The Wakandan Hanuman is entirely unrelated to the Indian Hanuman and their similarities are coincidental. Wakandan Hanuman is an ape while Indian Hanuman is a monkey. Wakandan Hanuman is associated with ice (?) while Indian Hanuman is associated with fire.
That was one of the weirdest plot developments in Age of Ultron.
"Ultron stole and deleted all our computer files. We have no idea where he's headed next."
"So how will we find him?"
"Opening hundreds of random paper files and just guessing."
edited 17th Feb '18 11:56:20 AM by Tuckerscreator
Anyway, my thoughts on the movie.
Fantastic! Everything everyone's already praised, the costuming, the city, the mythology, the fleshed out supporting cast, it's amazing. Princess Shuri is perfect and now I'm even more upset that she's not in the upcoming Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors cast. Maybe I should start a petition.
Something I found noteworthy is that the film is actually a lot like what I hoped the movie Tomorrowland would be. It's a story set in a utopian setting, that inspires viewers through its culture and technology, examines its setting's flaws without tearing down its society, and ends with a concrete intervention for improvement of the whole world in the future. The actual Tomorrowland film and its tie-ins had this weird obsession with not letting the story take place in Tomorrowland, so it's great to see this film show how to tell a utopian story the right way. And I want to see even more!
Regarding Killmonger, I had caught some light spoilers earlier about how his character wants to use Wakandian technology for the salvation of black peoples across the world, and was worried about how that might be portrayed. I've grown to dislike Well-Intentioned Extremist villains because they're usually used to dismiss legitimate criticisms of a setting's status quo. Then they turn out to be hypocrites and are remorselessly killed off. Ultron is a big example of this. And since Ta-Nehisi Coates's BP comics have tended to use the Full-Circle Revolution trope over and over and over again (I like them, but their overuse of this trope starts to feel self-loathing after a while), I was worried about the potential for damage.
But thankfully, this film carefully avoided all that. Killmonger is given an enormous amount of sympathy, and T'Challa's recognizes that he is right; Wakanda needs to change, and their great power means great responsibility. It also avoids making Killmonger solely an oppressed victim lashing out, which could be right out of a right-wing "black people are taking their civil rights activism too far" fantasy. His military history in overthrowing foreign states makes him as much a product of American imperialism as it does Wakandan isolationism. So I see less of a parallel with "oh no, Black Lives Matter gone too far", and more with previous cases of "imperialism to 'fix' imperialism", like America's wars in the Middle East, or China in Africa, or the Spaniards against the Aztecs. So overall, a ton of praise to Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler for Killmonger's acting and writing.
I look forward to Black Panthers 2 through 10.
edited 17th Feb '18 1:57:43 PM by Tuckerscreator
A lot of people are saying that Killmonger is portrayed as a sympathetic villain, and to an extent that's true, but I think the movie makes it pretty clear that T'Challa and Eric are working towards two very different sets of goals. There were things that T'Challa learned from Killmonger, sure, but I don't think he ever actually agreed with him. T'Challa calls him a "monster of our own creation", so while he acknowledges that Wakanda needs to change it's outlook on the rest of the world, he sees Eric and his plan as a threat to this new direction he wants his country to take- and he's right.
However, this kind of conflict was handled in a more interesting and nuanced way than I would have initially expected, that's definitely true. If it had gone any of the usual ways, it would have had me rolling my eyes.
edited 17th Feb '18 1:54:21 PM by Gault
yeyIt's both. Erik is right that Wakanda needs to share what it has, but a threat because he'd do it by military means. Nakia from the start has a much more reasonable version of his philosophy that T'challa warms up to, without Peace Through Superior Firepower.
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Right.
I'm just saying, when you look at what they were each trying to accomplish, their motivations strike me as being not just completely different but also mutually exclusive- so I think it's a stretch to say that T'Challa thought Killmonger was "right" in any meaningful sense.
