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Moroaica Since: Aug, 2017
#3126: Dec 16th 2022 at 11:05:01 PM

It makes no sense why the Wakandas lost so badly against the Fish people. They had weapons that could stop their regeneration, and access to iron man suits and yet 90% of them were wiped out in the final battle against fish people wielding pointy sticks.

It makes no sense, and honestly makes Shuri seem like a horrible leader, sending her people people to their deaths when it should have been gone the other way around.

RedHunter543 Crimson Paladin Since: Jul, 2016 Relationship Status: Barbecuing
Crimson Paladin
#3127: Dec 16th 2022 at 11:17:56 PM

This movie def needed to be a bit more even with the Wakanda vs Atlantis conflict.

Sure it's good to have a nation that could conceivably challenge Wakanda warriors but Wakanda gets it's teeth kicked repeatedly, and there were certain moments that needed more fanfare like Shuri becoming the Black Panther to help sell the idea that Wakanda was becoming stronger.

I dunno, I feel Chadwick Boseman's idea of wanting to explore Black Panther's tactical side would have done this movie a lot of good.

At least Shuri is able to come up with plans to turn the tide in favor of Wakanda in the climax.

"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"
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#3128: Dec 17th 2022 at 7:25:41 AM

I thought it was pretty evident that the "fish people with pointy sticks" were all superhumanly enhanced. Like, Okoye's fight with some mooks on the bridge made it clear to me that this is an entire race of Black Panthers.

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Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
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#3129: Dec 17th 2022 at 8:44:34 AM

All of their ancestors took the equivalent of a heart shaped herb

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OrangeBun Formerly Hail Muffins (He/Him) from The only sane region left in Brazil (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: I'm her lunatic and she's my sociopath
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#3130: Dec 17th 2022 at 9:03:10 AM

I mean the whole point of Talokan is to be the Always Someone Better to Wakanda as a whole, to challenge their view of themselves as the most powerful nation on Earth.

If we weren't shown Talokan being vastly superior in combat, then what would even be the point?

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Moroaica Since: Aug, 2017
#3131: Dec 17th 2022 at 11:09:06 AM

They didnt show Talokan as superior in combat, the Wakandans grabbed the Idiot Ball and fought with pointy sticks instead of their arsenal of advanced weapons and technology that has been shown to one hit kill the fish people.

Maybe if the fish people had magic other than water bombs that could counteract the Wanakndan super-science that would have put them in an even playing field but as it stand they both seem inferior to modern warfare.

[up][up][up]S Shuri synthesized the heart shaped herb, why weren't the rest of the army given it? They handicapped themselves in a literal warzone so the hero can be special

Edited by Moroaica on Dec 17th 2022 at 11:10:59 AM

RedHunter543 Crimson Paladin Since: Jul, 2016 Relationship Status: Barbecuing
Crimson Paladin
#3132: Dec 17th 2022 at 11:20:04 AM

Royal Family blood I think?

"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"
MurlocAggroB from the second-most ridiculous province of Canada Since: May, 2015
#3133: Dec 17th 2022 at 11:29:40 AM

[up][up] The Heart-Shaped Herb is a little more than just a super serum. You have to go through a ritual where you go to the Ancestral Plane to determine whether you deserve the herb or not. It's played in a Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane way, but even still it definitely can cause heart failure if your body rejects it.

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fredhot16 Don't want to leave but cannot pretend from Baton Rogue, Louisiana. Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: Too sexy for my shirt
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
#3134: Dec 17th 2022 at 1:52:13 PM

…Do you really think they’re just “pointy sticks”, that’s it, literally nothing special about them at all?

And they can be “one-shot”? ماذا?

Edited by fredhot16 on Dec 17th 2022 at 1:53:02 AM

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slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#3135: Dec 17th 2022 at 1:55:22 PM

[up][up] Its pretty much the balance there. Aside from the spiritual significance the herb doesn't work for everyone which is why they don't mass-produce it.

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RedHunter543 Crimson Paladin Since: Jul, 2016 Relationship Status: Barbecuing
Crimson Paladin
#3136: Dec 17th 2022 at 3:55:13 PM

So I came across this bit from a reviewer that I follow from time to time:

"Black Panther 1 was this beautiful statement of mythmaking, a special thing that movies rarely achieve blockbuster or otherwise. It offered a dream of an Africa still safe and not marauded by European colonization and capitalism. Wakanda could be the shining beacon, if only in our imaginations, of a homeland for people whose culture and history had been stolen from them. Black Panther 2 tries to double the trick with a new Mayan/Aztec Atlantis, but also completely drops the ball on any decolonization fantasies. Instead, the untouched refuges from white domination are also brutal theocracies prone to genocidal rage to control precious resources. A better world isn’t possible, because in the end, we’re all the same kind of asshole regardless of the color of our skin. Wakanda Forever did not just bury Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther, it buried Wakanda."

TBH, while I'm not exactly fond of Namor, calling him a genocidal theocratic ruler is a bit much.

I do get the grievances with having Wakanda and Atlantis as two countries representing marginalized people fight each other instead of the countries guilty of colonization and currently making inroads towards them.

"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"
Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#3137: Dec 17th 2022 at 6:18:04 PM

I think it's a little weird of a take because the first movie already tossed stones at Wakanda's "perfect utopia" approach. In this one the fact the two havens for the oppressed keep fighting one another rather than the oppressors seems like a glowing neon sign of a point.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#3138: Dec 17th 2022 at 6:25:34 PM

[up][up]I mean, he's worshipped as a living god, rules autocratically (as far as we can tell) and is proposing to commit genocide, I'm not sure what's wrong about it?

