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blackpanther2018dirryancoogler · 7 years ago

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Saw Black Panther for the second time tonight. I’m gonna put my thoughts below the cut because they won’t be spoiler free.

I just want to start by saying that this movie changed my life, and if it had that much of an impact on me, I can’t even begin to understand how much more it will mean to people of color who finally get to see a superhero who looks just like them. This movie is long overdue, but worth every ounce of hype it’s received.

The mixing of Wakandan and English shows how much their culture means to them, and also gives them the ability to talk about people right in front of their faces, like T’Challa and Okoye do in South Korea with Ross.

The tech, as anticipated, is out of this world. Shuri is the smartest person in the entire world at just sixteen, and she uses her resources to her benefit. The use of holograms in both the rescue mission and in their everyday life are so casual but so crucial to their way of life.

There were so many small moments of humor, and none of them felt forced or awkward. Shuri especially brought humor in, which I feel is expected when you have a sixteen year old involved, even if she is a genius.

Okoye tells T’Challa not to freeze when he’s going to rescue Nakia, and he says that he never freezes when he sees her. Turns out he does end up freezing and letting out a really awkward “hi”, and when he returns home to Wakanda, the first thing Shuri asks is if he froze. Okoye says, “Like an antelope in headlights” and T’Challa says, “Are you finished?” It’s a nice little exchange.

It’s also great to see Shuri wearing more contemporary clothes in different scenes, a sign that she’s branching out with her fashion but also staying close to her roots.

The interactions between Shuri and T’Challa are so heartwarming and feel very natural for a brother/sister pairing.

When T’Challa returns home and Shuri says that she wants to upgrade his tech, he asks her why she needs to do so when it worked perfectly.

Shuri says, “How many times do I have to teach you? Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.” T’Challa replies, “You are teaching me? What do you know?” and Shuri follows it up with a quick “More than you.”

There’s so many great cultural moments in the movie, like when all the different tribes are dancing on their rafts on the way to the ceremonial challenge. Each tribe is represented and has the opportunity to fight for the throne, but no one wants to. Until Shuri raises her hand and says that her corset is too tight and they should all just hurry up so she can go home. I love that she does it for the drama of it all. M’Baku shows up and when he walks toward Ramonda and Shuri, the Dora Milaje automatically get into a defensive stance.

I love the burial/rebirth ritual, and I love the shot of T’Challa in the ancestral plane. I especially love T’Challa’s white robe and the contrast between that and the black panthers in the tree, and also himself bearing the mantle of the Black Panther. Also white usually means purity or good intentions, and I think in that part of the film, T’Challa has the best intentions when he goes to speak with his father. He really does have a sort of innocence to him, because he hasn’t experienced much in the way of being a king yet.

“I am not ready to be without you,” he says to T’Chaka, to then continue on by asking him how he can be a good king.

Shuri showing her brother all of her inventions is a great chance to see her lab, and also get a taste of what she’s making at this point in the MCU. I can’t wait to see what else she invents as the years go by.

I love that she’s always teasing him, from what shoes he’s wearing, to filming him getting blasted with kinetic energy from his suit. Speaking of, it’s so awesome and resourceful of her to have the suit build up the energy in order to use it.

Nakia and T’Challa matching when they’re in South Korea is the best thing in the world. Also it’s so cool that T’Challa understands Korean. Shuri using her tech and driving the car from Wakanda is...so cool, I don’t even know what else to say about it. The moment when she runs over someone and asks what that was, and T’Challa says, “Don’t worry about it, you’re doing great” is so good because I’m sure eventually she found out she technically ran someone over.

Also I’m not sure what Shuri made Okoye’s shoes out of, or what tech is in them, but they’re also pretty cool.

One thing I loved about the movie was the constant talk of the white characters being repressive or just not useful, and the Wakandans are almost always annoyed with them. Especially when Klaue is being interrogated in South Korea, and T’Challa and Okoye are speaking in Wakandan about what they’re going to do with Klaue once Ross is done interviewing him. Ross touches T’Challa’s shoulder and Okoye says that if he does it again, she’ll put him through the desk in the room. Then Ross asks T’Challa, “Does she speak English?” and Okoye replies, “When she wants to.” When Ross leaves the room, T’Challa has to remind Okoye to play nice.

