Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

[ecarden]

Saw it yesterday. I'll say definitely worth seeing once in theaters, not sure I'm going to watch it again though.

General, non-spoilery comments:

1) Least 'marvel formula' MCU movie
2) Least 'marvel humor' MCU movie
3) Very different tone from most, more...mournful and contemplative?
4) This is making it sound dull, which it wasn't.
5) This is also making it sound like something I'd really enjoy, which it also wasn't, though I can't quite put my finger on why. I have my gripes, but they're not Eternal's sized, or anything.

[Peelee]

Points one and two make it sound the exact opposite of dull, actually. For me at least.

This might be the first Marvel movie I wanted to see in quite some time.

[Palanan]

I've been debating seeing this in the theater, since the past few movies I've seen in the theater were disappointments and not really worth the money.

I'm not especially excited for it, and pretty burned out on Marvel movies in general. Is there enough here to justify seeing it in the theater? Or is this one of those "wait to rent if you're not super-pumped" movies?

[ecarden]

I've been debating seeing this in the theater, since the past few movies I've seen in the theater were disappointments and not really worth the money.

I'm not especially excited for it, and pretty burned out on Marvel movies in general. Is there enough here to justify seeing it in the theater? Or is this one of those "wait to rent if you're not super-pumped" movies?

I'll say I think the theater added a lot. There's quite a bit of spectacle that I think worked better on the big screen, the 3d was well integrated and not entirely superfluous, and the emotion can land harder in a group setting then streaming on the couch.

However, I will also say it is LONG. Long as in I ended up taking two separate bathroom breaks. Bring back the intermission!

[Psyren]

Saw it, and while I definitely enjoyed it, the plot was quite messy. You could really see the production issues and cracks that were holding this one back. But the visuals as usual were stunning and I loved the new and returning Marvel characters.

There is one mid-credits scene which isn't majorly impactful I'd say. Post-credits there is a brief statement from the filmmakers rather than an additional stinger.


I don't like Shuri as the new Black Panther, even putting all my issues with her actress aside that I won't elaborate on here. Physically, she's nowhere near ready for the role; she's as skinny as a twig, she doesn't look at all believable in melee, her suit is lame (come on, you're the gadget queen, couldn't you add one new feature to it?) and her fighting style doesn't incorporate any kind of cool agility or techniques. And for the role itself, she takes the power for all the wrong reasons - desire for revenge, lack of respect for the spiritual aspects, and worst of all, putting herself at colossal risk with an untested herb despite being the only one with a prayer of synthesizing more of it in the whole kingdom. And don't get me started on her getting Killmonger's spiritual endorsement of all people, which to me suggests her tenure won't be long, or the fact that Wakanda now has a succession crisis in the making if she ever ends up having children of her own (maybe her fake herb will nip that in the bud, no pun intended, by making her sterile though.) Oh wait, they might have one anyway, since I guess M'Baku is running unopposed for the throne now too? What if he has kids? I can't help but think about this stuff!

Nakia by far would have been the superior choice (and I'm not the only one who thinks so (https://www.cbr.com/nakia-better-black-panther-shuri-black-panther-2-mcu/) - she proves herself to be a capable badass even with no powers at all during the film, and she's royalty now herself due to being the mother of T'Challa's child assuming that's a hard requirement. And she has shown she fulfills the number one job description for the BP, i.e. being a multifaceted agent and fighter who can secure and protect Wakandan interests at home and abroad. Hell, Queen Ramunda herself turned to Nakia in the kingdom's darkest hour, and she delivered - you can't get a better endorsement than that. But no reason is given for them not even considering her for the job. When she showed up in the lab right as Shuri finished the herb I got excited, only for my hopes to be dashed. When M'Baku proclaimed Shuri as the new BP, it was positioned as some kind of triumphant moment, but my theater was dead quiet, and the underwhelming feeling was palpable.

The Val and Ross subplot was another chunk of wasted motion. It served one purpose early on - Ross helping Wakanda locate Riri (I'll get to her). But after that, Ross commits a bunch of treason by telling the Wakandans nothing, gets caught by Val and arrested (Apparently they were... married? And she keeps handcuffs in his kitchen? Eww) then freed by Wakanda and now he... I dunno, lives there? I guess? It's all very vague and very little of it was necessary for an already bloated 3 hour movie. I feel like they could have had Wakanda locate Riri on their own much more easily, or had Bilbo's help occur off-screen.

I love Dominique Thorne in this role, but there was quite a bit of suspension of disbelief here. She's really the only person who can make a vibranium detector? I get that Tony funded everyone's MIT projects, which probably explains how she was able to put together her Mark I and develop the detector, but it's not like there's no vibranium to study outside of Talokan and Wakanda (hell, a bunch of doofuses got their hands on a vibranium needle in She-Hulk somehow, on top of Todd buying an entire spear in a black market auction.)

I was really hoping she'd have been more involved with T'Challa's legacy, i.e. the Wakandan robotics outreach centers in POC communities he established, but being an MIT genius following more closely in Stark's footsteps is fine too I guess.

The T'Challa funeral was touching. Ramunda's was rushed.

M'Baku and the Jabari continue to be the best part of these movies.

Ramunda taking down Okoye verbally was well-deserved, even if her timing royally (heh) sucked.

Namor was solid but I don't have too much to say about him, he was just Killmonger 2.0 here really - charismatic yet genocidal demagogue - but with a foundation laid for him to become more in future movies.

The action scenes were meh. By far the best one was extracting Riri from the US. The boat climax and the duel between Shuri and Namor were silly. (Seriously, your big Wakandan boat only has one weapon on it, and no plan B if the Atlanteans wreck it?)

The visuals in both Wakanda and Talokan were stellar, as was the view of MCU Haiti.

All in all, it had several high notes and did what it needed to do, but I wasn't too enamored with this one and I'm hoping this end of the MCU goes through some changes.


Is there enough here to justify seeing it in the theater?

I always find this immensely hard to answer for other people. Only you can really justify what about a movie makes it worthwhile to head out to a theater for. For me, every Marvel movie gets that because I love the intercontinuity and I hate dodging spoilers and memes for weeks online, but others might not value those things the way I do.

Even one like this that I felt had serious structural problems was worth the ticket for me.

[Dienekes]

I always find this immensely hard to answer for other people. Only you can really justify what about a movie makes it worthwhile to head out to a theater for. For me, every Marvel movie gets that because I love the intercontinuity and I hate dodging spoilers and memes for weeks online, but others might not value those things the way I do.

Even one like this that I felt had serious structural problems was worth the ticket for me.

Personally, I'd say this. Theaters are louder than I like, seats are less comfortable than my couch, food is over costed, other people are annoying, there's always some annoying jerk talking or on their phone, and the floor is sticky.

But the spectacle? The sheer size of watching action performed in front of you. That is what theaters do better than the comfort of my home. So if the movie is more of a slow burn, a character drama, a display mostly on nuance and understanding the inner humanity of the characters? Yeah, that can wait. I will enjoy it more at home. But if the film has a focus on spectacle, set pieces and all that fun stuff then I'll cough up more than I'd like to go see.

[Peelee]

Personally, I'd say this. Theaters are louder than I like

The volume and temperature are set to whatever the last person complained about to the staff/management. Be that person and the problem gets resolved. For you, at least.

[Deadkitten]

The volume and temperature are set to whatever the last person complained about to the staff/management. Be that person and the problem gets resolved. For you, at least.

That's not as likely as you would think. I'm a manager of a 12 screen of one of the big chains so take it with a grain of salt how accurate it is broadly but I can give a few tidbits of info when it comes to those sorts of things.

For starters on temperature. Because an auditorium is so big and has such a huge ceiling, it takes FOREVER for there to be any meaningful change on the settings. That's coupled with the fact that we can only adjust the temperature by 5 degrees in either direction for only an HOUR. Then it reverts back to the programmed temperature set by home office. So even then with how long it takes to change the temperature, probably won't matter. Also attendance directly affects temperature more than you think. Body heat is a big factor in an auditorium and if it's busy it can have a hard time keeping up. Those aren't great excuses but those are the limitations of the equipment we have and I don't work for a small chain with no resources so that that for what you will.

As for sound. We do try to keep an eye on if it is off but we generally don't adjust it by a large degree because it can risk damaging the speakers and those are NOT cheap and usually leave an auditorium down for at least a week or two to get it fixed. Generally any repairs are a nightmare because the guys who do it cover multiple states and hundreds of miles by themselves and are constantly in a game of whack-a-mole of trying to fix more problems than they have time to solve. So we try not to mess with those too much. Lowering volume usually isn't too much of an issue but you would be surprised how it can affect other issues that can come up.

I can honestly gripe all day about my issues with theatre chains and some of the dumb logic they can do but some things are hard to solve and most places try to deal with that as best they can.

That definitely might have been WAAAY too much info that no one wanted or cared for but it's 5am here and I'm kinda bored. So my apologies.😅

[Kareeah_Indaga]

For starters on temperature. Because an auditorium is so big and has such a huge ceiling, it takes FOREVER for there to be any meaningful change on the settings. That's coupled with the fact that we can only adjust the temperature by 5 degrees in either direction for only an HOUR. Then it reverts back to the programmed temperature set by home office. So even then with how long it takes to change the temperature, probably won't matter.

Now I’m wondering if that’s why my local theater installed the lovely heated seats. Fewer complaints and less maintenance.

[Peelee]

That's not as likely as you would think. I'm a manager of a 12 screen of one of the big chains so take it with a grain of salt how accurate it is broadly but I can give a few tidbits of info when it comes to those sorts of things.

For starters on temperature. Because an auditorium is so big and has such a huge ceiling, it takes FOREVER for there to be any meaningful change on the settings. That's coupled with the fact that we can only adjust the temperature by 5 degrees in either direction for only an HOUR. Then it reverts back to the programmed temperature set by home office. So even then with how long it takes to change the temperature, probably won't matter. Also attendance directly affects temperature more than you think. Body heat is a big factor in an auditorium and if it's busy it can have a hard time keeping up. Those aren't great excuses but those are the limitations of the equipment we have and I don't work for a small chain with no resources so that that for what you will.

As for sound. We do try to keep an eye on if it is off but we generally don't adjust it by a large degree because it can risk damaging the speakers and those are NOT cheap and usually leave an auditorium down for at least a week or two to get it fixed. Generally any repairs are a nightmare because the guys who do it cover multiple states and hundreds of miles by themselves and are constantly in a game of whack-a-mole of trying to fix more problems than they have time to solve. So we try not to mess with those too much. Lowering volume usually isn't too much of an issue but you would be surprised how it can affect other issues that can come up.

I can honestly gripe all day about my issues with theatre chains and some of the dumb logic they can do but some things are hard to solve and most places try to deal with that as best they can.

That definitely might have been WAAAY too much info that no one wanted or cared for but it's 5am here and I'm kinda bored. So my apologies.😅

No worries! I used to run projection back when it was 35mm (and sitting the transition to digital, which was pretty neat, but it wasn't nearly as fun as film). I know all aboit the issues and ranges for temps and sounds, but it's still good to know they're adjustable. Especially the sound, even within the range it changes its usually noticeable and also typically due to people in crowded auditoriums wanting it up and empty ones wanting it down, for obvious reasons.

