YIBAMBE! T’Challa: The Black Panther Appreciation 2022

[Username taken]

They’re kind of already delving into it by having the comics be pro democracy. Which is funny because they want to enforce American ideals on characters that aren’t even American and yet the USA is the biggest glass house in the world right now in terms of democracy. Hey Marvel, did you forget that there was a whole attempted coup on live television last year because the last president was too butthurt to admit he lost fair and square. And don’t even get me started on the voter suppression in some states. Even funnier is that T’Challa himself points out the flaws of democracy in the first issue of Ridleys run!

Exactly this.

The Texas GOP just flat out rejected the current President’s election and don’t recognize it. Furthermore, they want to secede from the union. And let’s not forget just how many people in the US were disenfranchised for centuries and even recently the Supreme Court struck down parts of the voting rights act.

The idea that “American style” democracy is hilariously ridiculous is the standard. Furthermore, the Asian Tigers (and China) have pretty much put to bed the argument that a nation needs democracy to develop.

Wakanda’s conception is unique and it makes a lot of sense. It’s a country that developed in its own way away from Western influence (which has been a net negative in most African countries). The idea that a super-developed society where things have worked for centuries will suddenly bend over backwards to install “American style” democracy is completely missing the point of Wakanda and indirectly downplaying the negative influence the Western powers have had in Africa. That’s why on a personal level I have a big, big problem with Coates politics, it’s pandering to a certain type of liberal.

[Ezyo1000]

I've thought that before yeah. After T'Challa "dies" there is a period of the characters reacting and going on the run, until he's revealed to be alive and afterwards goes straight to fighting Killmonger again with only a calling out his father in the spirit plane as an in-between.

The movie really suffers from the fact it moves strictly by the actions of the antagonist. T'Challa doesn't know anything so majority of the movie is Killmonger running circles around him until he enacts his final plan, knocks him out, and T'Challa only comes back at the end with the clutch play.

The main issue is that there's not enough for T'Challa himself to do aside from treading water until Killmonger reveals himself. At least with say Shang-Chi he consistently kicks ass over the course of the movie steadily building up his ultimate confrontation with Wenwu.

Which yeah brings into the other issue, the movie's action choreography sucks. I mean I guess sucks is too hard a word but overall the action is pretty underwhelming and a downgrade from the juggernaut BP is in Civil War. Hell one of the most consistent and major criticisms for the movie is that the final battle between BP and Killmonger isn't as good as the rest of the movie preceding it.

Like I've seen plenty of people rag on Aquaman as inferior to BP but I'd argue that at least the action in Aquaman is better. The final match between Arthur and Orm especially is fantastic and a visual spectacle.

I don't understand the downplaying of T'Challas skill. Throughout the movie he is consistently whooping ass. Even in the warrior falls between Erik there's a clear skill gap. T'Challa literally learned his father murdered his uncle and abandoned his cousin then his cousin shows up 2 min later.

In the fight T'Challa had two clear chances to kill Erik but doesn't because it's his cousin. He underestimates Eriks rage and loses. However, it was VERY clear that T'Challa wasn't fully focused. That point was driven home and solidified this in the final fight. Which the first 30 sec of the mine fight CGI was a little bad but after that it was good. Let's criticize the movie for the right stuff

[Klaue's Mixtape]

Yall are not surprisingly harsh on BP T'Challa. Yall really comparing two of the greatest fight scenes ever as the bar? Nothing tops that Batman warehouse fight.

I feel like the BP film gets punished for being viewed through the MCU lens. Maybe comic book movie lens.

It was operating far beyond just that. I mean Pulp my dude...who the heck cares if he wasnt quipping all movie. The character work and interactions more than made up for it. In fact made it refreshing.

T'Challa washed a group of soldiers, washed M'Baku with no powers, kicked ass in the casino and then began washing Klaue and his men, would have killed Killmonger in 2 mins if not for finding out he was fam, returned "from the dead" and took on half the Border Tribe by himself, killed Killmonger.