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#3139: Dec 17th 2022 at 6:34:13 PM

I don't know if it makes sense to draw a line at that when the Black Panther itself is also the mantle of a "living god" (Bast, more precisely). I also don't remember Namor proposing genocide, just a brutal war of retaliation against the surface world. It's not even particularly clear if he just decided to go against the entire surface world single-handedly or if he's using it as a byword to talk about the USA and the other countries trying to steal his resources specifically.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#3140: Dec 17th 2022 at 7:06:56 PM

[up]I mean, we see what he does to Wakanda, which is the one nation he doesn't actually despise...

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#3141: Dec 17th 2022 at 7:19:51 PM

I mean, it's a brutal, shock-and-awe attack, but nothing about it implies genocide. He stormed their capital and killed their sovereign (while causing a fair bunch of damage to their structure and likely at least a dozen civilian deaths) but we don't see him ordering his soldiers to wipe out the entire Wakandan populace and cut down as many civilians as possible or anything. As I said, he seems to more operate in the "brutal retaliation" method than "we need to wipe out their entire race systematically", which is what genocide means.

In fact, every time we see Namor operate he seems to roll with the same approach: very brutal and relentless lightning strike and stride off from the smoldering ruin. We see him doing that all the way back to his childhood with the spanish mission. A protractred campaign to wipe out a civilization doesn't seem like his style.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#3142: Dec 17th 2022 at 7:26:41 PM

Smash his enemies back into the Stone Age to keep them from threatening him, maybe. But kill them off to the last person? Nah.

ArthurEld Since: May, 2014
#3143: Dec 17th 2022 at 8:27:41 PM

He explicitly tells Shuri "You're Queen now" and tells her to bury her dead. You don't do that to people you want to wholly wipe out.

Even at the end, Namor still wants Wakanda to ultimately be his ally and not just a bunch of corpses (there's also some "man defeated by woman is smitten with her" vibes, but that's not relevant).

To say the movie depicts Namor and his people as "the same kind of asshole" as the rest of the world is also just wrong, because we know well enough that the colonizers back when Namor was young would have killed everyone in Talokan if they could have, and it's made abundantly clear that there are people around in the present day who would wipe out Wakanda if they could.

Edited by ArthurEld on Dec 17th 2022 at 8:28:04 AM

ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#3144: Dec 17th 2022 at 9:55:26 PM

[up][up]Attempting to smash your enemies back to the stone age is an attempt at genocide.

[up]Right, he doesn't want to destroy Wakanda. He wants Wakanda to join him in destroying the rest of the world. We see what he does to the surface dwellers he least wants to harm. This only sets a floor on his intended actions.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#3145: Dec 17th 2022 at 10:13:39 PM

...No? It's not. Unless you want to claim every brutal war is an attempted/successful genocide, by which point you'd call every major armed conflict the US ever got involved with an act of genocide.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#3146: Dec 17th 2022 at 10:17:02 PM

[up]I mean, essentially no war actually attempted, let alone succeeded in smashing the enemy back to the stone age. To be clear, that would require murdering the vast majority of the population, destroying their industry, culture and society and ensuring they couldn't simply use their pre-existing knowledge to, you know, not be in the stone age.

Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#3147: Dec 17th 2022 at 10:17:08 PM

I'm unsure if he's genocidal per se, but I could see it.

He does at the very least give off some vaguely Hitler-esque vibes in that he's a charismatic leader viewed almost as a deity by his people who is also highly xenophobic and who wishes to engage in war against the rest of the world.

Leviticus 19:34
ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#3148: Dec 17th 2022 at 10:27:29 PM

We can walk through the definition, if that would help. As Wikipedia tells us:

"In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly."

So, based on what we see, it seems quite clear to me that his plan is to kill a very large number of people, with the intent of destroying essentially all non-Talokan, non-Wakandan national groups (ie the surface world). The victims would be targeted for their national (non-Talokan, non-Wakandan) identity as he attempted to remake the world to his satisfaction.

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#3149: Dec 17th 2022 at 10:28:54 PM

Genocide is narrowly defined as an action with the deliberate intent to wipe out a people or a culture. It's this strict for a very good reason, as it is a legal crime you can charge against someone. Crippling a rival nation to the point they no longer pose a military threat is harsh, but he clearly intends to leave those who can't hurt him alone or "just" in a subordinated state, but not even close to the same thing as genocide and it would be disingenous to claim that they are.

[nja]

Edited by AlleyOop on Dec 17th 2022 at 1:29:48 PM

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#3150: Dec 17th 2022 at 10:52:58 PM

"Smashing someone to the stone age" is just a hyperbollic parlance for "crippling their national structure to a severe level" (and one used by Alley, not Namor). It's a fairly common one so I'm confused as to why suddenly we're taking it extremely literally just to enforce this strange notion Namor is literally Hitler (a figure with whom Namor has absolutely nothing in common).

Like, the movie is pretty open about the fact Namor is a very ruthless and very brutal leader who's ready to wage total war on those who provoke him, you don't need to invent the idea he's a genocidal psychopath. He's already a morally multifaceted character without inventing the idea he wants to ethnically cleanse all surface dwellers with a thousand year reich.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

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