I feel kind of sad that once digital was firmly entrenched theaters went with automated protection. I understand why but man, for a crappy minimum wage job, movie theater was really fun, and projection was just the best. Though I was also at a chain that took care of its equipment and employees. I had several friends who worked at a different theater in town which did neither, and to this day they complain about some of the stuff management pulled.

[Palanan]

I appreciate the various perspectives on the movie. I dislike crowded theaters, and I enjoy it most when I’m the only one watching, so the group experience isn’t a draw for me. But “least Marvel formula MCU movie” is a strong endorsement for me, and I do like the spectacle of the big screen.

Also, I’m personally happy to hear as much about theater operations as anyone wants to share, although probably better in a dedicated thread—“Night of the Living Theater Employees” or something like that. I’ve always been interested in how a theater works.

Never in a thousand years would I have expected heated seats, though. That would drive me right out the door, unless I could turn it off myself.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Second having a specific thread for How Theaters Work.



Never in a thousand years would I have expected heated seats, though. That would drive me right out the door, unless I could turn it off myself.

You actually have to activate it manually if you want it on, and it has an automatic shutoff (I’m uncertain of the length of time beyond, ‘I had to turn it on more than once during the movie’). They also have two different heat settings.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
You actually have to activate it manually if you want it on, and it has an automatic shutoff (I’m uncertain of the length of time beyond, ‘I had to turn it on more than once during the movie’). They also have two different heat settings.

Interesting. Maybe that's more popular in places where it snows? Not something I've often felt the need for.

[Deadkitten]

Now I’m wondering if that’s why my local theater installed the lovely heated seats. Fewer complaints and less maintenance.

Now my theatres doesn't have heated seats but from my 10 years in the business and the cynicism that I acquired over that time I am fairly certain it's more of them trying to throw around various fancy bells and whistles to justify the cost of going to the theatre over lowering the prices. I can defend theatre chains to a large degree on their pricing because it has waaaaay more fixed cost things that are our of their hands but it definitely feels like they don't put as much effort into lowering prices and more into trying to justify having them.

An example of silliness is that 3D movies used to be more expensive because the company that owned the technology wouldn't sell you the equipment, they RENTED it to you and that was on top of them getting a cut of the ticket prices. 3D moves have pretty much fallen out of favor outside of imax though so it hasn't been too much frustration in years. People just don't want to wear the glasses.🤷

[Deadkitten]

I appreciate the various perspectives on the movie. I dislike crowded theaters, and I enjoy it most when I’m the only one watching, so the group experience isn’t a draw for me. But “least Marvel formula MCU movie” is a strong endorsement for me, and I do like the spectacle of the big screen.

Also, I’m personally happy to hear as much about theater operations as anyone wants to share, although probably better in a dedicated thread—“Night of the Living Theater Employees” or something like that. I’ve always been interested in how a theater works.

Never in a thousand years would I have expected heated seats, though. That would drive me right out the door, unless I could turn it off myself.

It's a good idea so I made a thread. If someone doesn't care to go ahead and post a link in this one I would appreciate it. It's obviously a busy weekend and I post off of my phone so I don't have the patience to do a link right now.😅

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Here you go: Theater thread. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?651405-Night-of-the-living-theatre-employees&p=25633885)

[GloatingSwine]

I thought it was pretty great, it does have to take quite a bit of time setting up Namor and Notlantis but outside that the performances are all strong, with Angela Bassett being the core for the first half of the movie, and the action scenes are servicable.




I don't like Shuri as the new Black Panther, even putting all my issues with her actress aside that I won't elaborate on here. Physically, she's nowhere near ready for the role; she's as skinny as a twig, she doesn't look at all believable in melee, her suit is lame (come on, you're the gadget queen, couldn't you add one new feature to it?) and her fighting style doesn't incorporate any kind of cool agility or techniques. And for the role itself, she takes the power for all the wrong reasons - desire for revenge, lack of respect for the spiritual aspects, and worst of all, putting herself at colossal risk with an untested herb despite being the only one with a prayer of synthesizing more of it in the whole kingdom. And don't get me started on her getting Killmonger's spiritual endorsement of all people, which to me suggests her tenure won't be long, or the fact that Wakanda now has a succession crisis in the making if she ever ends up having children of her own (maybe her fake herb will nip that in the bud, no pun intended, by making her sterile though.) Oh wait, they might have one anyway, since I guess M'Baku is running unopposed for the throne now too? What if he has kids? I can't help but think about this stuff!

Nakia by far would have been the superior choice (and I'm not the only one who thinks so (https://www.cbr.com/nakia-better-black-panther-shuri-black-panther-2-mcu/) - she proves herself to be a capable badass even with no powers at all during the film, and she's royalty now herself due to being the mother of T'Challa's child assuming that's a hard requirement. And she has shown she fulfills the number one job description for the BP, i.e. being a multifaceted agent and fighter who can secure and protect Wakandan interests at home and abroad. Hell, Queen Ramunda herself turned to Nakia in the kingdom's darkest hour, and she delivered - you can't get a better endorsement than that. But no reason is given for them not even considering her for the job. When she showed up in the lab right as Shuri finished the herb I got excited, only for my hopes to be dashed. When M'Baku proclaimed Shuri as the new BP, it was positioned as some kind of triumphant moment, but my theater was dead quiet, and the underwhelming feeling was palpable.

The Val and Ross subplot was another chunk of wasted motion. It served one purpose early on - Ross helping Wakanda locate Riri (I'll get to her). But after that, Ross commits a bunch of treason by telling the Wakandans nothing, gets caught by Val and arrested (Apparently they were... married? And she keeps handcuffs in his kitchen? Eww) then freed by Wakanda and now he... I dunno, lives there? I guess? It's all very vague and very little of it was necessary for an already bloated 3 hour movie. I feel like they could have had Wakanda locate Riri on their own much more easily, or had Bilbo's help occur off-screen.

I love Dominique Thorne in this role, but there was quite a bit of suspension of disbelief here. She's really the only person who can make a vibranium detector? I get that Tony funded everyone's MIT projects, which probably explains how she was able to put together her Mark I and develop the detector, but it's not like there's no vibranium to study outside of Talokan and Wakanda (hell, a bunch of doofuses got their hands on a vibranium needle in She-Hulk somehow, on top of Todd buying an entire spear in a black market auction.)

I was really hoping she'd have been more involved with T'Challa's legacy, i.e. the Wakandan robotics outreach centers in POC communities he established, but being an MIT genius following more closely in Stark's footsteps is fine too I guess.

The T'Challa funeral was touching. Ramunda's was rushed.

M'Baku and the Jabari continue to be the best part of these movies.

Ramunda taking down Okoye verbally was well-deserved, even if her timing royally (heh) sucked.

Namor was solid but I don't have too much to say about him, he was just Killmonger 2.0 here really - charismatic yet genocidal demagogue - but with a foundation laid for him to become more in future movies.

The action scenes were meh. By far the best one was extracting Riri from the US. The boat climax and the duel between Shuri and Namor were silly. (Seriously, your big Wakandan boat only has one weapon on it, and no plan B if the Atlanteans wreck it?)

The visuals in both Wakanda and Talokan were stellar, as was the view of MCU Haiti.



I doubt they ever seriously considered anyone except Shuri as the new Panther, but I agree that Letitia Wright didn't really make much impact. Her action scenes were okay, but never really more than that and Danai Gurira carried most of the action of the film.

Hopefully for the next one they'll at least get a good fight choreographer who can design a style around her being so thin and having such little presence in a fight scene because of it.

I think she did a lot better with the rest of the character though, with Bassett and Gurira both having a lot of screen presence there was a risk she would get lost out of the action as well as in it and that didn't happen, she just doesn't land in fight scenes.

Such is the price of continuity. Ross' scenes are 99% setup for Secret Invasion, and Val is probably a Skrull.

The MCU is full of improbable one-off geniuses. Peter Parker makes web fluid basically nobody can replicate in a high school science lab. Also the combination of the big shoulder boosters and arm cannon made her full Ironheart suit look a bit like Samus Aran, and that's worth extra points from me.

[Peelee]

An example of silliness is that 3D movies used to be more expensive because the company that owned the technology wouldn't sell you the equipment, they RENTED it to you and that was on top of them getting a cut of the ticket prices.
And on top of renting the movie itself. I assume that's still being done, at least. I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

3D moves have pretty much fallen out of favor outside of imax though so it hasn't been too much frustration in years. People just don't want to wear the glasses.🤷

You mean "IMAX".

I also ran 70mm IMAX in a dedicated IMAX dome and was second in line to theater director, the top position in the theater department at the company (and a position where you can only quit during a 2-month period every 2 years or pay $20,000 in penalties, because every other year they send you to Toronto for intensive training at IMAX headquarters, where among other things, you learn how to take apart the entire projector - which is massive, bytheway) down to each individual part and out it back together again).

Working there may have biased me against "IMAX" upgraded auditoriums at chain theaters. :smallwink:

[Talakeal]

Did anyone else think the movie was very dark? I had trouble seeing what was going on, especially in the underwater scenes, and I can’t tell if it was the movie or the theatre. Last time I had this problem was Pacific Rim.


On the subject of underwater, I thought Aquaman did I much better job of presenting a wondrous underwater civilization. Tlaloqan (sp) was kind of underwhelming. Its unusual for DC to do visual spectacle better than Marvel.

[GloatingSwine]

The underwater scenes were quite dark, yeah.

It's on purpose to give it an oppressive atmosphere and contrast with Wakanda.

[Talakeal]

The underwater scenes were quite dark, yeah.

It's on purpose to give it an oppressive atmosphere and contrast with Wakanda.

I figured as much.

It seems kind of strange though; Shuri is acting as if she is seeing this wondrous civilization that is worth preserving, but all we see is dark and oppressive gloom.

[GloatingSwine]

Taking it to spoilers:

Yeah, though also going with a naturalistic "bottom of the sea is actually quite dark" presentation is that it increases the impact of Namor's artificial sun, because he literally brought light to a people who had to hide in darkness.

Also finding an entire undersea nation is pretty wondrous in the first place, even with the lights turned off.

[Psyren]

I thought it was pretty great, it does have to take quite a bit of time setting up Namor and Notlantis but outside that the performances are all strong, with Angela Bassett being the core for the first half of the movie, and the action scenes are servicable.




I doubt they ever seriously considered anyone except Shuri as the new Panther, but I agree that Letitia Wright didn't really make much impact. Her action scenes were okay, but never really more than that and Danai Gurira carried most of the action of the film.

Hopefully for the next one they'll at least get a good fight choreographer who can design a style around her being so thin and having such little presence in a fight scene because of it.

I think she did a lot better with the rest of the character though, with Bassett and Gurira both having a lot of screen presence there was a risk she would get lost out of the action as well as in it and that didn't happen, she just doesn't land in fight scenes.

