Black Panther

Have we ever had a US president as entertaining as Donald Trump? Hell, has any head of state ever been subject to as much mockery?

Yes,George bush was mocked just as much for being stuupid

fittingly he was a Republican as well

but when your nation is advanced as Wakanda

Yeah.. but its basically so advanced just because comic book gobblyedook.

Pretty sure that “ask the Drumpf about Wakanda” offer came from over a year ago.

Look we get it, the Republicans are backing a mentally addled man in the White house. Again. Can we talk about something other than Trump ?

So what's your favorite moment from the movie?

Honestly, I have stopped laughing about Trump a long time ago. Pretty much on election day.

Klaue in the car. It's a shame they killed him off, and in a way that makes him coming back as a sonic being pretty damn unlikely.

"I'll take you BOTH Uncle James!"

"No tears for me?"

The best superhero movies have scenes that transcend the genre and these were BP's.

Wakanda is one of the most blatantly escapist concepts in all of comic bookdom, or at least most grandiose. The entire thing is an embodiment of the cultural idea of what an African nation that turned colonialism on his head and made the colonizers look like primitives might look like.

It being unrealistic isn’t a flaw, it’s an essential part of its definition. It being “what if our history didn’t go down like that” incarnate means that it will, inherently, always fly in the face of realistic history, as will the multitude of hand waves, gimmes and caveats required to justify its presence in the narrative or the world at large.

It’s like calling Wolfenstein unrealistic for imagining a world where the Nazi’s won. Of course it’s unrealistic. It’s supposed to be.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 21st 2018 at 4:19:58 AM

There is nothing unrealistic about it. They came pretty close. If Hitler hadn't attacked Russia and Stalin had refrained from attacking too in reaction to it, and if Japan hadn't decided to attack the US and instead focussed on Chine and Korea, this could have ended very differently.

Plus, the question here is not if an isolated state could exist, what is challenged is the notion that people in isolation would thrive and be ahead of the rest of the world. It's basically a right wing fantasy that this is the case.

It’s unrealistic by default because reality didn’t happen that way. You’re mistaking believability with realism. Also, Wolfenstein has the Nazi’s win by way of superadvanced mecha and such.

And either way, mincing the logistics of it are missing the point.

And again, that is entirely the point of the concept in the first place, and as such it being unrealistic is, itself, part of that point.

Of course an African nation that avoided colonialism by cutting itself off from contact with others would t thrive. That’s both obvious and entirely irrelevant to why Wakanda exists in the first place.

It’s not there to give a realistic symbol of what could have happened if things in Africa’s history were believably different. It’s escapism, and by default exists to contrast the reality of the world we live in and know.

In short, it’s something for black people to look at and say “this is us, if we told everybody else to GTFO and became just as powerful as the colonizers.” It’s not realistic - which, as I said, it requires a lot of handwaves and gimmes - and it isn’t meant to be.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 21st 2018 at 4:35:40 AM

Man, as much as I love Mecha, Mecha ain't the only way to win the war...though it is the fun way.

It should be noted that the film acknowledges that the rest of the world is catching up to Wakanda. So even within the story, isolationism might have made Wakanda more advanced but it didn't guarantee it would stay that way.

Black Panther is finally hitting Netflix streaming the 4th of September.

It looks like it'll be part of the last batch of Marvel movies to hit Netflix. Starting with Captain Marvel, all future MCU movies (except Spider-Man) are going to Disney's new streaming service.

Edited by comicwriter on Aug 22nd 2018 at 12:56:35 PM

Only the US netflix unfortunately

stuupid regional differences

Edited by Ultimatum on Aug 23rd 2018 at 11:54:29 AM

Ever wondered what if Black Panther had an anime opening? It would look like this I guess

https://youtu.be/CvKf-LWllHs

Chadwick Boseman stopped Marvel from giving the Wakandans British accents

https://www.themarysue.com/wakanda-accent/

Good.

Not even sure why they'd consider doing that.

It very much stands out that when a character proposes emulating Western standards, it is the villain who envies their imperialism.

Not surprising. People are rather trained to think of "ethnic" accents as coarse and plebian, and associate affected European accents - especially British - as emblematic of being civilized.

It's not really a shock that somewhere along the line, some writer or exec would think "they won't sound cultured or regal if we give them African accents, but the royal dignity would come across right away if they were British!" without even thinking of the implicit problem.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 2nd 2018 at 5:25:24 AM

There's also the Majored in Western Hypocrisy aspect which an RP accent implies, which doesn't really strike the right note given that it's about a wholly independent African nation which specifically avoided being colonized by European powers.

Hell, it's already kind of straining for a lot of people that they speak English in the first place rather than exclusively Xhosa (or some other traditionally African tongue).

They obviously speak both, so maybe Wakandan education is good enough that everyone speaks a whole bunch of languages, but since the rest of the world uses English for a lot of things, they got used to speaking it even at home.