Plus, kingship by combat makes a lot of sense for the way Wakanda is set up. Most monarchs are symbolic protectors of the people. The Black Panther isn’t. He’s a real, literal, direct protector of the people. Their national defense is skewed heavily towards a small number of highly capable people, rather than a large number of common grunts. And the royals are expected to do their part: Not just the Black Panther himself, but his sister is the country’s top technologist, and his lover is their best spy. You want your king to be the best at what he does, and when what he does is fighting, then obviously the selection process is going to involve a test of his fighting skills.
And this is fundamental to the character, because it’s the fighting, not the politicking, that we’re here to see. If anything, the part that’s dispensable isn’t that the Black Panther is chosen by combat, but that the Black Panther is King.
Slight hijack, but: when I was a kid, and I heard the UK still has a ceremonial thing where coronation involves a designated champion who ritually declares that he’ll engage in personal combat with anyone who wants to challenge the heir’s right to take the throne — which is like asking wedding guests to speak now or forever hold their peace, in that it’s a tradition to announce that, sure; but nobody is expected to actually take them up on the offer — I thought, when I grow up, I hope I’m enough of a big-shot VIP to get invited to that, and a good enough brawler to go for it, and American enough to still think this is a good idea then.
Saw the movie not long after it came out and liked it (esp. the King’s top bodyguard, one of the best badass sf female warriors since Ripley in Aliens), but I can’t say it really stuck with me.
The cultures of Dune had interstellar spaceships. Asgard built a tesseract to travel between the worlds.
A throne that must be defended by combat is exciting. Parliamentary procedure is boring, much as it’s better for real world governance. Do you really want a movie where Killmonger fundraises and buys TV spots for negative ads about T’Challa? Even if you do, I doubt enough other people do, not enough for a $700M domestic gross, anyway.
Note the similarities to Wakanda, though: when T’Challa is challenged, everyone is shocked, because it’s supposed to be a purely ceremonial thing. Just like in Merry Olde England, nobody is supposed to actually take the invitation seriously. And the reason it’s taken seriously is because one political group feels like the government is serving them ill by neglecting them.
The challenge is the equivalent of a parliamentary maneuver, an exploitation of a little-regarded loophole in some ancient rules that nobody’s thought to update.
That’s comic book logic; the idea that you can solve problems by punching them in the face. If the main thing your king (or other national leader) does is hand-to-hand fighting you’re going to have a screwed-up country.
“Your Majesty, the latest reports from our Education Ministry says that children’s literacy rates are declining.”
“Well, let me put on my costume and I’ll go defeat illiteracy in combat.”
“Actually, Sire, we were looking more for suggestions about additional sources of revenue so we could buy textbooks.”
My own thought: In the real world, Thailand and Ethiopia managed to maintain their independence against the colonial empires. Both were monarchies, where the sovereigns held real power. So the idea that Wakanda might be a monarchy is not completely unrealistic.
It’s an error to equate brutality with primitiveness. If the 20th century taught us anything, it taught us that civilized man is sooo much better at the brutality front, both in inventiveness and in absolute numbers. A lesson we should have learned from Rome and Tenochtitlan, but there you go…
That those of us who live in the real world don’t have to accept comic-book logic.
If you want to accept that hand-to-hand combat is a good system for choosing a king in a comic-book world because it works in that setting, then fine. But if somebody else wants to object that such a system would not work and therefore they can’t suspend their belief that far, then their opinion is just as valid.
In a comic-book movie, it’s a little odd not to accept comic-book logic. It’d be like going to see Hamilton and getting pissed because in real life people don’t just randomly break into song.
I just saw the film for the first time myself, and while I liked it, I did have a few quibbles. First, I thought that Killmonger was much less compelling than he could have been, and the isolation vs intervention argument was poorly presented on both sides. Black Panther kept making the argument that isolation keeps them safe, but never makes the much more common and logical isolationist argument that they owe nothing to outsiders, of any color- the we’re too good for them argument, the “Beggars in Spain” argument.
Yes, the King of Wakanda has many duties other than fighting. But a movie about tax negotiations would be really boring. So we watch the parts where he kicks butt, instead.
I don’t quite get this quibble over how Wakanda is ruled, etc.
Its set up straight from the getgo of the film - they were 5 warring tribes, they found the vibranium, set up a way that works for them - and largely under tradition - maintain it to this day - including ‘protecting’ vibranium from the outside world and remaining isolated.
The entire movie, and the events in CA:CW with T’Chaka all set up how 'Wakanda can no longer afford to be on the sidelines" - and this movie, is specifically about those growing pains for them.
“That superficial”? I’ve seen so many POC speak movingly of how important it was to them as children to see characters in movies that represented them demographically. But if a little white kid in 2018, someone born in the 2010s, feels the same urge, it’s “superficial”? Remember, these kids’ current pop culture is what’s out now, not what we grew up on.
I think you make a strong point, and people are unfairly shouting you down.
It was important to them because it was so rare. That white kid born in 2010 has no end of representation in popular media, including literally every other movie in the MCU.
It’s either a superficial desire or it’s not (I say not). And I think it makes perfect sense for them to give white representation in a movie made in a country that still has a lot more white people than black people.
I know when I travel, or like when I was looking for a place to live in Jersey City or St. Louis or Minneapolis, I thought it was cool if a neighborhood was say 50 percent black, 20 percent Latino, 20 percent various others, and 10 percent white. But sometimes I’d run into a neighborhood that was essentially 100 percent black, no sign of anyone of any other ethnicity. And I knew “this is not a place for me”. I think movies can work kind of the same way.