Such is the price of continuity. Ross' scenes are 99% setup for Secret Invasion, and Val is probably a Skrull.

The MCU is full of improbable one-off geniuses. Peter Parker makes web fluid basically nobody can replicate in a high school science lab. Also the combination of the big shoulder boosters and arm cannon made her full Ironheart suit look a bit like Samus Aran, and that's worth extra points from me.


1) I know she was always intended to be the successor but some explanation in-universe why it couldn't be anyone else would have been nice... Anyway, my hope is that they go with the comic arc where Bast finds her unworthy and she gives up the mantle.

2) I don't even know what setup is here. Ross getting arrested for helping Wakanda with classified intel might as well have happened offscreen since it didn't end up meaning anything for this story. And Val's setup here is essentially the same as where we left her in FATWS; we learn that she's smart, devious and highly connected in the US government, none of which is new information.

3) I have no problem with improbable prodigies being capable of unique technology in Marvel, but "vibranium detector" isn't really part of Riri's identity the way "web shooters" are for Peter, "Pym particles" are for Hank or "arc reactor" is for Tony. Still, for the sake of this film I can certainly buy her being the first to crack it, but Namor's grand plan still seems kind of silly.

[Deadkitten]

The underwater scenes were quite dark, yeah.

It's on purpose to give it an oppressive atmosphere and contrast with Wakanda.
CGI also looks better or hides the poorly done graphics when it's dark. 3D can also make it SLIGHTLY darker cause there is usually an extra lense used

[Ranxerox]

The underwater scenes were quite dark, yeah.

It's on purpose to give it an oppressive atmosphere and contrast with Wakanda.

I don't think so. The people of Talokan, the underwater city, didn't seem particularly oppressed. We see people working, socializing, and playing games, and none of them seem unhappy. I suspect that to the Talokan people, the city is not dark. Their eyes are adapted to the low light. It is only because we are seeing it as Shuri see it that the city looks dark.

[Tyndmyr]

So, this film is, for me, very mixed.

On the one hand, they fixed one of my beefs with the original Black Panther film, and showed us a broader swathe of Wakanda. On the other hand, the entire film is basically a memorial to Chadwick. Don't get me wrong, his loss sucks badly, and it really is a shame he wasn't with us for this film. However, it does bring down the mood a lot from most comic book movies.

All in all, I consider it very mixed, but I expect it to make buckets of money on the domestic market, but do fairly miserable overseas.

Spoileriffic review:

There is yet another race of superpowered beings that have been hidden this entire time. Their leader is a mutant, which I guess I'm supposed to squee over because Xmen, but he really, really hates when things happen to his people or in the ocean. Not Thanos's snap, that was cool, I guess. Also, not bothered by the events of the Eternals, when a plant cracking godbaby begins to emerge from the Ocean. Also ok. But when someone turns on the wrong kind of metal detector, it's time to murder everyone.

There is a side plot in the US. It doesn't matter. Pretty much nothing about it will ever matter, the power level is ludicrously lower than anything else.

Angry goddude wants to murder the metal detector creator who is...an insane genius even by marvel standards. She's 19. She also somehow wants to be recruited by Wakanda, but is upset at being taken to Wakanda and wants to go home. It isn't really ever clear what she wants. However, she has invented quantum computing, broken basically all encryption, made a super metal detector, an iron man suit, and half a dozen other things. Also, she refurbished a car at the age of three. Three.

You should probably just turn your brain off while watching this movie when it comes to explaining how anything works. Apparently god dude actually flies not from magic, but from tiny ankle wings. It's comics, just....don't think about this too much. Or think about how since guns work on the bad guys, they are actually not that much of a threat if you just call upon any of the many forces that embrace firepower instead of resorting to melee fighting the strong dudes.

Shuri's the protaganist, and I guess the main theme of her story is that it really sucks that Chadwick died. Okay. This never really presents an obstacle to her at any point, and she's largely reacting, not proactive, with the exception of the naval battle idea, which is strategically wild. The movie skips to a "yes, this guy has straight up murdered everyone I know without mercy or remorse, but I must forgive him and spare his life, after offing hundreds of his underlings" finale, which....okay.

I kind of wish they had gone a little more hardcore Aztec on the sea people, and finished with a finale of Suri holding their leader hostage to end the conflict. Much more morally ambiguous, a nice historical nod, and leaves you the obvious sequel bait of Namor's return.

It was not entirely bad, but it was a long movie, and it felt long, and I have no desire to see it again.

[Ramza00]

Tyndmyr the arc.


Shuri’ arc is internally driven. She is an avoidant person who avoids pain, and tries to dismiss it, and the problem is all her coping strategies are unable to tackle the challenge at hand. She has to wrestle with her anxiety, and wrestle with the grief. A person who is so dismissive of stories that her culture has given her to help manage the grief, the tradition, and feelings of betrayal. Well Shuri feels all alone. And normally this type of person feels more comfortable with controlling the distance with people and tradition, to insert some space and not seek out closeness…but now she feels alone and it is too much.

Note this is parallel to the Queen Mother Ramonda who is also dealing with grief but also has different coping mechanisms and there is a parallel mirrors of Shuri and Ramonda.

Shuri does not want to cry, she is a dismissive avoidant person when it comes to anxiety (30% of people are), she wants to solve the problem and nip it in the bug. She hated how the heart shape herb could not be technology that cures her brother but it was not available at the key moment, she hates how she wanted to connect with her brother, mother, and father on the ancestral plane when she became black panther (a nearly unconscious desire), and this too she feels this was stolen from her by Killmonger. For as much as she wants this desire of closeness, another part of her wants revenge is more connected to her anger, her feelings of betrayal, her feelings of “abandonment”.

Thus she finally connects with her mother, and her mother is not gone when she offers mercy to Namor*. This is not what Shuri wants to do, but she picked a choice she did not want in order to feel connected to her mother, and she can hear the voice of her Queen mother in her head why it makes logical sense which is make the choice of mercy to unite Wakanda and Talokan.

Contrast this with Namor who picks his name No Love in the MCU lore, for he feels betrayed by the outside world he can walk through but his people can not. There was a cultural genocide, and he had to start anew with a new culture. And now that old culture could destroy the things he does care about and love. It is a similar desire with Shuri, both feel betrayed by an aspect of the kosmos and they must stand alone as their nation’s cultural hero.

=====

I have lots more thoughts about other aspects of the movie but this response is long enough for now. I am sure I will have space to voice those other things later.

[Psyren]

My biggest hope from this movie:

Wakanda should now realize that pinning the bulk of their national defenses on one hero is ludicrous. The massive losses they suffered at the hands of Talokan were entirely due to the fact that Talokan has an army of supersoldiers instead of just one; by all means, have one titular Black Panther, but those next in line for succession like Nakia and M'Baku should be able to defend themselves properly too.

Shuri is sort of acknowledging this by developing the Midnight Angel suits for the elites of the Dora Milaje, but I don't think "create a bunch of Iron Women" is the right answer either; it detracts from the Dora's iconic visual design to stuff them all into blue CGI tin cans.

[Talakeal]

My biggest hope from this movie:

Wakanda should now realize that pinning the bulk of their national defenses on one hero is ludicrous. The massive losses they suffered at the hands of Talokan were entirely due to the fact that Talokan has an army of supersoldiers instead of just one; by all means, have one titular Black Panther, but those next in line for succession like Nakia and M'Baku should be able to defend themselves properly too.

Shuri is sort of acknowledging this by developing the Midnight Angel suits for the elites of the Dora Milaje, but I don't think "create a bunch of Iron Women" is the right answer either; it detracts from the Dora's iconic visual design to stuff them all into blue CGI tin cans.

Its a comic book movie. Technology and power will always be held in the hands of a few heroes.

There is also no reason why every world power doesn't have their own "Iron Man Corps" or the equivalent, but we will never see it.

[Ramza00]

My biggest hope from this movie:

Wakanda should now realize that pinning the bulk of their national defenses on one hero is ludicrous. The massive losses they suffered at the hands of Talokan were entirely due to the fact that Talokan has an army of supersoldiers instead of just one; by all means, have one titular Black Panther, but those next in line for succession like Nakia and M'Baku should be able to defend themselves properly too.

Shuri is sort of acknowledging this by developing the Midnight Angel suits for the elites of the Dora Milaje, but I don't think "create a bunch of Iron Women" is the right answer either; it detracts from the Dora's iconic visual design to stuff them all into blue CGI tin cans.

Tech


They have forcefields and laser spears. Or was it sonic spears?

They do not need super strength… dexterity, speed, maneuverability , situational awareness is far more important in real life if you have force fields and sonic spears.

But like every action tech tv show or movie with forcefields the forcefields are useful when the plot requires it and it loses it when the plot does not require it (same thing with super-strength.) It is not real life. It is more fun to see a Dora Milaje twirling their spear blocking bullets than to see a border tribe raise their cloak and there is a forcefield which blocks bullets. Why did T’Challa give Steve Rogers a vibranium shield that was merely durable and used for smashing? Because you want the story to be selective when the Paladin has magic tech powers or not.

[Psyren]

It is not real life.

Gosh golly gee willikers, are you sure? :smallsigh:

I'm aware of how fiction works, thanks!




They have forcefields and laser spears. Or was it sonic spears?

They do not need super strength… dexterity, speed, maneuverability , situational awareness is far more important in real life if you have force fields and sonic spears.


Here's the problem though; however cool the visual (and I completely agree with its coolness), the zappy spears clearly aren't enough.

Wakanda has been successfully invaded twice now. And both times they abjectly failed to repel said invaders, causing the loss of many Wakandan lives - combatants and civilians alike.

The mere fact that Shuri is so fixated on developing the Midnight Angels, shows that she recognizes this glaring deficiency in their current defenses.

They want to be the sole guardians - and beneficiaries - of the largest stockpile of vibranium on the planet. That's fine; I even agree with Queen Ramunda's logic for not sharing, that they are the ones who have had it for centuries and therefore are the least likely to become corrupted by having it. (Ideally such a weighty responsibility means they should do something to modernize their frankly ridiculous means of selecting a head of state while they're at it, and institute some meaningful checks and balances on said leader too, but that's a completely different rant for the third movie once we see whether or not they've made some reforms to the selection process.)

Their biggest defense for most of their history was the rest of the world having been ignorant of their existence. That's out the window both narratively and metanarratively - from a Watsonian perspective, the governments of the world (and maybe aliens too?) are slavering for what they have, and from a Doylist one, Wakanda itself is now such a lucrative brand that they are almost guaranteed to play a role in pretty much any major cross-property MCU conflict coming down the pipeline. Whether it's Kang, Galactus, Dr. Doom etc., if the entire world is threatened then the audience (not to mention the shareholders) are going to want Wakanda to play a role, and therefore we'll have both in-universe and out-of-universe reasons for them to show up with some upgrades.

I'm totally fine with all of that. What I'm not fine with is Wakanda either learning nothing from getting their butts kicked twice, or deciding that the best solution is to take the absolutely iconic design of the Dora and stick them behind ugly blue not-Ironman suits. That's my gripe, they need to grow but neither of these two options is appealing.