Could we have used another fight? Sure. Narrative wise wouldnt it have been better if T'Challa lost his kinetic energy and whooped everyone without it? Sure, no doubt. Does the rushed CGI/botch by Marvel take away the power it could have had at the end? Absolutely.

However, just because it didnt have A+ T'Challa action the entire movie doesnt mean T'Challa's action sucked or bad.

Now yes they chose to have this be about a son dealing with the loss of his father's movie. Paralleling/contrasting him and Killmonger. However, Boseman's work and underrated Coogler's work shows proper adjustment and transition of someone who just lost his father and becomes king. Again this wasnt boy king T'Challa who spent 10 to 20 years in the role already. This was grown man T'Challa. And when you've grown with your father thats more time of having "perfection" pushed on you. How do you handle that? How do you handle being out of your comfort zone? It was about him becoming King and earning that role.

The deeper you dig the more it makes sense why they went that route based on the previous film. If this was his first intro I'd get the complaints more.

[Agent Z]

The things that big me the most is Nakia having the stance to Open Wakanda literally does nothing. They could of left it the same, as T'Challa being the one to want to open Wakanda and Nakia supporting it and nothing would of changed at all. Same goes for his super Genius. It actually makes more sense as a call back of T'Challa discovered how to make VB inert for travel, but instead it's given to Shuri as if she needed another thing on top of being able to heal people with her tech. It was stupid and poorly thought out, and completely changes the origin of T'Challas story, and not for the better. I really wanted to see T'Challa and Erik clash on ideals. Not status quo vs being progressive, it was the biggiest disservice to T'Challa.

I don't agree that T'Challa was a cypher because everything revolved around him but they definitely have us an incomplete character arc that somewhat spoils the first movie now

Nakia being the one who wants Wakanda to be more open shows that Wakandans aren't a monolith and that there are progressive Wakandans besides T'Challa.

[Agent Z]

The idea that “American style” democracy is hilariously ridiculous is the standard. Furthermore, the Asian Tigers (and China) have pretty much put to bed the argument that a nation needs democracy to develop.

Admittedly, those come with their problems too. Like any nation really.

Wakanda’s conception is unique and it makes a lot of sense. It’s a country that developed in its own way away from Western influence (which has been a net negative in most African countries). The idea that a super-developed society where things have worked for centuries will suddenly bend over backwards to install “American style” democracy is completely missing the point of Wakanda and indirectly downplaying the negative influence the Western powers have had in Africa. That’s why on a personal level I have a big, big problem with Coates politics, it’s pandering to a certain type of liberal.

I think it's the idea that it has worked that people take issue with specifically. Democracy certainly isn't perfect, but I don't think it would be inaccurate to say monarchies have considerably worse track records. I've seen some people argue that superhero comics have a rather authoritarian ideology and the way monarchies were originally written is often cited as evidence.

Now the real issue, as you pointed out, is also sanitizing democracy. But I don't think Ridley is quite doing that the way Coates is.

[Agent Z]

I’ve been calling BP1 the killmonger movie from day 1. If you don’t have a character quipping all the time, you need to bring it with the action and they failed T’Challa. There was no cap in the elevator or Batman in the warehouse equivalent to balance it out.

More importantly, T’Challa doesn’t have his own belief and just takes on nakia’s at the end. I see what they where trying to do but T’Challa getting ping ponged between what other side characters want while trying to keep the status quo, just to end with what Nakia at the start suggested, fell flat with me. They wanted T’Challa to be indecisive for the majority of BP1, so killmonger was always gonna overshadow him because his beliefs are astronomically stronger. Contrast that with Batman begins. Chadwick did great with what he was given but that script was rigged from the start. Bruce starts out with strong beliefs about fear that are challenged by 3 villain’s beliefs about fear throughout the film which lets him learn how to be and why he needs to be Batman by the end.

