#wakandaforever
Feb. 24th, 2018 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glass_icarusWatched Black Panther last night at laaaaaaast, and with great company! At least, it feels that way; it was only released here about a week ago but even that was pushing my limit re: spoiler avoidance. The worldbuilding and the design aesthetic just blew me away, and I could easily have watched another 3 hours/movies of actual storyline unfolding. Things I loved, more and less specific:
- T'Challa the sensitive, empathetic, compassionate hero with an incredible sense of responsibility/loyalty/ethics FTW! His story is such a refreshing, palate-cleansing change from the whitebread superhero narratives of individualistic self-absorbed manpain and angsting on rooftops/etc.
- ALL THE FAMILY LOVE! I include the friend/kin/tribe relationships as an extension of this. No one is an island, and basically everything about the movie does an excellent job of showing that. T'Challa and Shuri are the MOST ADORABLE sibs omg, and the "hi, Auntie" line! asd;lfkajs;
- On a related note, how amazing is it that the conflicts between T'Chaka and his brother, and T'Challa and Killmonger, aren't based on clashing views of people as human beings, but on whose people should be considered "theirs"? The transnational/diasporic solidarity issue makes me flail SO HARD, you guys.
- ALSO. KILLMONGER. SUCH WOW, AMAZING LINES, probably the best complex human villain I've seen in Hollywood films to date? I love that his reasons aren't fundamentally wrong and irrational or based in selfishness, but that his fuck-the-consequences, justice = vengeance approach are what actually make him the antagonist.
- ALL THE BOSS LADIES. I could watch a trilogy about the Dora Milaje, but also about Nakia and Shuri and the Queen Mother being their entirely different HBIC selves, with their various and complementary priorities.
- Selected favorite ladies' scenes: ALL OF SOUTH KOREA but especially the club fight with Okoye whipping her straight hairpiece off at someone like she's discarding trash, and later skidding down the road on the roof while Nakia rolls up in her magically-intact ejected-looking car seat; Shuri's wisecracking sib suit shenanigans in her lab; Okoye jumping in front of the rampaging war-rhino which halts just to lick her on the face asd;lkajsd can you get more boss than that??
- Other themes of win: the thorny ethical questions of intervention and protectionism for never-colonized, developed Wakanda when its neighbors/fellows are post-colonial; the different levels of personal, familial, national, transnational loyalties and how to prioritize them; tradition vs. modernity... I love that the movie managed to tackle them all!
- On leaving the theater, a friend made a crack about the two Tolkien white dudes, lol. I can handwave Klaw as comic relief/plot point, but I'm unconvinced that Martin Freeman was at all necessary, tbh. There's no reason that a CIA operative needs to be a white man, right? :P
- I simultaneously feel that the character development for most people in this movie was both great and insufficient. Killmonger's arc was pretty complete and satisfying, but T'Challa's felt a bit... shortchanged? I'm not sure if it's a pacing thing or something else; I'll probably need a rewatch or two to figure out what my quibbles are.
- T'Challa the sensitive, empathetic, compassionate hero with an incredible sense of responsibility/loyalty/ethics FTW! His story is such a refreshing, palate-cleansing change from the whitebread superhero narratives of individualistic self-absorbed manpain and angsting on rooftops/etc.
- ALL THE FAMILY LOVE! I include the friend/kin/tribe relationships as an extension of this. No one is an island, and basically everything about the movie does an excellent job of showing that. T'Challa and Shuri are the MOST ADORABLE sibs omg, and the "hi, Auntie" line! asd;lfkajs;
- On a related note, how amazing is it that the conflicts between T'Chaka and his brother, and T'Challa and Killmonger, aren't based on clashing views of people as human beings, but on whose people should be considered "theirs"? The transnational/diasporic solidarity issue makes me flail SO HARD, you guys.
- ALSO. KILLMONGER. SUCH WOW, AMAZING LINES, probably the best complex human villain I've seen in Hollywood films to date? I love that his reasons aren't fundamentally wrong and irrational or based in selfishness, but that his fuck-the-consequences, justice = vengeance approach are what actually make him the antagonist.
- ALL THE BOSS LADIES. I could watch a trilogy about the Dora Milaje, but also about Nakia and Shuri and the Queen Mother being their entirely different HBIC selves, with their various and complementary priorities.
- Selected favorite ladies' scenes: ALL OF SOUTH KOREA but especially the club fight with Okoye whipping her straight hairpiece off at someone like she's discarding trash, and later skidding down the road on the roof while Nakia rolls up in her magically-intact ejected-looking car seat; Shuri's wisecracking sib suit shenanigans in her lab; Okoye jumping in front of the rampaging war-rhino which halts just to lick her on the face asd;lkajsd can you get more boss than that??
- Other themes of win: the thorny ethical questions of intervention and protectionism for never-colonized, developed Wakanda when its neighbors/fellows are post-colonial; the different levels of personal, familial, national, transnational loyalties and how to prioritize them; tradition vs. modernity... I love that the movie managed to tackle them all!
- On leaving the theater, a friend made a crack about the two Tolkien white dudes, lol. I can handwave Klaw as comic relief/plot point, but I'm unconvinced that Martin Freeman was at all necessary, tbh. There's no reason that a CIA operative needs to be a white man, right? :P
- I simultaneously feel that the character development for most people in this movie was both great and insufficient. Killmonger's arc was pretty complete and satisfying, but T'Challa's felt a bit... shortchanged? I'm not sure if it's a pacing thing or something else; I'll probably need a rewatch or two to figure out what my quibbles are.
