Black Panther (2018), dir Ryan Coogler

Tbc I’m not trying to argue for the movie being good or bad as much as I am interested in unpacking the ideology arguments it makes or doesn’t make, looking at where the limits of its imagination are w/r/t that ideology

It already has to try and explain vibranium’s paradoxical relationship with infrasound — the explanation of pan-African politics, America’s disgusting post-Reconstruction record, our “soft empire” and exceptionalist / interventionist foreign policy approaches ended up on the cutting room floor.

but tsrobodo, wasn’t there something a little...underwhelming about that conclusion, a kind of vague, generalized “outreach” ? Did that not feel just a little emotionally pat?

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, March 11, 2018 5:21 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Honestly? Not really.

It's entirely consistent with the specifics of the plot:

Black Panther father kills brother, abandoning nephew to discover his cold corpse.
Black Panther son seeks to atone by reaching out to those who grew up like his cousin, starting at the place of original sin.

Trite? probably, but I don't see what more you could reasonably expect.

Black Panther comics, for that matter, have never been about the African experience - at least not to an African. Hasn’t stopped me loving them over the years but, that is loving them with an understanding of how limited the premise is as a vehicle for broad, political and cultural allegory.

― tsrobodo, Friday, February 23, 2018 12:27 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I go back to this because in fairness they do really skirt the line here. The movie incorporates concepts and ideas that the scope of the story is not equal to but rather than these passes constituting a genuine argument I see it as grounding the movie in our lived realities so that its emotional beats hit harder.

People forget that Wakanda is no less mystical and fantastical than Thor's Asgard, but because 'Africa' as anything other than a place where children starve, wildlife rules and terrorists kidnap schoolgirls is completely absent from the public imagination, Wakanda in all its allure and visual glory functions as a stand-in and ends up being afforded a realism that it can't possibly live up to. I have to imagine any disappointment with the direction taken stems in part from that.

Best Coogler decision was to kill Killmonger so that other marvel productions don't ruin him.

comix killmonger has died more than once iirc

so i just got back from visiting my family on vacation

my mom spent most of my visit with her complaining that "black panther" was monarchist propaganda

my mom hasn't seen this movie and, as if it need be said, isn't particularly much of a comics reader

i offer this information in the hopes that it may provides some amelioriation, or at least sympathetic backdrop, to my own frequently-expressed uninformed crackpot theories

two hours of propaganda for Big Vibranium imo

to be the first film released in saudi arabia in 35 years

https://shadowandact.com/black-panther-breaks-saudi-arabia-cinema-ban

When does this open in the US?

it's banned in the contiguous united states iirc, gotta get yrself to alaska and/or hawaii to see it

Will Moviepass cover plane tickets?

i dunno dude, i think you’ll need to contact their customer service desk

this is gold guys

honestly feeling so attacked rn

Here we go...

https://io9.gizmodo.com/black-panther-is-coming-home-in-may-complete-with-dele-1825147215

Director’s Intro
From Page to Screen: A Roundtable Discussion - Delve into the film’s making
Crowning of a New King – Explore the world of Black Panther in all its color and complexity
The Warriors Within – Get to know Wakanda’s women and the actors who portray them
The Hidden Kingdom Revealed – Wakanda’s diverse people
Wakanda Revealed: Exploring the Technology
Gag Reel
Exclusive Sneak Peek at Ant-Man and The Wasp
Marvel Studios the First Ten Years: Connecting the Universe
Director’s Commentary

Then the deleted scenes:

U.N. Meet and Greet
Okoye And W’Kabi Discuss the Future of Wakanda
T’Challa Remembers His Father
Voices from the Past

so this has topped the most recent Star Wars for worldwide box office

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/

seeing that news prompted me to finally watch this. 30 mins in and im already loving it. so many questions already, so many different ways you can look at this, all the conflicting motivations, etc. visually it is super stunning with lots of things that it feels like i have never seen before. love that the conflict of isolationism y/n of Wakanda is one of the film's central themes. also that first scene in the museum was brilliant.

not that yr takes aren't predictably wrong/awful but lets hold of on judgement until youve seen the entire mess

thought the cgi was notably awful in this btw

spoilers for adam ahead --

as undercooked as the climax of this is (viz vagueness of the "threat" actually driving the action) at this point the only thing that really bugs me about it is how everything hinges on BP giving his friends and government the vaguest possible description of what happened with klaw in Busan. iirc it's just like "he got away" which is almost at the level of the pronouncements made by the doctor on arrested development. he really doesn't think it's worth informing anybody that klaw has a wakandan collaborator? this is a crucial new clue and something everybody needs to be on the lookout for. at the very least you'd think he'd want to exonerate himself a little. it's a small line but it's really forced plotting.

Did they know Killmonger was Wakandan at that point? I thought everyone was laboring under the assumption that he was African American.

didn't he show off the tattoo? i mean I'd still let them know anyway. it's valuable klaw intelligence.

movie was p cool anyway tho, I had a post about this but I lost it. maybe later.

man that was amazing. i almost teared up at 2 or 3 spots. Killmonger indeed one of the most sympathetic villains ever. for months i have been hearing arguments about who is the real villain and who is the real hero. personally i liked both of them and thought the film did a good job of letting the viewer decide.

i like the symmetry of the challenge, having them first fight without BP power and then at the end both of them have BP power when they fight again. i thought the concept of the challenge was good because the king's authority wasn't derived from a magical plant.

fwiw i was not bothered by the CGI at all. i loved the blacklight world stuff. i loved the gadgets too, it was almost like a James Bond at points. it is a really well-written movie that just flew by! there was a lot of drama but also some good comedic moments to lighten it up. great film, easily one of the best comic films.