Indecisive characters are only compelling when they go from one extreme to the other with a redemption struggle in the middle being the meat of the development. That’s not what happened. The confrontation with t’chaka is the lynch pin and turning point for t’challa’s development. Although it’s a powerful scene, it comes way too late and isn’t enough to make up for the mid T’Challa that was in the majority of the film. It also doesn’t help that in the finale, T’Challa finally has beliefs strong enough to rival killmonger’s but the cgi is so distractingly bad.

MCU thinking it’s okay to shelf the character after they deliberately wrote him like that tells me they’re either delusional or they didn’t care about the character to begin with.

Maybe I’m too harsh on the movie. I understand that the waterfall fight with killmonger was a battle of wills and T’Challa had lose that one but it was such a foot stomp. "Is this your king!?", yeeted off a waterfall, is dead for a chunk of the movie where t’challa’s strongest character development was desperate needed to redeem him from being the type of king that deserved to get thrashed by killmonger. I can’t with that.

It wasn't a foot stomp. Up until Killmonger starts taking him seriously, T'Challa has the upper hand and even draws first blood.

I think some base their view on MCU T'Challa too much on how other people saw him.

[Ezyo1000]

Nakia being the one who wants Wakanda to be more open shows that Wakandans aren't a monolith and that there are progressive Wakandans besides T'Challa.

But that defeats the purpose of T'Challa being different from other Wakandans. Again I'm not saying she should of also been anti opening Wakanda, but it should not of been her idea. She should of been the only person from his personal Circle who supported the idea straight up. But because it was her idea and T'Challa was so wishy-washy about it, he came off as lacking in the progressive view. Which goes completely against the character

[MindofShadow]

Yall are not surprisingly harsh on BP T'Challa. Yall really comparing two of the greatest fight scenes ever as the bar? Nothing tops that Batman warehouse fight.

I feel like the BP film gets punished for being viewed through the MCU lens. Maybe comic book movie lens.

It was operating far beyond just that. I mean Pulp my dude...who the heck cares if he wasnt quipping all movie. The character work and interactions more than made up for it. In fact made it refreshing.

T'Challa washed a group of soldiers, washed M'Baku with no powers, kicked ass in the casino and then began washing Klaue and his men, would have killed Killmonger in 2 mins if not for finding out he was fam, returned "from the dead" and took on half the Border Tribe by himself, killed Killmonger.

Could we have used another fight? Sure. Narrative wise wouldnt it have been better if T'Challa lost his kinetic energy and whooped everyone without it? Sure, no doubt. Does the rushed CGI/botch by Marvel take away the power it could have had at the end? Absolutely.

However, just because it didnt have A+ T'Challa action the entire movie doesnt mean T'Challa's action sucked or bad.

Now yes they chose to have this be about a son dealing with the loss of his father's movie. Paralleling/contrasting him and Killmonger. However, Boseman's work and underrated Coogler's work shows proper adjustment and transition of someone who just lost his father and becomes king. Again this wasnt boy king T'Challa who spent 10 to 20 years in the role already. This was grown man T'Challa. And when you've grown with your father thats more time of having "perfection" pushed on you. How do you handle that? How do you handle being out of your comfort zone? It was about him becoming King and earning that role.

The deeper you dig the more it makes sense why they went that route based on the previous film. If this was his first intro I'd get the complaints more.

^^^^^^^

I'm not gonna let the terribleness of everything that came after BP1 taint BP1.

I don't like a single thing that's happened since the movie in regards to the MCU. IW/EG was a joke for BP and the justifications were even worse, not recasting is ridiculous, the efforts and comments they've made to "honor" Chadwick by downgrading and elminating the character he put a lot of effort into is borderilne gross. The fact they wouldn't even name drop T'challa during Falcon/WS is just dumb.

But BP1 was fire.

[Pulp Fiction]

It wasn't a foot stomp. Up until Killmonger starts taking him seriously, T'Challa has the upper hand and even draws first blood.

I think some base their view on MCU T'Challa too much on how other people saw him.

