[Moderating]
Uke, you know better than this, and it should have been obvious what forum you’re in. This is a Warning for politicking in CS.
On a separate note, everyone, remember that this thread is not marked as containing spoilers. Either box your spoilers, or start a new spoilers-open thread.
They explicitly offered him this and he refused.
I’m going to go against the masses here. I love the MCU and I am currently binge watching Daredevil on Netflix. I thought that the movie was about 30 minutes too long and as a result, the pacing was terribly slow. We watched Dr Strange when we got home and it felt like non stop action as a comparison.
The tech was cool, really cool, especially the holo driving. The movie was as good as any other MCU offering. However, to me, it was not the “epic” that had been promised by early reviews.
Loved it. Super performances, beautiful look, ticked all the superhero action movie boxes and gave a lot more depth to the MCU as a whole. All the thumbs up.
But roll your eyes and scroll on past now, because I’m about to be That Person.
bienville said:
Going forward, [Killmonger] would have been a great Ally-But-Not-Ideologically-Aligned kind of a character, actually, I think he would have had the potential to be one of the all time best of that kind of character. He definitely had a lot more to offer going forward.
That would have been a very daring choice, because
I think it’s no coincidence that the major villain role was assigned to the American black guy who was “thuggish”, “militant”, “radical”, and the only person in the movie actively angry about exploitation and oppression of black people. I felt that setup was, perhaps not totally intentionally, crafted to be reassuring to white viewers—oh, the scary angry American black guy is a bloodthirsty villain who gets rejected and taken down by the peace-loving “good blacks” with the cute accents and the international-cooperation aspirations. All Lives Matter. :rolleyes:
And speaking of international cooperation, what really ground my gears at the end was that fucking Wakanda Outreach Center in Oakland bit. Right, because of course the sufferings of poor blacks in the US, due in large part to centuries of oppression and discrimination by whites, need to be addressed by the efforts and resources of foreign rich blacks from a wealthy African nation! Heaven forbid that US society should be expected to put in the work to overcome and redeem the legacy of its own racist past in its own communities, right?
Yeah yeah yeah, I do get that in-universe it made a lot of sense that T’Chala should have felt some personal responsibility to reach out to the community where his uncle was killed and his cousin struggled. But whether the filmmakers meant it that way or not, that aspect of the movie really came across as pandering to the comfort zone of white people.
That said, I reiterate my overall opinion that it was a very good Marvel movie and a fun watch.
Except for the CGI rhinoceroses. I really don’t feel that the CGI rhinoceroses added anything.
Not really…
[SPOILER]T’Challa offers to take him to have his wounds healed.
Killmonger refuses specifically stating that his refusal is based on not wanting to live in bondage (assuming incarceration for his attempt at usurping the throne to wage war on the rest of the world).
His refusal is directly tied to the presumption that his healing will be immediately followed by incarceration.
I’m saying that not only did I in audience think Killmonger was redeemable but T’Challa as a character in the movie seemed to feel that Killmonger was redeemable. Therefore T’Challa standing by while Killmonger allows himself to die was,
for me, a dissatisfying ending. Especially, since T’Challa had already expressed regret that his father’s sins had created the damaged angry part of who Killmonger came to be.[/SPOILER]
I don’t see how you can have redemption that doesn’t have “paying for your crimes” as step 1. Of course he should be incarcerated, his refusal to submit to that is a refusal of the offer of redemption.
The amusing thing is that despite the whole “oppressed peoples” meme, in real life an African kingdom like Wakanda would have been a slave selling enterprise.
Why? They’ve built a thriving economy with basically zero foreign trade (we’ll ignore the probable economic impossibility of that by saying “vibranium”). There is no reason to think that they would have felt the need to raise funds in the slave trade.
I loved it.
I love the plethora of kick-ass women characters. There are no damsels-in-distress in this movie. Even Princess Shuri was ready to throw some bows.
I love the costumes and all the natural hair styles. (Only black chick with straightened hair was Killmonger’s girlfriend.)
I loved that the people of Wakanda are so culturally diverse. I loved that the cast also reflects this diversity. Danai (the General) is of Zimbawanean heritage (born in US, though). Lupita is of Kenya-Mexican heritage. Danial Kaluuya (the guy with the rhinos) is the child of Uganda parents. Letitica Wright (Princess Shuri) is Guyanese. And of course the African Americans and British Americans. Anyone who thinks the film lacks diversity isn’t really paying attention.
I loved the quandry of what to do when you have a tyrant leader who is entitled to the throne. Is your duty to the throne or to the society that throne is supposed to serve? What do you do when those two things conflict? Very timely indeed!
The movie has been on my mind ever since I saw it yesterday afternoon. I hope Princess Shuri inspires kids (of all colors and genders) to go into engineering and science.
There is a lot of evidence that they tend to stick to themselves. Nothing that they have zero trade and links. Obviously they have exported vibranium. That’s how Stark Sr got hold of some some.
What I liked best about the film was how they avoided making all the black characters all paragons of virtue and they did not make the White CIA Agent a doddering racist evildoer. Even the heroic black characters had some flaws and serious ones. The CIA agent is a good, if misguided person.
Made the film seem more “real”, or at least as real as a Marvel film can get.
Africans were usually enslaved by other Africans who they were at war with.
The Wakandans were pretty isolated. So I’m not seeing how there would have been much warfare between them and other states.
At any rate, many Africans states were not in the slave trade business. Should we assume that because there were concentration camps in some parts of the European continent during the 1930s and 1940s, that any random European state during that time would have been in the concentration camp business?
Furthermore, the kind of slavery practiced by Africans was very different from the kind practiced by Europeans/Americans. Both were oppressive, but there is a spectrum. If I could choose the kind of slave I had to be, I’d choose the one where I retain the right to call myself a human being. Wouldn’t you?
I don’t see how any of this is “amusing”. But YMMV.
So you’re saying the film is pretty much like any film that is produced nowadays? Because I can’t think of any film where most of the characters are good and flawless. Can you?
:rolleyes:
Most of the slave trade was carried out by established African political entities. For instance the Songhai Empire, the Dendi Kingdom and earlier the Mali Empire. Its not like Europeans showed up at an African beach with nets and grabbed the first people they saw. Plus there was a lot of levels of trade in slaves within the continent before they got to the Americas. X would capture slaves to sell to Y who would sell them on to European traders. Whydah was a small kingdom which regularly bought out slaves from elsewhere and then sold them on.
And so cute that you think a slave of whatever description retains the right to call myself a human being’. A slave is by definition property. I’d rather not be property.
Fuck you.
!!! I missed that at the time! Fantastic.
Eta: Nm.
It was said when they brought Ross in from Pusan.
[Moderating]
OK, first of all, monstro, telling another poster “fuck you” is not acceptable anywhere on this board, not even in the Pit (which we aren’t in). This is an official Warning.
That said, I understand that you were provoked. AK84, it looks like you brought up slavery just for the purpose of scoring political points, and your “so cute” comment is dangerously close to the “personal insults” line. Drop all discussion of the slavery question, and reign in the condescension.
On Further Review
I’d forgotten that this was the same thread that I had just given a different Warning for politicking in. Given that, AK84’s post looks a fair bit more jerkish. It was already very close to the line; that’s enough to put it over. This is also therefore a Warning for AK84.