I'm not saying that every Wakandan warrior needs to become T'Challa. But I think it would be an easy and sensible lore addition to have their most elite ones take a bit of heart-shaped herb - much like the Talokans do with their aquatic version - and thus be able to go toe-to-toe with many metahuman threats in a narratively satisfying way. Or if they're not going to do that for all the Dora, at least the named characters like Okoye, Ayo, M'baku and Nakia.

[GloatingSwine]

I'm not saying that every Wakandan warrior needs to become T'Challa. But I think it would be an easy and sensible lore addition to have their most elite ones take a bit of heart-shaped herb - much like the Talokans do with their aquatic version - and thus be able to go toe-to-toe with many metahuman threats in a narratively satisfying way. Or if they're not going to do that for all the Dora, at least the named characters like Okoye, Ayo, M'baku and Nakia.

I think they probably should solve it with proliferation of tech rather than proliferation of superpowers, especially with Shuri in charge. Like maybe the next time we see Wakandans fight they're using Dune style personal shields and more explicit power weapons (like the knives Aneka used but applied to their spears and maces, discharges of energy whenever they hit, etc)

It shouldn't be more iron mans, it should be the sort of approach Wakanda would take. One that leans more into Wakanda's identity as a covert technological superpower because even when they go public cultural habits are hard to break out of.

[lord_khaine]

There is also no reason why every world power doesn't have their own "Iron Man Corps" or the equivalent, but we will never see it.

This at least makes sense before this movie.
Where you both need a engineering genius and military development grade component to make a suit.
And everyone just dont have that. We saw in Iron Man.. 2? what happened with the suits they tried to make.

I havent watched the move (i fear it would make me yell at the screen).
But by the sound of it someone builds a functional Iron Man suit in their garage?


Here's the problem though; however cool the visual (and I completely agree with its coolness), the zappy spears clearly aren't enough.

See i in turn have a massive disconnect with Wakanda supposedly being a high advanced nation.
But still uses spears. When they should have something like Space Marines.

[Psyren]

See i in turn have a massive disconnect with Wakanda supposedly being a high advanced nation.
But still uses spears. When they should have something like Space Marines.

Dora spears double as long rifles; they're a perfectly fine stylistic choice. They're also functional; they blend seamlessly with the Dora's combat style, and we see them used for utility in this movie and elsewhere (e.g. Okoye using hers to keep from being knocked off the bridge, Ayo using hers to disarm John in FATWS, etc.)

What's most important though is the aesthetic/theme. They're not supposed to run around with actual guns in their hands; they're not colonizers.



But by the sound of it someone builds a functional Iron Man suit in their garage?


No, that doesn't happen.
Riri rigs together a very rudimentary frame while at MIT, not a whole suit - little more than a jetpack with handles and a gun. And even that makes perfect sense, given that Tony canonically provided unlimited funding for MIT students back in Civil War.

She doesn't actually craft the Ironheart suit until she makes it to Wakanda.

[Ramza00]

See i in turn have a massive disconnect with Wakanda supposedly being a high advanced nation.
But still uses spears. When they should have something like Space Marines.

Dori spears can be as small as a lightsaber handle and then expand to be a melee weapon while simultaneously being a sonic rifle (but in spear-pointy form), but also thrown if you need something to restrain something.

But we also see a non Dori Wakanda agent use a sonic rifle gun (that also does not match a gun's appearance exactly) in the movie.

[Dragonus45]

See i in turn have a massive disconnect with Wakanda supposedly being a high advanced nation.
But still uses spears. When they should have something like Space Marines.

The spears are aesthetically cool and make sense, it's the tactics on display that make me think that even for all it's awesome power Wakanda would lose against most conventional militaries.

[Psyren]

The spears are aesthetically cool and make sense, it's the tactics on display that make me think that even for all it's awesome power Wakanda would lose against most conventional militaries.

In Wakanda's defense, I think they fared better than most conventional militaries would have against the likes of the Children of Thanos or a race of aquatic supersoldiers with seemingly infinite ordnance.

For comparison, the Chitauri stomped a conventional military force, and per Rocket they are a galactic laughingstock, so Wakanda's military is probably a step or two up.

[GloatingSwine]

For comparison, the Chitauri stomped a conventional military force, and per Rocket they are a galactic laughingstock, so Wakanda's military is probably a step or two up.

When?

I know US police are pretty militarised but I don't think the NYPD actually counts as a military force yet.


Dora spears double as long rifles

Nah, they don't. See this historical document for why:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8

They could be a short range precursor attack in a classic spear formation, but there's no sighting mechanism to turn them into a genuine ranged weapon.

[Wintermoot]

When?

I know US police are pretty militarised but I don't think the NYPD actually counts as a military force yet.



What is your criteria for a military force? By number of active armed personnel they are the 60th largest armed force in the world. By budget they are in the top ten. I'd be curious what criteria you would use that would discount them as a military force.



But by the sound of it someone builds a functional Iron Man suit in their garage?
.

Tony built his first functional Iron Man suit in a cave. He built his second in his garage.


(and, yes, I know Tony had an expansive, rich boy mega-garage. In the movie, Riri's "garage" is actually a sprawling warehouse full of high end technology that impresses the Wakandan super-scientist. So dismissively referring to it as "a garage" is exactly as accurate as dismissively referring to Tony's workshop as "a garage", or the workshop that Vulture made the Vulture suit, Shocker gloves and other technology in as "a garage". Or the blasted out basement Whiplash made his whiplash whips in as "a garage." The MCU is chock full of people building impressive super-dscience technology in garages.



Tony canonically provided unlimited funding for MIT students back in Civil War.


You, or someone else, used this point earlier in the thread. My question is this: If I remember, Tony was fully funding all the current/active projects of everyone at MIT at the time of his presentation in (I think) 2016 (in universe). Between the various time skips/one year laters/etc, I think BP2 must take place in 2026 at the earliest. So even if Riri was blipped (I don't think she was) and MIT has some sort of waiver for student who unblipped to pick up where they left off, then she must be one terrible student to still be in school after that much time. As I don't think she was blipped, I think she was, like, nine when Tony funded those programs. So I don't think she probably benefitted from it.

But I'm making a bunch of assumptions here, who knows.

[Dragonus45]

What is your criteria for a military force? By number of active armed personnel they are the 60th largest armed force in the world. By budget they are in the top ten. I'd be curious what criteria you would use that would discount them as a military force.


Training and equipment for law enforcement is an entirely different animal then the training and equipment for military forces, and is a far more important metric to go by then just size.

[GloatingSwine]

What is your criteria for a military force? By number of active armed personnel they are the 60th largest armed force in the world. By budget they are in the top ten. I'd be curious what criteria you would use that would discount them as a military force.


A military force contains things a police force doesn't. No matter how many spare MRAPs the NYPD gets to play toy soldier with they've not got mortar and artillery support or armoured combat vehicles.

[Tyndmyr]

In Wakanda's defense, I think they fared better than most conventional militaries would have against the likes of the Children of Thanos or a race of aquatic supersoldiers with seemingly infinite ordnance.

For comparison, the Chitauri stomped a conventional military force, and per Rocket they are a galactic laughingstock, so Wakanda's military is probably a step or two up.

The conventional military force would absolutely have beaten the Chitauri. With a nuclear warhead to New York, as shown in Avengers. Loki might have found some trick to survive, but the rest of them die to bullets, they would most certainly die to nuke. It'd just have had a ton of collateral damage.

Wakanda's regular troops, even with laser spears, have not been shown to be very effective. On the one hand, a single shot laser spear is deeply inferior to a regular ol' rifle. On the other, it's kind of necessary for the genre. Superheroes, by their nature, are an exceptional answer to a problem, not a regular one. Batman wouldn't make sense if the Gotham Police had things well in hand, either.

A ton of these things could be dealt with by a traditional military, but the stories are not likely to focus on that. At best, we will have exceptional people within those militaries, such as Cap, Bucky, Shield agents or the Dora Milaje. Even within the small units, there's generally a measure of specialness associated with the focal character.

[GloatingSwine]

Wakanda's weapon designs make sense when you remember that they're supposed to be secret. The point of the spears is that they look like spears so nobody knows that they're actually energy weapons.

Remember that their primary defence is secrecy.

[Bartmanhomer]

I saw the movie in IMAX and I'm going to tell you my thoughts and opinions of the movie:

This movie is a tribute to Chadwick Bosman: The actor who play the original Panther movie before he passed away from cancer. His younger sister took his place as the New Black Panther as she fights Namor. What I like about this movie is action-packed and emotional as she remembers her brother's memories I cried during that scene. There wasn't anything that I dislike or hated about this movie. Marvel did a great job tributing Chadwick Bosman. So I'll recommend this movie. :smile:

[Psyren]

The conventional military force would absolutely have beaten the Chitauri. With a nuclear warhead to New York, as shown in Avengers. Loki might have found some trick to survive, but the rest of them die to bullets, they would most certainly die to nuke. It'd just have had a ton of collateral damage.

I thought avoiding the bold was implied :smallconfused:


Wakanda's regular troops, even with laser spears, have not been shown to be very effective. On the one hand, a single shot laser spear is deeply inferior to a regular ol' rifle. On the other, it's kind of necessary for the genre. Superheroes, by their nature, are an exceptional answer to a problem, not a regular one. Batman wouldn't make sense if the Gotham Police had things well in hand, either.

A ton of these things could be dealt with by a traditional military, but the stories are not likely to focus on that. At best, we will have exceptional people within those militaries, such as Cap, Bucky, Shield agents or the Dora Milaje. Even within the small units, there's generally a measure of specialness associated with the focal character.

We can't conclude on how traditional military would fare against an army of aliens or superhumans based on what we've seen in the MCU, there just isn't enough data. Wakanda needs to continue improving, sure, but that doesn't mean they would have fared worse.

[Ramza00]

Ultimately there is two options here


The surface world could never conquer Talokans due to the fact the Talokanil breathe water and the surface world breathes air.
Likewise the same in reverse.

Thus the limiting factors is
1) Mass Death and/or terrorism
2) The Surface World somehow acquiring Vibranium and thus covert opts back and forth trying to locate a Vibranium mound and then harvesting it, then holding onto it to the point one can develop Vibranium tech based on the raw ore.

Well 1 is just depressing and is very possible, but even this has limiting factors. For example let’s say the surface world tries to nuke an area, well the Talokanil can just move, and it is a big ocean, and the fact it is water based tremendously limits how surface world tech operates for explosive and gun weapons do not operate well in water for water absorbs and displace force in a 3D dimension. Likewise the same in reverse with the Talokanil doing mass death / terrorism on the surface world, their oxygen masks are the limiting factor and there is lots of humans. It is possible for a genocide or just a mass death but I vibe wise feel it is unlikely.