It’s clear that T’Challa really cares for Nakia, and obviously so since they mention him having a crush on her and them being exes, etc. There’s a moment after Erik (N’Jadaka) breaks Klaue out where Okoye calls T’Challa back and when she mentions Nakia’s name, T’Challa goes running because he thinks she’s hurt.

When T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia bring Ross back to Wakanda for Shuri to help heal him, she says, “Great, another broken white boy for us to fix! This is going to be fun.” Nothing has ever been more accurate in a Marvel movie. Then later when he wakes up, she says, “Don’t scare me like that, colonizer!”

While Shuri is explaining her inventions to Ross, she’s also explaining them to us and giving us a better idea of how things work, like the sonic stabilizers in the trains.

While T’Challa is grappling with the fact that his father wasn’t the perfect man he thought, Nakia reminds him that no one is perfect but he doesn’t have to be the same kind of king T’Chaka was. She tells him that he gets to decide what kind of king he’s going to be. He takes the advice later on when he nearly gets beaten in a ceremonial challenge against N’Jadaka and has to basically be reborn. He sees T’Chaka and tells him that he’s going to be a different king, and that he can’t die yet. Nakia’s advice is also what leads him to open Wakanda’s borders and share their technology and inventions with the world at the end of the movie.

When everyone believes T’Challa to be dead, Nakia asks Okoye to run away and work on overthrowing N’Jadaka, but Okoye says she can’t go because she is loyal to the throne, and therefore the king. Nakia mentions that Okoye is the greatest warrior Wakanda has. That line makes me wonder why she wasn’t sent with T’Challa in Civil War when he was meeting with the others in Germany, but why Ayo went with him instead. Okoye is also the leader of the Dora Milaje, but maybe he had her stay behind in Wakanda to look after things.

Another big thing about the Dora Milaje is that they’re all so revered in Wakanda, and it’s an honor to be a part of the Dora. It’s such an amazing thing, seeing a group of strong black women acting as the security force for the king of the richest country in the world.

The one part of the movie that is the most gut-wrenching is when N’Jadaka is watching the sunset before his death. T’Challa says maybe he can still be healed, because there must be something Shuri can do, and it shows his compassion to offer healing to the man he stabbed. N’Jadaka says he won’t be healed because he knows he’ll just end up locked up. Then he says, “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, ‘cause they knew death was better than bondage.” I don’t know if I’ll ever get through that scene without crying.

T’Challa, after deciding to open Wakanda’s borders and share information, goes to California, where N’Jobu died at T’Chaka’s hand. He buys the building, and the ones surrounding it, and then tells Shuri that she’ll spearhead the science and information exchange, and Nakia will be in charge of the social outreach for the first Wakandan international outreach center. There’s a group of boys outside playing basketball and one looks at T’Challa and asks who he is. You can see in his eyes that he’s amazed by this man, who looks like him, dressed like royalty. Of course he’d wonder who T’Challa was, and he’d want to know more about Wakanda.

Finally, in the end credits, Bucky returns. His hair in its half bun is one of the things I’ve wanted to see for years. Literally ever since Winter Soldier when I first saw him with long hair, I imagined what his hair would look like in a half bun, and Black Panther finally made that dream a reality for me. But beyond that, it was so nice to see Bucky looking relaxed and rested and feeling safe.

Shuri will give him a new arm, replacing the metal one that had the communist star on it. I’m sure it’ll have some incredible technological abilities, and I can’t wait to see what they are. For now, it was just great seeing Bucky able to relax and feel safe for a while. Shuri started by calling him Sergeant Barnes, but he said, “Bucky,” reminding her to call him by his nickname. When she asked how he was feeling, he said, “Good” and I think that’s probably the first time in over seventy years that he’s been able to say that. It’s good to see him at peace for a while.

But Bucky is absolutely not the focus of this movie, and in fact, he’s nowhere close to being the focus. As always, the end credits scene just pushes the narrative forward, and sets us up for Infinity War. I don’t think they could’ve gone without mentioning Bucky because he was in Wakanda for a few months, and it would’ve been nearly impossible to think that Shuri hadn’t come up with a way to fix his head in that time.

More importantly, the film is about much more than Bucky Barnes being out of cryofreeze; it’s about the lack of representation for people of color in film, and showing what African countries could’ve been like without colonization. I can’t wait to learn more and more about this movie, the cultures, and the people involved as time goes on, and learn more about small details in the film the more times I watch it.

#black panther #text

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