and blood, holding her unconscious young sister aloft by one of her feet, remains one of the most cherished images of 20th-century britain

Trafalgar Square also has a time-warping force field so that 4 minutes inside is actually 110 minutes outside. Plus there were several trailers and a post-bout sequence

Lasagnegate I am wounded wounded it will never truly heal

wait anne is her sister? my basic british history is even further off than i knew

It's the big reveal at the end of empire

one of us was clearly born in an alternate universe but i refuse to be drawn on my suspicions as to which one

that's why they called the darkest hour tbf, no one could tell who was who for weeks

either way the royals are so inbred that we're in a real sister/daughter chinatown situation whenever we try to draw up a family tree imo

forget it jake it's sandringham

Anyway back to Wakanda analogues, wouldn’t it have been dope if George VI had been a spy? “Oh, you’re the King’s brother? Espionage school for you”

It's the big reveal at the end of empire

― DUMPKINS! (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 February 2018 14:38 (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Guys

needy imo, nagl

Sometimes we have to allow that our inner lj is in fact otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNHc2PxY8lY

do we tho would be my q xp

that video looks great, thx phil

Before I saw it I read a review that said the fight scenes were kind of incoherent, especially from the director of Creed, but I didn't have any problems with the fight scenes (besides, like, why an armored rhino is a bigger advantage than flying spaceships with lasers and shit). However, I thought the foley effects (at least as they sounded in my theatre) were weird. Like, totally '80s action movie punches.

“You can’t have an advanced techno-tribal utopia without democracy” is the new “if you can just hyperspace kamikaze things why don’t they do it all the time” is the new “you can’t hear explosions in space”

To be fair, this entire movie was literally about the handwringing that comes with being an advanced civilization, yet what felt like half of the run time was shirtless people punching each other over a waterfall.

Dod they no longer have any magic blue flowers? She only saved that one ...

man I love Ryan Coogler's Oakland accent

yes i was bothered about the last blue flower -- in the pub afterwards we decided it would be fairly easy to hide some as killmonger did not seem especially detail-orientated tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9VYzNUXGDA

ryan coogler is 31 btw

gonna sit awhile and quietly contemplate my mortality

xp I dunno, he seemed to hang about to check their work.

So either:

"The right/rite of challenge has been regrettably postponed indefinitely"

OR

"As Wakanda's protector, I am happy to swear in M'Baku as the first president of the Republic of Wakanda"

michael b. jordan will always be haddie braverman's troubled boyfriend alex to me.

speaking of bad panther, why did he even need that...uh, i don't know where klaw is supposed to be from...guy with the accent to help him steal that artifact? seemed like a waste of time. oh wait he needed his dead body to use as a calling card i guess...nevermind.

just dawned on me that the only white people in the movie were gollum and bilbo...

I'm sure there's some lesson in responsibility about a more technologically advanced nation not unilaterally deciding to arm people in less-developed nations in order to bring about regime change, but I just can't quite put my finger on it

Less-developed here includes the US tbf.

Less-developed here includes the US tbf.

You must have heard the pun scott

xp that's kind of the buried lede

i don't know where klaw is supposed to be from...guy with the accent

surely he was meant to be south african?

just dawned on me that the only white people in the movie were gollum and bilbo...

lol yes, i mentioned that to the people i came with during their interrogation scene. no riddles, though.

klaw's accent was (roughly) south african, yes

(i think his full marvel lineage is more complicated than that) (ie his dad was a nazi?)

I like the light continuity of him just being some south african mercenary that, we now know, entered the story when he was contracted by a rogue Wakandan

so he's a villain, but it's refreshing when the actual antagonist wastes him partway into the movie

the part in the museum where Killmonger observes that security has been watching him like a hawk since he arrived but haven't been watching what she's been putting in her mouth was a good one. basically racism got them all killed.

Before I saw it I read a review that said the fight scenes were kind of incoherent, especially from the director of Creed...

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The fight scenes in Creed were kind of incoherent too! Creed is not a very good movie!

i know i said it already but the museum scene is my favorite thing in the movie. i could "unpack" it but i almost don't want to disturb it...

but yeah, it's not just racism that bites our Africa Expert, it's the consequences of what she's been ingesting all this time...

the beat at the end of the scene, where killmonger reappropriates the mask not bc its vibranium, or even wakandan, but bc he's just feelin it... i could watch that over and over