Option 2 is possible if one has a Vibranium detector, but becomes much harder perhaps improbable if there is no Vibranium mode detector in he hands of America and other surface world nations. At the same time an alliance with Wakanda where Wakanda has a Vibranium detector makes it so much harder for a surface world nation to hold onto Vibranium tech other surface nations are developing. A quick Dora Milaje attack either on land, or with cloaking spaceships with tractor beams will make it hard for other surface nations to hold and continue to develop Vibranium based tech.

Of course insane / irrational things can always happen for I feel humans are self-destructive capable (gestures at World War 1 and the inability to de-escalate for 4 years after millions died.) But what I foresee is some form of slow Cold War and not a hot war for Surface Humans and Talokanil are just too different with breathing air vs breathing water.


In sum this is a movie about grief, and the reason for fighting is misunderstanding, miscommunication, projection, and grief in the first place.

[lord_khaine]

Dora spears double as long rifles; they're a perfectly fine stylistic choice. They're also functional; they blend seamlessly with the Dora's combat style, and we see them used for utility in this movie and elsewhere (e.g. Okoye using hers to keep from being knocked off the bridge, Ayo using hers to disarm John in FATWS, etc.)

What's most important though is the aesthetic/theme. They're not supposed to run around with actual guns in their hands; they're not colonizers.



The spears are aesthetically cool and make sense, it's the tactics on display that make me think that even for all it's awesome power Wakanda would lose against most conventional militaries.

The spears dont look like they would be accurate past perhaps 20-30 meters. There is a reason rifles have all the.. stuff. That they do.

And equally its just silly. I would also call it out as silly if a swedish special force were shown running around with axes.
Just because the vikings used them.


(and, yes, I know Tony had an expansive, rich boy mega-garage. In the movie, Riri's "garage" is actually a sprawling warehouse full of high end technology that impresses the Wakandan super-scientist. So dismissively referring to it as "a garage" is exactly as accurate as dismissively referring to Tony's workshop as "a garage", or the workshop that Vulture made the Vulture suit, Shocker gloves and other technology in as "a garage". Or the blasted out basement Whiplash made his whiplash whips in as "a garage." The MCU is chock full of people building impressive super-dscience technology in garages.


Oh wow i hit something sensitive here :smallbiggrin:


Wakanda's weapon designs make sense when you remember that they're supposed to be secret. The point of the spears is that they look like spears so nobody knows that they're actually energy weapons.


Best argument for the bodyguards spear i have seen.
And yeah alright does make sense for them to be low key. Well less if they then blow their cover by laser blasting something with futuristic technology.

Problem is they dont have much other stuff. Didnt see much else of when they got invaded.
Like hover tanks. Or Hunk-buster grade battle suits.

[GloatingSwine]

Problem is they dont have much other stuff. Didnt see much else of when they got invaded.
Like hover tanks. Or Hunk-buster grade battle suits.

That's because they've never faced a context where they might need it until ca. 5 years ago and we've only just started seeing the response to that (Midnight Angel suits) and there's still cultural resistance to even that. Weapons systems don't change overnight (and everyone always plans to fight the last war not the next one).

Like the most serious thing the Wakandans have likely had to deal with in the last 180 years (since the european colonial expansion in that part of Africa) is rhino poachers.

Consider: There are single digit numbers of non-Wakandan people who know that Wakanda isn't a dirt poor stretch of African plain in the first place, and even then they only know that there's a lot of Vibranium there not what's really there, and they're also about the only people who know what Vibranium even is in the first place.

Until Wakanda goes public (and since they keep their holofield on there's a distinct question about how public they're being), nobody knows there is anything there worth sending any kind of force to seize (except, as noted, Rhino horns).

So they've got weapons and tactics which are secret and would be effective against pretty much the last serious opponent they might have faced (colonial era armies using ranked fire with early rifles) and would also be effective against poorly organised basically untrained gangs who weren't expecting their AKs to be blocked by a cloth cape that happens to have a hidden energy shield projector built in.

Now that Wakanda has had its defenses penetrated twice, this is when you'd expect to see them developing new capabilities for widespread use. I still think those capabilities should fit the national character of Wakanda as seen so far though, so covert defenses but more capable and "always on" like full body personal forcefields and powering up their spears and maces (when nobody can shoot you you have a lot less need to shoot them first).

[Tyndmyr]

the fact it is water based tremendously limits how surface world tech operates for explosive and gun weapons do not operate well in water for water absorbs and displace force in a 3D dimension.

Given that Namor is in the trailer, I'm not going to spoiler mere discussion of water.

Water doesn't *absorb* force as such. Water is dense and incompressible. This makes it hard for a bullet to overcome it, but it makes explosives very, very effective, because it conducts the shock wave of the explosion directly, whereas air compresses. This is why depth charges work so well.

The US has actually conducted underwater nuclear experiments. A large blast like this underwater will create a half-mile wide bubble with no water at all in it for about a second, transmitting a truly insane amount of force far, far beyond this from all that instant displacement. After about another second, the bubble is again gone as the insane water pressure at depth slams it all back. Both forces are staggeringly huge, and such an event can easily be detected worldwide as a result.

Land vs water would be roughly as unbalanced as an orbital society vs a planetbound one. The society lower in the gravity well loses hard.


The spears dont look like they would be accurate past perhaps 20-30 meters. There is a reason rifles have all the.. stuff. That they do.

And equally its just silly. I would also call it out as silly if a swedish special force were shown running around with axes.
Just because the vikings used them.

Sights are important, yeah. We largely see the spears used at very short range, and there, sure, it kind of works, but at any further distance, it definitely wouldn't. Because of genre, a lot of stuff happens at fisticuffs range or adjacent, so even using the spears as spears works sorta well enough for a lot of things, but it's a really poor plan when trying an actual war.

The MCU has generally not been amazing at depicting full on wars, and very much prefers to follow the exceptional characters within them. The more it does the latter, the better it generally is. Hulk tearing through the Chitauri in Avengers is a lot more memorable than mobs of folks charging each other(the one strategy that the MCU understands) en masse.


That's because they've never faced a context where they might need it until ca. 5 years ago and we've only just started seeing the response to that (Midnight Angel suits) and there's still cultural resistance to even that. Weapons systems don't change overnight (and everyone always plans to fight the last war not the next one).

That's true, but the movie repeatedly has other governments refer to Wakanda as "the most powerful country on earth" in a military sense.

The "we hid, so we didn't have much of a military" would be reasonable, but cannot be squared with that statement.

Wakanda was able to hide because, as the original Black Panther confirmed, it was a small landlocked country deep inlands in the mountains.

In this movie, it is a coastal country. I....have no idea how the whole country just moved, but it is ridiculously hard to ignore either portrayal.

[lord_khaine]

Well its at least a point for why Wakanda does not have serious military gear.
But even so that instead is an over reliance on a single point of failure. Their secrecy.
And with vibranium being as valuable as it is, the moment the secrecy fails they are at a decent risk of invasion.

While with the "national theme part of using spears". One of the reasons i find it dumb to an almost insulting degree.
Is that we also used spears once. It was a peak weapon at a time. Then we moved on to better weapons.

But well. If they put all their elites in panther suits or something.
Then perhaps spears make a bit more sense. Or well are less dumb at least.

[GloatingSwine]

That's true, but the movie repeatedly has other governments refer to Wakanda as "the most powerful country on earth" in a military sense.

The "we hid, so we didn't have much of a military" would be reasonable, but cannot be squared with that statement.

Wakanda was able to hide because, as the original Black Panther confirmed, it was a small landlocked country deep inlands in the mountains.

In this movie, it is a coastal country. I....have no idea how the whole country just moved, but it is ridiculously hard to ignore either portrayal.

The most powerful country on earth doesn't need to have a large military if it is invulnerable to attack by conventional means (covered by an energy shield) and can assassinate every and any world leader it chooses with advanced stealth aircraft.

(Wakanda is not a coastal country, it is on a large river. The River Tribe is mentioned in both films. Namor and the Talokan attack up the river. The scene where Ramonda calls Namor to distract him are specifically pointed out to be at Cape Verde)

[Tyndmyr]

Cape Verde are...islands, so that doesn't make it any more coherent. I don't recall it being identified as such, though. The queen says she comes out to the veldt, which makes sense in context, but doesn't have anything to do with Cape Verde.

The map shown is:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcinematicuniverse/images/5/56/Map_of_Wakanda.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20211017005219 which isn't anywhere close to Cape Verde either.

Yes, the Golden City is portrayed in this film as having big rivers on either side of it giving it a de facto massive moat, but these were not shown in the Wakanda battle of Infinity War.

It's very definitely some changing geography goin' on. Yeah, there was a river tribe in the original one, but the river that was shown(for the fight for kingship) was definitely in a mountainous area, not the city or near an ocean.

[Ramza00]

Given that Namor is in the trailer, I'm not going to spoiler mere discussion of water.

Water doesn't *absorb* force as such. Water is dense and incompressible. This makes it hard for a bullet to overcome it, but it makes explosives very, very effective, because it conducts the shock wave of the explosion directly, whereas air compresses. This is why depth charges work so well.

The US has actually conducted underwater nuclear experiments. A large blast like this underwater will create a half-mile wide bubble with no water at all in it for about a second, transmitting a truly insane amount of force far, far beyond this from all that instant displacement. After about another second, the bubble is again gone as the insane water pressure at depth slams it all back. Both forces are staggeringly huge, and such an event can easily be detected worldwide as a result.

Land vs water would be roughly as unbalanced as an orbital society vs a planetbound one. The society lower in the gravity well loses hard.


Okay but can you do the same thing without nukes? Using more traditional things such as Depth Charges?

[GloatingSwine]

Cape Verde are...islands, so that doesn't make it any more coherent. I don't recall it being identified as such, though. The queen says she comes out to the veldt, which makes sense in context, but doesn't have anything to do with Cape Verde.


Specifically, Cape Verde is a set of islands the opposite side of the Atlantic from where Nakia was infiltrating the prison. The whole movie shows that Wakandans can go anywhere in the world extremely quickly. Ramonda met Namor on neutral ground to distract him. The location is in the onscreen text (Curral Velho, Cape Verde).

The map there would put Wakanda somewhere on the Turkwel river.

[lord_khaine]

assassinate every and any world leader it chooses with advanced stealth aircraft.


Thats not a very significant feat.
A man with a grudge managed to assasinate the Wakanda leader.
And as we also saw that only made the retaliation more furious.


Okay but can you do the same thing without nukes? Using more traditional things such as Depth Charges?

Of course you can. Well you possibly need a bigger bomb for the same size explosion.
But that also hardly matter when you can always resort to using nukes for it.

[Sapphire Guard]

Think I enjoyed this more than most of the MCU. Glad to see a conflict actually end in a peace agreement for once.

They are weirdly casual about killing US police, though, and the whole scene only happens because they didn't take one of their invisible jets for some reason, or have a pilot nearby.

The thing about the BP suit is it's almost completely invulnerable, so it's hard to have meaningful stakes in the fight scenes. Addressed that this time by keeping it offstage except against someone who actually could penetrate it. Probably only works this once, though.

Isn't the heart shaped herb poisonous to most people? Hard to mass produce.

Shuri is small, but her powers don't come from her physical size, so that doesn't matter.

