The Gorilla people mountains display evidence of glaciation. My sense was that the Gorilla people’s government seat is in an area of permanent snow. I doubt there’s any part of the Drakensberg Mountains that’s true of, but I did find out that the Rwenzori Mountains do have glaciers.
I had a very close call with a glacier on Mt. Kenya.
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It almost ran you down, did it?
The reverse: I slipped off the trail and slid a ways down the glacier. Our guide, the only one in the party equipped with ice tools (my mom had seriously underequipped us), rescued me, and we continued to the summit.
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well, yes, there is that.
No, the only permanent snow in Africa is, ironically enough, much nearer the equator, like you’ve seen.
Sure, but those warriors were also showing a lot of bare skin.
But I do kinda like the idea that a vibranium offensive/defensive stalemate means that “war” between the Wakandan factions is basically just a big rugby scrum.
I just watched this movie this weekend and really liked it. I then started to consume all the spoilery discussion that I’ve been averting since it came out. I came across a discussion sparked by a series of tweets and article by Leslie Lee III who writes:
He alsotweeted this immediately after watching the movie:
I could be reading into this way too much, but it immediately brought to mind the writings of MLK:
I think Killmonger is motivated by more than revenge for his father’s death and his abandonment. In the comics he wanted to commercialize Wakanda. But in the movie this is not so. He wanted to be a conqueror, to raise up oppressed people to overthrow their oppressors.
I don’t agree with all of Lee’s take on it, but I thought it was very thought provoking. The best scene in the movie for me was when T’Challa confronts his father in the ancestral plane and declares that his father was wrong. I wish before the climactic fight with Killmonger there was at least a conversation about the opposing ideologies - I think that would have given the film a lot more weight. They didn’t ever really talk outside of the very brief throne room scene.
I think that is part of what makes the film so good. on some level Killmonger is right… but also absolutely wrong. His plan is nothing but death. It’s a revolt doomed no matter how good Wakandan technology is. War is war. And good and bad people are going to suffer and die…usually innocents pay the highest price. Killmonger’s nebulous goal is “revolt” but then what?
The ending is T’Challa deciding that Wakanda SHOULD influence the world, but not through death and destruction, but by being the beacon of progress.
WTF is global black liberation? Like some Americans are talking you’d still think Africa is still under colonial rule.
Yeah, this guy’s a racist. Can’t protect those evil, subhuman, whites. They all deserve to die. That evil singular mass of whites. I’m sure the black middle-school teacher in London, or Paris, or Montreal, or Stockholm, or L.A. is happy to have her white husband and interracial children be killed in the name of Killmonger’s global liberation of blacks.
I’m surprised the writer of this tripe is white. This is some impressive self-loathing.
More akin to Leia declaring that any being even remotely connected to the Empire, no matter how little, should be killed.
Killmonger’s rage was that of a child’s. He wasn’t interested in “global black liberation,” I mean, not really. The way he so casually killed his black girlfriend after she’d outlived her usefulness is proof of that. He just wanted revenge for the slights against him, personally, and used the “liberation” of black people as an excuse. Whether the rest of the black people of the world agreed with it or not was of no consequence to him. Some people just want to see the world burn.
Yeah, the Wakandans were wrong and Killmonger made a couple good points but that doesn’t mean he was right either. T’Challa was right at the end, there was nothing evil about it.
The whole issue of Wakanda’s historical role in Africa was off, imo. Bottom line, the first concern of the king of Wakanda is Wakanda, which they seemed to do quite well by, rather than the entire African continent. To spread all over the world with advanced weapons technology is to endorse a policy of genocide, because that’s what happens.
Actually, you can expand this even further; beyond failing to protect black Africans forced into slavery, Wakanda has horded an incalculably valuble resource and the technology to harness it from the entire world. Given the properties presented in the film, it could at the very least provide a source of clean energy as well as a virtually impenetrable shield against any attack, notwithstanding its biomedical applications and who knows what else. The shield technology of Wakanda could have easily protected New York in the first Avengers film as well as any number of other natural threats, essentially eliminated the threat of nuclear holocaust, and prevented global climate change.
One could make the argument that vibranium and the technology based on it is just too dangerous for humanity to have access to, but from what we’ve seen of the Wakandans in their lack of unification, tribal-based governance, and obvious weapon stockpiling and professional military (albeit without any indication of rampant military adventurism) they don’t appear to be particularly ethically superior to everyone else. Beyond colonization of Africa they’ve permitted various regional and global conflicts to occur with the deaths of millions of people instead of interceding in any way. So, really, it doesn’t do well to delve too deeply into the supposed morality of Wakanda and Black Panther; it is, after all, a comic book story and character that was originally crafted to cash in on the blaxipolation fad.