Look at their respective approaches. T'challa, in a post-credits scene I'm still kicking myself for missing because I walked out of the theater right after the credits started, appears before the United Nations and vows to open up Wakanda to international trade and humanitarian aid efforts. Killmonger, meanwhile, wants to arm insurgent cells in every country with Wakandan weapons technology in a bid to create an empire that, and I quote, "the sun shall never set on". I'm having a hard time looking at this and seeing much of anything in common regarding these two men's long-term goals and motivations.
yeySure, a lot of people may have died from terrorist bombings by his spies, especially given the ridiculous energy density of magical vibranium explosives. But I don't think he's going to get many recruits for his "die to kill as many whities/chinks/etc." possible plan. It's not like there's a huge insurgency of African-Americans just waiting to happen and wage a race war given the opportunity (outside of the minds of delusional racists). His targeting of Hong Kong also caused me to raise an eyebrow, since the very few African-descended people living there are mostly well-off businessmen, students, or athletes. A death toll of millions is probably overstating it, especially for just three transports with small arms aboard. Then again, after his vision quest, he clearly wasn't thinking rationally and basically admits in the climax he just wants to kill a bunch of people.
edited 17th Feb '18 2:23:54 PM by NogaiKhan
edited 17th Feb '18 2:33:29 PM by NogaiKhan
edited 17th Feb '18 2:49:44 PM by NogaiKhan
So a full-body force-field couldn't possibly have been useful when their agents were deploying on missions in this film?
Couldn't possibly have been useful when aliens invaded?
Did they also just decide to not give such tech to their Praetorian Guard for the lulz?
Just seems like you're drafting fanfiction at this point tbh.
edited 17th Feb '18 2:49:29 PM by NogaiKhan
Killmonger's plan likely hinged on the rest of the world not figuring out that Wakanda was the source of the technologically advanced weaponry until he had orchestrated full scale revolutions across the globe and begun toppling governments, and thus wouldn't be able to commit sufficient forces to invading Wakanda. He also counted on getting literally all of Africa on his side.
In a direct conflict of Wakanda verse literally everyone else, Wakanda would lose badly and I don't think the movie expected us to believe otherwise. I also don't think the movie's stakes hinged on the overall likeliness of Killmonger's plan succeeding, but if he even managed to get the ball rolling outside of Wakanda it would cause an enormous amount of chaos and death across the world.
It's a pretty obvious case of Taking You with Me. Killmonger has a legit reason to hate the Wakandan state and would probably be glad to go down in flames with it.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.Building defense weapons aimed at foreign armies makes sense when you are an isolationist country the rest of the world knows about.
As it stands, the rest of the world thinks there is nothing valuable in Wakanda. Neither Rwanda nor anyone else would bother spend resources to try to conquer it, and since the Wakandans are isolationists, they had no reason to antagonize other ethnicities.
Plus, in Africa, actual land wars between two distinct countries look relatively rare. There are many wars - of the civil kind. Since Wakanda didn't mix, no one would have any reason to want to bother them, and throughout the ages they probably were advanced enough to deal with those who threatened to uncover their secret.
Now, if someone like, say, Shuri decides that Wakanda needs an air and/or land force tailored to deal with the U.S. Army, I'd wager that in a couple of months or years at worst they can ensure no one on Earth can even dare to look at them funny.
The US seem to have about one aircraft with significant cloaking abilities. Wakanda puts it on everything as an afterthought. They could build cloaked helicarriers with shields powerful enough to make them impervious to everything if they wanted to.
Oh, also - the US is drooling about getting vibranium to build weapons. Shuri knows how to deactivate its properties. And so far she has used it to build a freaking train of all things.
edited 17th Feb '18 5:04:40 PM by Julep
Don't forget that Wakanda is separated from its neighbours by inhospitable terrain and is all but inaccessible by land. I don't think that most countries would have the large-scale airlift capability to move their troops and equipment anywhere nearby, let alone mount an invasion.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.

A living computer like Ultron, or the guy who designed his programs to begin with, are bound to be better at finding people than Wakanda is.