(viz vagueness of the "threat" actually driving the action)

yeah the movie maybe could have had some establishing shots of warlords around the world getting ready for weapons shipments or something but then again that would have put more importance on Martin Freeman's heroic turn when the movie really isn't about him. tbh i was afraid the ending would have them handing over tech to the CIA (tho i guess that is still a plot thread, it would have been a massively bummer ending)

so this has topped the most recent Star Wars for worldwide box office

seeing that news prompted me to finally watch this

game over

Imagining that in Denzel Virtuosity voice

Rewatched it last night & still love it

Yeah this, Ragnarok and Infinity Wars ( and Himecoming) have been a wonderful streak of totally entertaining, supreme comic book films that actually feel like the comics. Just when I was getting bored...

the things i like the most are the things I like abt Coogler in general
- the story’s heart is sons & fathers
- there’s depth & humanity in the characters, you see backstory in the most subtle interactions
- the humor that pops up in the most unexpected & delightful places

Shuri is a very necessary addition to the MCU if for no other reason than somebody has to be female, a genius, AND be able to make jokes. This became very apparent to me after Infinity War.

In that vein, I am suddenly hoping very hard for a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur movie. When a tree and a raccoon rabbit become megastars, no weird idea is outside the realm of possibility.

WHAT ARE THOOOOOOSE still makes me lol so hard

and when Shuri puts her hand up like she wants to battle him but is actually just complaining that her corset is too tight & can we plz go now <3

looking forward to Coogler's commentary on the movie

RABBIT! is somehow my favorite bit from A:IW

And the best part about it is that, while Rocket gets snappish towards pretty much everyone who comments on or speculates about his specieshood, he totally just rolls with Thor calling him a rabbit.

Wrong thread but whatevs. All these peeps are at last joined together.

WHAT ARE THOOOOOOSE still makes me lol so hard

yes i laughed out loud at this! also "I call them sneakers".

Shuri was VIP at the jokes wo taking you completely out of it or detracting from the heavy moments. in fact it felt more like a regular/non-superhero person would react, which kind of made it all the more real. here's hoping she is in many Marvel films to come.

also i enjoyed the visual gag of the car disintegrating around Nakia and having her clutching the steering wheel like in an old cartoon. in a way it felt like a comedic pay-off to the awesome spectacle of the vibranium spear stopping that SUV like it had hit a brick wall.

so yeah i dug this movie! a $200 million popcorn flick with a nearly all-black cast, who get to play interesting and complex characters, where "colonizer" is said multiple times, where in the first five minutes a black leader in oakland points out (if you want to hear it) that the real-life black panthers were marginalized and murdered by the state, where the whole thing is devoted to a fantastic what-if of an uncolonized africa... ok sure martin freeman's character is terrible and the space given to a meddling CIA spook shooting down black revolutionaries (!) should have been given over to making killmonger's plan (and bp's objection to it) just slightly clearer, or doing some street-level wakandan world-building (the palace drama setting kinda makes the place feel unreal, undercutting the protect-our-way-of-life stuff).... but whatever!!! all the action scenes were actually interesting and exciting and you didn't know how they would end, the design work was awesome, the supporting cast was awesome, the jokes were actually funny and built the characters, michael b killllllllled it from that museum scene on, and even miniboss serkis as neocolonial resource extractor was miles more interesting than the main baddies of most of these films. though i do wish he had gotten turned into living sound and started rhyming brainlessly at killmonger like he does with doctor doom in secret wars, oh well. having him be a wannabe rapper was a nice way of alluding to that while also cementing his rep as cultural appropriator.

also there was just something about seeing a big movie that felt like a real event, bigger than star wars in terms of the general public giving a shit about it. the lines going into every screening of this were NUTS in nyc. i got a little teary thinking about little kids who have not one but like five new awesome black characters to identify with, have toys of, daydream about. and to know that those characters are actually super popular with the public as a whole and not some underbudgeted side thing. how great is that? and it's an actual conversation starter. even if you ultimately kind of think killmonger is right and that BP's little community outreach program seems reeeeeal weak, you get to argue about that afterwards! the movie is about actual things, it has unresolved questions on its mind beyond whether the heroes will believe in themselves and stop somebody with a big blue laser that's going to turn everybody into panthers or whatever. whatever its flaws, that alone puts most of this genre to shame.

^^^I'm doing this because we're not on FB and thus I can't heart your post, DC.

I finally saw this on Netflix and am wondering if perhaps all the supposedly good parts were edited out? Killmonger had like 10 lines in the movie.

But every one of them formed a band.

it played really differently on the big screen in a way that i can't define. some of killmonger's best stuff, like the museum scene, felt suddenly like low-budget marvel TV watching on a computer monitor.

Yeah just watched it too. It’s ok but I don’t understand all the hype about it.
M. B. Jordan was pretty cool though (and the Shuri character/actress is fresh).

get yr eyes checked maybe idk

:D

you are all otm except that no it was not any better on the big screen in fact much of it looked like shite tbh

fp

😎 worth it

you are dead to me on so many levels <3

aw that is a vmic assassination

:D

This will be the first best picture nominee I haven't watched since the wild horses couldn't drag me to Finding Neverland.