Yeah I do base some of how I feel on how others saw him. I can’t help that, I saw so much "T’Challa was overshadowed" after the movie came out but begrudgingly, I also agreed with them. I don’t see the fight as a battle of skill but rather a battle of wills. T’challa goes from: Conflicted -> loses -> calls out father -> not conflicted -> wins. Subtle like a whisper with killmonger yelling all over it. You can play the most beautiful Chopin but if you’re blasting playboi carti over it, ain’t nobody gonna hear that sh*t

Not to knock folks that like the movie. I just didn’t like the direction they took. Doesn’t make it a bad movie.

[Klaue's Mixtape]

Yeah I do base some of how I feel on how others saw him. I can’t help that, I saw so much "T’Challa was overshadowed" after the movie came out but begrudgingly, I also agreed with them. I don’t see the fight as a battle of skill but rather a battle of wills. T’challa goes from: Conflicted -> loses -> calls out father -> not conflicted -> wins. Subtle like a whisper with killmonger yelling all over it. You can play the most beautiful Chopin but if you’re blasting playboi carti over it, ain’t nobody gonna hear that sh*t

Not to knock folks that like the movie. I just didn’t like the direction they took. Doesn’t make it a bad movie.

It does suck to hear those complaints. I started posting on this board because it bothered me how much others opinions didnt align with mines. Like it really stressed/p'od me for a couple years that the CGI not being top notch at the end gave people a reason/excuse to discredit the movie, lol. For real.

However, sometimes we go overboard with the criticism. And honestly it hurts even more because we didnt get to see Chadwick in another solo BP film and it appears to be the end of T'Challa for awhile. I wrestled with that after the fact. However, at some point we gotta remind ourselves to judge the 1st film in a vacuum.

[Ezyo1000]

Yeah I do base some of how I feel on how others saw him. I can’t help that, I saw so much "T’Challa was overshadowed" after the movie came out but begrudgingly, I also agreed with them. I don’t see the fight as a battle of skill but rather a battle of wills. T’challa goes from: Conflicted -> loses -> calls out father -> not conflicted -> wins. Subtle like a whisper with killmonger yelling all over it. You can play the most beautiful Chopin but if you’re blasting playboi carti over it, ain’t nobody gonna hear that sh*t

Not to knock folks that like the movie. I just didn’t like the direction they took. Doesn’t make it a bad movie.

But you can't base other peoples views on it (especially casuals) because they also said stupid isht like "OMG Shuri stole every scene she was in" and. "everyone overshadowed T'Challa" when in reality every scene that people remember that was so good or powerful usually had one thing on common. T'Challa was in the scene with them. Chad wore so many hats and brought out a multilayered T'Challa who was more than just. Quips or old memes. Or silent warriors. One thing people forget is that if a actors can shift how they talk depending on the character and relationship the characters have with one another takes a lot of talent.

As for the fight it was a battle of skill and will. The first fight T'Challa is conflicted and doesn't land the two killing blows and instead showed mercy, and he lost however, the gap in skill was clear. The second fight is even more clear that Erik is completely outmatched. Watch on YouTube T'Challa vs Erik with health bars and you will see just how one sided the second fight was.

In BP 1 I didn't need T'Challa Making a bunch of speeches. One thing they got right was Tchalla was a man of action. All I needed was his Super genius clearly present (Which they could of done easily) for him to keep his motivation to open Wakanda.

Hell he still could of been conflicted on HOW to do that. Not exactly wanting to Jump into full blown refugee's like Nakia wanted, but also not going the opposite and going full imperialist either. But people love over the top characters.

People say T'Challa was better on cw but he really wasn't. He didn't talk much, and he was the only character actually trying to kill his opponent and he failed to do so. He came off badass but also incompetent because obviously he won't be killing a hero in another heros movie, especially they're supporting cast. The only thing going for CW T'Challa is he had agency which he needed more from his solo but I already covered that

[MindofShadow]

And honestly it hurts even more because we didnt get to see Chadwick in another solo BP film and it appears to be the end of T'Challa for awhile. I wrestled with that after the fact.