As for succession crisis, the kingship is done by ritual combat, not blood. The kids can just fight and whoever wins takes the crown.

Wakanda was invaded with by aliens and Atlanteans. There's nothing they could upgrade to that would have helped. Namor and Thanos would have wrecked them anyway.

[Peelee]

Given that Namor is in the trailer, I'm not going to spoiler mere discussion of water.

Water doesn't *absorb* force as such. Water is dense and incompressible. This makes it hard for a bullet to overcome it, but it makes explosives very, very effective, because it conducts the shock wave of the explosion directly, whereas air compresses. This is why depth charges work so well.

The US has actually conducted underwater nuclear experiments. A large blast like this underwater will create a half-mile wide bubble with no water at all in it for about a second, transmitting a truly insane amount of force far, far beyond this from all that instant displacement. After about another second, the bubble is again gone as the insane water pressure at depth slams it all back. Both forces are staggeringly huge, and such an event can easily be detected worldwide as a result.

Land vs water would be roughly as unbalanced as an orbital society vs a planetbound one. The society lower in the gravity well loses hard.
Because humans are kinda sorta good at appreciating large numbers but bad at actually conceptualizing large numbers and we tend to group them to make smaller numbers (eg half a mile as a measure of distance is nice and small), a half-mile-wide bubble works out to roughly 9.63 billion cubic feet, or 72 billion gallons, weighing 600 billion pounds.

Or, for our more metric-minded friends, 272 million cubic meters or 272 billion liters weighing 272 billion kilograms (why can't we have nice things in the US, like metric?)

Even if we halve it and assume a half-bubble centered just below the surface (I'm not sure how the forces would actually disperse at that point but unless you want to look the math up and do it yourself, I'm happy to say we collectively don't care for this purpose and are simplifying just to make the point), that works out to 300 billion pounds or 136 billion kilos. Which I think we can all agree is an absolute ****ton of water. And all of this water was moved in one second, and then moved back the next second.

I'm going to take a moment of silence to respect the sheer insanity of the forces involved here. And let us all know that no, you do not want to be in the water when there is a nearby explosion in the water. You're not going to have a good time.

I actually had 90% of this post written where I showed all my work but I accidentally closed the tab and am on my phone and man, I'm not doing that again. That pissed me right off let me tell you.

[lord_khaine]

I dont think its a spoiler at this point Wakanda both have fought aliens and Atlantheans.
And its not true nothing would have helped.

Iron man grade suits would have helped.
Vision grade androids would have helped.

Hulk Buster Suits would likely have helped a lot.

[GloatingSwine]

I dont think its a spoiler at this point Wakanda both have fought aliens and Atlantheans.
And its not true nothing would have helped.

Iron man grade suits would have helped.
Vision grade androids would have helped.

Hulk Buster Suits would likely have helped a lot.

Yeah, but you only find out about things that would have helped in impossible-to-predict situations via hindsight and not everyone always agrees that that specific thing is the right way to address the capability once you know you need it.

Iron Man style individual combat suits would have helped, and that's why Shuri starts building some, but she can't force their acceptance on anyone especially not the prinicipal people who she mosts need to accept them (the military elite).

[Ramza00]

I dont think its a spoiler at this point Wakanda both have fought aliens and Atlantheans.
And its not true nothing would have helped.

Iron man grade suits would have helped.
Vision grade androids would have helped.

Hulk Buster Suits would likely have helped a lot.

No they would not, for this is a narrative and one is talking about tension. One has to have a story where things fail in order to keep the tension.

Especially a story with genocide in the background. In some stories people do everything right, and people still die.

[lord_khaine]

Its true that everything is more clear in hindsight.
So while they could have had stuff that would help against aliens and mermen, its fair they didnt have it.
A lot of places dont. (doesnt change its incorrect nothing would have helped).

Fury/Shield was prudent after the first Alien invasion though. Starting to try and prepare a counter.

[The Glyphstone]

Given that Namor is in the trailer, I'm not going to spoiler mere discussion of water.

Water doesn't *absorb* force as such. Water is dense and incompressible. This makes it hard for a bullet to overcome it, but it makes explosives very, very effective, because it conducts the shock wave of the explosion directly, whereas air compresses. This is why depth charges work so well.

The US has actually conducted underwater nuclear experiments. A large blast like this underwater will create a half-mile wide bubble with no water at all in it for about a second, transmitting a truly insane amount of force far, far beyond this from all that instant displacement. After about another second, the bubble is again gone as the insane water pressure at depth slams it all back. Both forces are staggeringly huge, and such an event can easily be detected worldwide as a result.

Land vs water would be roughly as unbalanced as an orbital society vs a planetbound one. The society lower in the gravity well loses hard.
.

I'd call land vs water more a case of mutually assured destruction myself. An orbital force is the next best thing to immune to counter attack from the surface, but a submerged civilization can turn that incompressibility of water into a weapon too. Nuclear depth charges will ruin their day, but retaliatory mega-tsunamis would be apocalyptically devastating to anyone with a coastline to speak of.

[Tyndmyr]

Okay but can you do the same thing without nukes? Using more traditional things such as Depth Charges?

Yes, though at a smaller scale. The incompressibility of water still makes them lethal at great distances, and they do not need to directly hit a submarine to sink it as a result. WW2 was the last time these things were used on a truly broad scale, but the same basic principles hold true.

If you pop a 250 pound bomb fifty feet away from someone, you're looking at over 2,000 psi. For a human, that's extreme overkill. As portrayed, the Atlanteans are tougher than average, but a pistol bullet is as lethal on them as anyone else, and a pistol bullet would not generally penetrate a submarine. So, I feel fairly safe estimating that depth charge hits that would kill a submarine would easily kill an Atlantean.

A British 290 lb depth charge was said to be a sure kill within 22 feet, and within twice that distance would inflict sufficient damage to force it to the surface crippled(a status that was pretty much as good as a kill). Modern day depth charges run 400 lbs, and while I can't easily find numbers on how far they are effective, I would assume that the added punch extends the blast radius somewhat.


Specifically, Cape Verde is a set of islands the opposite side of the Atlantic from where Nakia was infiltrating the prison. The whole movie shows that Wakandans can go anywhere in the world extremely quickly. Ramonda met Namor on neutral ground to distract him. The location is in the onscreen text (Curral Velho, Cape Verde).

The map there would put Wakanda somewhere on the Turkwel river.

Ah, well, fair enough. But that doesn't change that Wakanda is portrayed as fairly coastal in this rendition. Even if we're calling them massive rivers rather than the ocean, they are surely large enough to conflict with their far inland Africa portrayal earlier, and no such bodies of water were visible in Infinity War.

The Turkwel river is not nearly so large as portrayed, especially far inland...and is often completely seasonally dry. It does not seem as if they felt very constrained by real world geography. Which, for a fictional country is kind of fine, I only really object to the inconsistency.


I'd call land vs water more a case of mutually assured destruction myself. An orbital force is the next best thing to immune to counter attack from the surface, but a submerged civilization can turn that incompressibility of water into a weapon too. Nuclear depth charges will ruin their day, but retaliatory mega-tsunamis would be apocalyptically devastating to anyone with a coastline to speak of.

Sort of, but gravity and density works against them. Depth charges are effective, but submarines do not really use counter depth charges. They must rely on far more elaborate torpedoes....and the Atlanteans have no such tech. The most advanced tech we see them use is the water grenades and face masks. They fight with strength and spears, not ships and remotely piloted weaponry. They could attack the coast, particularly where it is undefended given the advantages of their water powers, but the ability to raid and murder isn't the ability to win a war.

Consider a regular attack aircraft flying at altitude. With the exception of Nemo, they can do nothing to it, and it can kill them at will. Anything well outside of spear shot is basically safe. Nemo himself can alter that fight a great deal, but someone like, say, War Machine would gut their army swiftly.

[Ramza00]

Side note on the subject of depth charges and related things.

The water grenades / Talokanil Water Bombs seem to break the conservation of mass rule we assume the MCU rules on. They are able to add more water to the room than the size of a grenade, making a skyscraper “flooded” full of water, when a few grenades were the inciting item and were able to be carried by a single man.

=====


Weapons of mass destruction is always an option, but I do not think the story would go there for it is not the type of story the MCU wants to tell. There are no heroes in such a story, only monsters.

But since MAD is always an option, and the goal, and the type of tech both sides possess I foresee a conflict being peace laden with a Wakanda and Talokanil alliance. What the surface world wants is Vibranium but it is a extremely high risk and high reward conflict for attempting to obtain undersea Vibranium will escalate so quickly. One can not “posses” it without quickly flirting with MAD, the whole oxygen problem for both sides prevents the creation of permanent bases, footholds, etc.

Especially if Talokanil and Wakanda form an alliance and they have a working Vibranium detector with Wakanda. Anytime a terrestrial land source gains Vibranium that is not part of the Wakanda inventor it will be so easy to do a reprisal preventing this foothold. Neither side can not possess what they want, without mass death, their ways of life are too far apart, and there will be quick escalation to MAD if someone tries to subvert the status quo.

[lord_khaine]

The water grenades / Talokanil Water Bombs seem to break the conservation of mass rule we assume the MCU rules on.

No we dont? that rule gets broken so often its barely a lose guideline. :smalltongue:

[Talakeal]

No we dont? that rule gets broken so often its barely a lose guideline. :smalltongue:

Pretty much.

Pym particles? Nano-Tech Iron Man Armor? The Incredible Hulk?

What conservation of mass?

[Peelee]

The Incredible Hulk?

Like plants, most of The Incredible Hulk's mass comes from the carbon dioxide in the air (hence why he is green). This also explains why storylines involving Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk and then being taken off planet are popular, as they are often cited as an environmentally friendly carbon reduction method.

[thatSeniorGuy]

Like plants, most of The Incredible Hulk's mass comes from the carbon dioxide in the air (hence why he is green). This also explains why storylines involving Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk and then being taken off planet are popular, as they are often cited as an environmentally friendly carbon reduction method.

... I'm 99% sure you're joking, but given how comics books are I can't entirely dismiss what you're saying.

[Sapphire Guard]

By far the most effective thing Wakanda has are those invisible jets, which is why they have to keep forgetting they exist.

It's always hard to tell how much superhero suits can be mass produced. What do they cost to produce and maintain, how much training do you need to pilot them, how many people will you lose to training accidents, how many androids will shake off their programming and become Ultron.

And Namor and Thanos would be able to take them anyway.

[lord_khaine]

Thanos in his prime fought an out of shape Thor, Captain America wielding Mjølner, and Iron Man at the same time.
So i find it excusable if your defense plan dont account for him.

I dont know how badass movie Namor is. But comic Namor goes toe to toe with the thing.
Who himself is strong/tough enough to survive all out brawls with Hulk and Thor.
So i also find it excusable if your defense plan dont account for handling him.

But their armies is another matter i think.

Something that also makes we wonder who there are actually left to handle Namor, or jerks like him.
Basically all the heavy hitters of the Avengers are dead, gone, or no longer really a combatant.