Where Killmonger was wrong was in assuming that if he provided weapons that black African decendents would use them to liberate themselves and then a miracle would happen, instead of that the survivors would factionalize and go to war with one another, a la the Spanish Civil War, the US invasion of Iraq, or pretty much any other unfocused, broad scale revolt that rapidly turns into sectarian violence. Killmonger’s ‘solution’ would have people fighting one another with superpowered weapons and no central leadership or moral authority, and a world that would likely descend into global conflict, or at least a collection of indefinite regional conflicts. Killmonger wished to be an autocrat over Wakanda while the rest of the world burns, and then presumably consolidating his control or at least a collection of like-minded demogogues on every continent.
Stranger
I’m not.
Why? Just look at Shaun King.
Me neither. That kind of screed is par for the course on Alternet. But I see this is the Cafe Society thread rather than the Pit one, so I’ll leave it at that.
It’s kind of a cop out, but I don’t expect the movie to delve into those in depth issues so I give it a pass for not grappling with the downstream ramifications of Killmonger’s plan. The reason the article resonated with me is because it’s not up to the oppressors to put a timetable on the oppressed. My disagreement is the nature of the oppression, but if we assume that Killmonger’s interpretation of the colonizers is correct, then he would certainly be justified in wanting to overthrow that oppressive regime.
We don’t bemoan when Cassian kills the informant to save himself in Rogue One. We don’t demonize Luke and Leia for destroying the Death Star…twice. We don’t lament the impact to the galactic economy for their actions, all the innocent janitorial staff that lost their lives and livelihood. We celebrate the rebels’ victory over the oppressive Empire. If the argument is well, the Empire was much more clearly bad than the oppression that Killmonger was fighting against, I think that’s fair. But I don’t think it’s fair to say his solution is bad because of all these downstream impacts.
I think Killmonger could have easily been the hero of the story with very minor tweaks. That would have grappled with the ideological dichotomy much more head on.
But he’s not correct. How are the weapons going to solve the oppression of black people in Oakland, California? Is he expecting them to take over city hall? Who does he think is going to go along with this? I don’t think the black people of Oakland are OK with the killing of their non-black neighbors, which would be inevitable in his rebellion. I believe African-Americans are suffering from institutional racism but it’s a form of oppression that can’t really be solved with violence. The only oppression blacks are suffering from today that could is at the hands of other black people.
His solution of give guns start killing is nothing but downstream impacts.
No.
Remember too, that Killmonger spent his entire adulthood killing people & violently bringing down governments. It’s what he was trained to do. Rebuilding governments afterwards was someone else’s job. So yes, it makes perfect sense that his “solution” would be based on killing people & violence.
Hrm. I still think you could make the argument that Killmonger is the protagonist. Without his agency and motivation, T’Challa wouldn’t have been driven to confront the internal contradictions of his forebears. T’Challa is a reactive figure throughout the movie - and throughout Civil War, for that matter - and that’s representative of his ancestors.
Killmonger - on the other hand - is portrayed as a tragic figure. He’s utterly wrong about what he’s doing - his motivation, his stated goals and so forth - but he’s NOT wrong in his analysis of how things have been for oppressed peoples the world over throughout history. In the end, his wrongness kills him.
T’Challa is given the opportunity to grow and change - himself and his nation’s policies - only through Killmonger’s efforts and death. And Killmonger is only set on this path through a combination of his ancestors poor policy decisions - isolationism - and interpersonal decisions - his abandonment by T’Chaka into the Oakland streets.
Are the Ewoks okay that they are part of the rebel alliance trying to overthrow the Empire? Are you okay that the casino patrons are injured and possibly killed in the Last Jedi? Blowing up the Deathstar was a good thing, right? If Killmonger was around when Africa was being colonized and enslaved, and instead of Wakanda being isolationist he lead the Wakandan people to resist, and ultimately kill those who would enslave them, I would say he’d be the hero of that story.
I think the movie does a good job of showing some depth of character to Killmonger. It could have been even better in my view to present the competing visions of Killmonger and T’Challa. The movie resolves with presenting to the audience that both were wrong and offers a third way. The workers on the Deathstar got no such choice.