All the (what I think anyway) minor issues became a bit more magnified but the story ended prematurely.

Even Civil War has that problem if you get too far into the weeds. CW was essentially just an introduction/extended cameo for Black Panther. At the time, it was pure hype and pure kino. With BP1, it made it even cooler imho.

But the the story immediately stopping... some of the faults in the CW story are magnified a bit, especially with what happened in Fal/WS show.

The story was simply not supposed to end yet.

[Username taken]

Admittedly, those come with their problems too. Like any nation really.

Admittedly there's no perfect system.

I think it's the idea that it has worked that people take issue with specifically. Democracy certainly isn't perfect, but I don't think it would be inaccurate to say monarchies have considerably worse track records. I've seen some people argue that superhero comics have a rather authoritarian ideology and the way monarchies were originally written is often cited as evidence.

Now the real issue, as you pointed out, is also sanitizing democracy. But I don't think Ridley is quite doing that the way Coates is.

It depends on how you look at the issue.

A good chunk of European countries are monarchies (Germany, Italy, and France being notable exceptions) and they experienced exponential economic and human development under their monarchies. Granted they brutally exploited other's resources (their colonies) to attain their wealth, they've managed to maintain their monarchies and still have stable, functional societies. The UAE has a monarchy and they've liberalized their economy, opened up for tourism, and are experiencing rapid economic growth (the place is amazing as I've taken vacations there before). Yes, it's a religious society but broadly speaking their monarchy has done very well for them. Most African countries have adopted Western-style democracy and frankly, it has created mammoth headaches for them, same for a lot of countries in South America. As you pointed out, every system has its problem but Wakanda had run a system that worked for them for centuries until Coates brought in crap like rape camps and the like. Coates created a problem that never existed in Wakanda and then introduced a hackneyed solution to said problem.

Thankfully Coates is no longer on the book and Ridley's BP isn't sanitizing democracy but his work is so far just a boring, tired mess of ideas.

[Klaue's Mixtape]

All the (what I think anyway) minor issues became a bit more magnified but the story ended prematurely.

Even Civil War has that problem if you get too far into the weeds. CW was essentially just an introduction/extended cameo for Black Panther. At the time, it was pure hype and pure kino. With BP1, it made it even cooler imho.

But the the story immediately stopping... some of the faults in the CW story are magnified a bit, especially with what happened in Fal/WS show.

The story was simply not supposed to end yet.

Exactly. Not getting the payoff is what hurts. However, that doesnt mean they werent in the process of paying it off.

Truth be told if T'Challa was a MAJOR factor in IW and Endgame it'd hurt a little less as well. Seeing Stark and T'Challa work to create Time Travel would have been dope.

Maybe they felt T'Challa/Wakanda being involved would have made things too easy, idk.

[MindofShadow]

Exactly. Not getting the payoff is what hurts. However, that doesnt mean they werent in the process of paying it off.

Truth be told if T'Challa was a MAJOR factor in IW and Endgame it'd hurt a little less as well. Seeing Stark and T'Challa work to create Time Travel would have been dope.

Maybe they felt T'Challa/Wakanda being involved would have made things too easy, idk.

He should have been involved. He lost as much as anyone. It was his people getting slaughtered to protect a freaking robot lol

It also would have been a perfect way to actually make him "an Avenger."

They fact they DIDNT use vibranium to make the glove is weird in general.

Hell, imagine Rocket seeing Earth having Vibranium and going, "yo wtf where did you get this?"

Imagine Thor, a king who lost everyting, going back in time with T'challa, a king who lost a **** ton. It could have been good ****. Especially considering t'challa could have played the straight man to Thor's depressed/comedy routine

Having T'challa help make the glove would have given them a chance to show his brain.

Shuri or T'challa should have been kept alive. Snapping them both was a weird decision.