[Tyndmyr]

Thanos in his prime fought an out of shape Thor, Captain America wielding Mjølner, and Iron Man at the same time.
So i find it excusable if your defense plan dont account for him.

Yeah, most militaries cannot reasonably take on Thanos, though....they probably should have tried the nuke plan. Might not have worked, given stones and all the BS they invoke. That said, all of Infinity War happens over a very short time span, because teleportation is awesome. So, it kind of makes sense that conventional forces are largely irrelevant to it. Not much they can do outside of scrap with the army of minions. And that's portrayed, so...kinda fair, yknow?


I dont know how badass movie Namor is. But comic Namor goes toe to toe with the thing.
Who himself is strong/tough enough to survive all out brawls with Hulk and Thor.
So i also find it excusable if your defense plan dont account for handling him.

MCU Namor is quite powerful, albeit in a flying brick sort of way. Not portrayed as overly smart. And even strength wise, I would not say as powerful as Thanos. Thanos goes toe to toe with...pretty much everyone in the MCU. Often many at once. Namor can definitely chuck around, say, a train car sized mass, but so could Spiderman. Spiderman being a lot more clever, Spidey probably wins head to head v Namor in the MCU. Spidey definitely cannot solo Thanos.


Something that also makes we wonder who there are actually left to handle Namor, or jerks like him.
Basically all the heavy hitters of the Avengers are dead, gone, or no longer really a combatant.

We are kind of missing the unity of the early MCU. Despite having shown replacements for pretty much all the original Avengers, they haven't had a teamup movie or the like. The concept of the Avengers appears to have just...largely vanished post-Blip?

[Sapphire Guard]

MCU Namor's power depends on how much water is nearby, but he still beat BP after being put through a drying machine, although he broke out before the process was complete. So it's going to fluctuate a lot.

Shuri tried to move him to a desert and failed. He's more or less indestructable if there is water nearby.

[lord_khaine]

Yeah, most militaries cannot reasonably take on Thanos, though....they probably should have tried the nuke plan. Might not have worked, given stones and all the BS they invoke. That said, all of Infinity War happens over a very short time span, because teleportation is awesome. So, it kind of makes sense that conventional forces are largely irrelevant to it. Not much they can do outside of scrap with the army of minions. And that's portrayed, so...kinda fair, yknow?

I was thinking about a stoneless Thanos. With stones its GG.
While for the conventional forces. They were to a large degree reliant on foreign super heroes for that.


MCU Namor is quite powerful, albeit in a flying brick sort of way. Not portrayed as overly smart. And even strength wise, I would not say as powerful as Thanos. Thanos goes toe to toe with...pretty much everyone in the MCU. Often many at once. Namor can definitely chuck around, say, a train car sized mass, but so could Spiderman. Spiderman being a lot more clever, Spidey probably wins head to head v Namor in the MCU. Spidey definitely cannot solo Thanos.

That does seem about an order of magnitude stronger than Spiderman?
Who could catch a thrown car with a bit of effort.

[GloatingSwine]

That does seem about an order of magnitude stronger than Spiderman?
Who could catch a thrown car with a bit of effort.

Most things undersell Spider-Man. Catching cars is pretty easy for him.

[ecarden]

Most things undersell Spider-Man. Catching cars is pretty easy for him.

I mean, a lot of this assumes constant power levels/strength, which just...isn't the case in either the comics or the MCU? This is most obvious in stuff like 'what does peak human mean?' Does it mean basically olympic athlete, or does it mean can hold down a helicopter with his bare hands? And in some cases (Namor/Hulk for instance) it can be justified in universe. But mostly characters are exactly as strong as they need to be for the plot to work. Why can Captain America fight Loki for longer than a second? Because he's a main character and that's what the author wants.

[lord_khaine]

Most things undersell Spider-Man. Catching cars is pretty easy for him.

Not Movie Spiderman. Catching cars seems to be close to the upper limit of his ability.

[Tyndmyr]

I mean, a lot of this assumes constant power levels/strength, which just...isn't the case in either the comics or the MCU? This is most obvious in stuff like 'what does peak human mean?' Does it mean basically olympic athlete, or does it mean can hold down a helicopter with his bare hands? And in some cases (Namor/Hulk for instance) it can be justified in universe. But mostly characters are exactly as strong as they need to be for the plot to work. Why can Captain America fight Loki for longer than a second? Because he's a main character and that's what the author wants.

Yeah, that's most definitely a thing in the MCU. Gotta kind of judge characters by a broad average of what they do. Cap holding back Thanos at all shouldn't be doable, they're wildly out of scale with one another. But comics gonna comic.

On the average, Spidey is treated as really strong. He doesn't rely on it in the way that the Hulk does, he's very much about using his wits first, but examples like him holding the ferry together or holding back a collapsing building are pretty common to just about any movie he's in. It's definitely somewhere significantly north of car level, though he can also definitely lift a car. He usually will dodge attacks even if he could tank them, though, and is very agile. Namor is sort of similar in that he's also nimble, and both move in 3d space effectively. Namor might be slightly stronger, but he also might just rely on strength more. We don't see him do anything terribly clever. Of the two, Spidey is definitely more likely to pull his punches.

[Delicious Taffy]

We are kind of missing the unity of the early MCU. Despite having shown replacements for pretty much all the original Avengers, they haven't had a teamup movie or the like. The concept of the Avengers appears to have just...largely vanished post-Blip?
We have uhhhhhh, and ummmmm, and I think Spider-Man and Doctor Strange are still active, and then there's uhhhhhhhh.

I haven't seen anything newer than Loki, show-wise, so I guess the title characters of whatever's out right now? Things sorta fell apart after they beat Thanos, honestly. Like, there's probably a bunch of heros still, but I can name maybe 3 if Sam is still active.

[Tyndmyr]

We have uhhhhhh, and ummmmm, and I think Spider-Man and Doctor Strange are still active, and then there's uhhhhhhhh.

I haven't seen anything newer than Loki, show-wise, so I guess the title characters of whatever's out right now? Things sorta fell apart after they beat Thanos, honestly. Like, there's probably a bunch of heros still, but I can name maybe 3 if Sam is still active.

Given that Thor has been off doing GOTG stuff and does not appear to be active on Earth at present, let's see....

Sam, as Falconcap.
Bruce Banner, in theory. I guess She-Hulk might be handing off the mantle, but I didn't watch anything after the pilot, so I have no idea if Hulk is written out or not.
War Machine, I guess? He hasn't been super focal, but I guess in theory he's around.
Captain Marvel, albeit mostly in the "brief cameo to explain that I've been offplanet" sense.

Everyone has either been written out/replaced or gone their own way, pretty much.

Like, Ant-man is around, in theory, but he's always bit a bit of an outsider to the Avengers, and it appears that in his upcoming sequel, he's working with the cast of his previous solo movies, not the Avengers. Maybe it'll tie back in through Kang eventually?

[Dragonus45]

Given that Thor has been off doing GOTG stuff and does not appear to be active on Earth at present, let's see....

Sam, as Falconcap.
Bruce Banner, in theory. I guess She-Hulk might be handing off the mantle, but I didn't watch anything after the pilot, so I have no idea if Hulk is written out or not.
War Machine, I guess? He hasn't been super focal, but I guess in theory he's around.
Captain Marvel, albeit mostly in the "brief cameo to explain that I've been offplanet" sense.

Everyone has either been written out/replaced or gone their own way, pretty much.

Like, Ant-man is around, in theory, but he's always bit a bit of an outsider to the Avengers, and it appears that in his upcoming sequel, he's working with the cast of his previous solo movies, not the Avengers. Maybe it'll tie back in through Kang eventually?

Sam and Bucky are still doing their paramilitary buddy cop thing yea.

Bruce is not written out and actually is getting new plotlines opened up for him.
He only leaves for the duration of the She-Hulk plot and now he is back with Skaar in tow.

Rhodey has always been more of a secondary character to Stark's stuff and the actual replacement moving forward will probably be Riri if she tests well enough since Spider-Man's story turned out to be about him ultimately losing the safety net and position as Stark's successor he had had and Don Cheadle is getting old enough that a long term stint as an action star is unlikely. But he apparently will have a big role in Secret Wars so we will see.

Captain Marvel was never an original Avenger, she has been pretty clearly set up for this new iteration of the team more then anything else.

Yea, we are waiting on Kang to tie all this stuff together. The new MCU plan has been a disparate scattershot of ideas waiting for something to pin it all together, because ultimately Marvel is waiting to see what works.

[Wintermoot]

Given that Thor has been off doing GOTG stuff and does not appear to be active on Earth at present, let's see....

Sam, as Falconcap.
Bruce Banner, in theory. I guess She-Hulk might be handing off the mantle, but I didn't watch anything after the pilot, so I have no idea if Hulk is written out or not.
War Machine, I guess? He hasn't been super focal, but I guess in theory he's around.
Captain Marvel, albeit mostly in the "brief cameo to explain that I've been offplanet" sense.

Everyone has either been written out/replaced or gone their own way, pretty much.

Like, Ant-man is around, in theory, but he's always bit a bit of an outsider to the Avengers, and it appears that in his upcoming sequel, he's working with the cast of his previous solo movies, not the Avengers. Maybe it'll tie back in through Kang eventually?

How is any of this different than how the MCU has always been?

Prior to the first avengers you had Iron man doing two solo adventures, Thor briefly visiting earth then leaving again and Captain America in 1945 then waking up in current time. The connecting point was SHIELD which was the big power defending earth from threats foreign and domestic up until that point. They had a few super agents current (Black Widow and Hawkeye) and former (Antman and the Wasp in the 80s) and in process (Thunderbolt Ross's military program for recreating the super soldier process that birthed the Hulk)

Then the heroes got together to fight Loki and the Chitauri Invasion that really shook up the world (and Tony Stark) by showing that alien life exists and is hostile.

After that, we had another Iron Man solo adventure where he "hung up the tights" (for about 5 minutes), another thor adventure where he lost the ability to travel back to earth at the end (for about 5 minutes) and a captain america adventure where he DISMANTLED SHIELD revealing that it was hopeless corrupt from within and secretly evil all along.

Then we had the second avengers movie, which was the first time it was indicated that the heroes were still workign together as a team. Nothing in the three solo adventures between 1 and 2 signaled that. And we find out that Tony and Bruce have built a massive robot army to serve as a new protection element only to have it go evil and have to be destroyed. At the end of Avengers 2 we establish that Thor goes off world again, Iron man retires (again) and Cap and Black widow start a new team of avengers that includes Scarlet Witch, Vision, Falcon and War Machine.

Great. We never see any work done by this group until Captain America Civil War (Avengers 2.5) where this team is immediately dismantled and splits up with half the heroes being forced underground.

So then we have a couple years where presumedly Cap, Falcon, Widow and Scarlet Witch are doing hero stuff secretly and Iron Man, Rhodey and Vision are the entirity of America's accepted Avengers doign stuff with Thunderbolt Ross like building prisons and official superhero works. But, again, we don't really see that its just implied.

Then we have the big Thanos project of Infinity War and Endgame where... woof... the world is just destroyed for five years then has to rebuild (most of which, as expected, is glossed over)

So who do we have now?

Captain America and the Winter Soldier are still out there doing heroics both officially and unofficially.
SHIELD is back in action or near enough
Doctor Strange, Wong and his Hundreds of Wizards are taking a more active role in protecting the world,
Hulk is still doing science hero things, much more openly.
Rhodey is still working for the army and doing iron man things.
Wakanda has build outreach centers and are helping out in places
New Heroes are working quietly (Eternals, Shang Chi, Daredevil, She-Hulk, Spiderman, Ms Marvel etc)
Antman, based on the preview, has become a celebrity so presumedly he's doing hero work.
Hawk-guy is active sporadically when needed.

And we see, in the Shang Chi post credit scene, that they are working together sporadically when Wong, Captain Marvel and Hulk all meet holographically to discuss the 10 rings.

Rather than living in one club house, they are each working alone but keeping each other informed, the same way they did in the blip period when Black Widow was running the collaboration.

We know there are two new Avengers movies (Kang Dynasty and Secret War) coming up in 2024, so that will be the next time we see them all working together, which I would assume will be a collaboration using a lot of these new toys along with the remainder of the old toys.

I don't really see how they are in worse shape now than they were at any point between the prior collab movies honestly. Thor was ALWAYS off planet. Iron Man was always retired except when he wasn't. Sam has replaced Cap, Rhodey has replaced Tony, Hulk and Dr Strange are more prominant in their roles. *shrug*

[Dragonus45]

How is any of this different than how the MCU has always been?


Because previously they pretended to have a plan, so when they threw a lot of things at the wall to see what stuck they could say they meant it all along and a wider public not used to comic book backfill retcon chicanery ate it up like candy thinking there really was a master plan at work, because at bare minimum they had an upfront through line that started with "We are making the Avenger movie" and from there they built up Thanos for years as a clear endpoint. Now though, they have the budget and the platform to really stretch out and try new things and put out all these series half of which would have been better paced and more interesting as movies and they are still just tossing out to see what works but the cracks are showing and I mostly blame it on them feeling like they don't need to hide them anymore.

[Tyndmyr]

How is any of this different than how the MCU has always been?

Sure, arguably it has always been at least a little improv and slapdash. Early on, though, there were a relatively small number of established heroes.

It makes perfect sense that Hulk and Iron Man are not working together, because Hulk is in hiding early on. Cap is an ice cube, and Thor shows up from space. In every case, you have the sense that people notice the new development, and there are at least small nods to continuity. Hawkeye appears in Thor, for instance, and you've got all the SHIELD glue.

Everybody is getting together, and while it makes sense initially that they are not familiar, phase 1 has a very sound buildup towards the Avengers.

I'd argue that IM 3 and Thor 2 were...off a bit. A weak point before they again found their footing. Neither film fits in very well, and they are probably among the less favored films in the MCU, or at least, were until this latest batch. New hero introductions mostly worked around this time. Ant-Man has good reasons why he's sort of laying low, GotG are off in space, so that's solved.

The problem is that now we have a ton of characters for them to keep straight, and it feels as if "just ignore it" is the de facto answer. This is further complicated by the "we've always been here" setup of new powers. There's no reasonable way to explain the events of Eternals not attracting attention from other heroes. There's no reasonable way to explain everybody just ignoring Nemo and his underwater army.

Sure, we're willing to tacitly overlook TV shows like Inhumans that have yet another race of MCU superbeings that don't mesh well anywhere, but it feels as if the entire ball of plot has gotten overly convoluted and lacking in direction. The previous weak point was two directionless films. We're on eight films since Endgame, and Kang has only really gotten attention in a TV show.

[GloatingSwine]

The problem is that now we have a ton of characters for them to keep straight, and it feels as if "just ignore it" is the de facto answer. This is further complicated by the "we've always been here" setup of new powers. There's no reasonable way to explain the events of Eternals not attracting attention from other heroes. There's no reasonable way to explain everybody just ignoring Nemo and his underwater army.

They're kinda at the point of critical mass where they have to just ignore it otherwise every title has to spend more time explaining why such-and-such isn't turning up than it does on its own plot.

Ignoring the problem is how the comics have handled it for decades.

[Tyndmyr]

It's mostly an issue with every plot being a "save the world" type thing.

Nobody really has an issue with the more street level comics, or adventures like Strange's where other heroes have no real way to participate.

Big ol' world threatening apocalypses are harder to justify. Both in comics and on screen, some comics are definitely frigging crazy, no argument there.

[Giggling Ghast]

I saw this today. My brother was surprised to hear me rate it at 6.5/10. I thought it was enjoyable and I particularly applaud the new BP design, but I had some niggling issues with the plot and the implications of Talokan from a worldbuilding perspective.

For instance, if Talokan has always been around, then wouldn’t the city have been affected by Thanos’ Snap like the rest of universe? Why didn’t the erasure of half their population prompt Namor to come to the surface to ask “Why the heck did half my people just turn into dust?”

Also, regarding the death of the Queen, I feel like that could have been done a little better. She was only in the water for a few minutes; it feels like that was the world’s fastest drowning. Also, Wakanda lacks the technology to bring back a recent drowning victim?

On a final note, Martin Freeman’s Agent Ross could have been cut down to a single scene without losing anything, and Riri Williams was either poorly-cast or poorly-written because that was a spectacularly unimpressive debut.

[Ranxerox]

For instance, if Talokan has always been around, then wouldn’t the city have been affected by Thanos’ Snap like the rest of universe? Why didn’t the erasure of half their population prompt Namor to come to the surface to ask “Why the heck did half my people just turn into dust?”


Maybe, Namor was dusted and the remaining people of Talokan were too busy with the effects of losing him and half their population to even wonder about what the people on the surface were doing.

Despite Thanos' Snap being a huge thing, people aren't going just ask everyone they meet how they spent the Blip. So, we the fans need to either stop asking these questions or just get use to having to supply our own explanations, like the one that I just gave to you.

[Psyren]

We are kind of missing the unity of the early MCU. Despite having shown replacements for pretty much all the original Avengers, they haven't had a teamup movie or the like. The concept of the Avengers appears to have just...largely vanished post-Blip?

There's no unifying meta-threat yet. The Infinity Stones were that for Phase 1, which later got transitioned to the guy most successful at collecting them (Thanos). Now they are no more and there's nothing to "avenge."

I think Quantamania will be our first glimpse at the next such threat. (Well, Loki kind of was, but it also wasn't.)

[Deadkitten]

There's no unifying meta-threat yet. The Infinity Stones were that for Phase 1, which later got transitioned to the guy most successful at collecting them (Thanos). Now they are no more and there's nothing to "avenge."

I think Quantamania will be our first glimpse at the next such threat. (Well, Loki kind of was, but it also wasn't.)

I agree. I'm not sold on kang being the new Thanos. I'm kinda leaning towards them just giving him the Ultron treatment and he is gone after the next avengers or gets sidelined to occasional shenanigans

[M1982]

I don't like Shuri as the new Black Panther, even putting all my issues with her actress aside that I won't elaborate on here. Physically, she's nowhere near ready for the role; she's as skinny as a twig, she doesn't look at all believable in melee, her suit is lame (come on, you're the gadget queen, couldn't you add one new feature to it?) and her fighting style doesn't incorporate any kind of cool agility or techniques. And for the role itself, she takes the power for all the wrong reasons - desire for revenge, lack of respect for the spiritual aspects, and worst of all, putting herself at colossal risk with an untested herb despite being the only one with a prayer of synthesizing more of it in the whole kingdom. And don't get me started on her getting Killmonger's spiritual endorsement of all people, which to me suggests her tenure won't be long, or the fact that Wakanda now has a succession crisis in the making if she ever ends up having children of her own (maybe her fake herb will nip that in the bud, no pun intended, by making her sterile though.) Oh wait, they might have one anyway, since I guess M'Baku is running unopposed for the throne now too? What if he has kids? I can't help but think about this stuff!

Actually I don't see a problem here. Or at least don't see how the problem got any bigger. There whole succession system seems to be based on any member of a tribe leader family being allowed to fight for the right to become king on every royal succession. It's more a matter of having been diplomatically successful so that no other eligible claimant actually steps forward to challenge your heir and/or having your heir being trained well enough to beat the snot out of any challenger.

With the whole Killmonger incident it seems even worse, as obviously that's not even limited to just the occasion of a succession, but rather any eligible claimant can step forward to challenge the living reigning king at any time?

So T'challa junior, any potential offspring of Shuri and any potential offspring of M'Baku (whether or not he has a stint as reigning king) and any yet unknown heir of any other tribe leader could duke it out at any time totally independent of Shuri's deeds


In Wakanda's defense, I think they fared better than most conventional militaries would have against the likes of the Children of Thanos or a race of aquatic supersoldiers with seemingly infinite ordnance.

The super powered children? Maybe.

Against the actual army they were leading definitely not. Warmachine was way more effective by essentially being a small version of what a conventional military would unleash on them.

Also against the aquatic supersoldiers the few Spec Ops on the oil rig seemed better at killing them than the Wakandians. They were overwhelmed due to being only a dozen or so strong and grossly outnumbered, but they sold themselves more effectively than then Wakandans

[KillianHawkeye]

Re: Wakandan Succession

Pretty sure each of the 5 or 6 tribes has their own "royal family", which is why there is a succession challenge ritual at all. Any member of the Wakandan nobility seems to be allowed to challenge, it's just seen as a mere formality in Black Panther 1 due to everyone being happy with the status quo which has seemingly been in place for so long.

The most curious thing to me is that the throne reverted to Queen Ramunda after T'challa's death rather than someone new taking the throne. I suppose it may have been out of respect for T'challa that no one at all took the challenge? They don't really go into it in the film, but that makes enough sense to me, I guess.

I disagree that the challenge can happen at any time, though. Everyone was against Killmonger making a late challenge in the first film. It was only T'challa overruling them that allowed the second challenge to take place, because he felt Killmonger deserved it as a lost heir or whatever. It didn't seem to be a normal practice. So M'Baku is probably going to stay King until he dies or retires, I'd guess.

[M1982]

Good point about Killmonger's challenge to a reigning monarch being an exception of the general rule

[Trafalgar]

Re: Wakandan Succession

Pretty sure each of the 5 or 6 tribes has their own "royal family", which is why there is a succession challenge ritual at all. Any member of the Wakandan nobility seems to be allowed to challenge, it's just seen as a mere formality in Black Panther 1 due to everyone being happy with the status quo which has seemingly been in place for so long.

The most curious thing to me is that the throne reverted to Queen Ramunda after T'challa's death rather than someone new taking the throne. I suppose it may have been out of respect for T'challa that no one at all took the challenge? They don't really go into it in the film, but that makes enough sense to me, I guess.

I disagree that the challenge can happen at any time, though. Everyone was against Killmonger making a late challenge in the first film. It was only T'challa overruling them that allowed the second challenge to take place, because he felt Killmonger deserved it as a lost heir or whatever. It didn't seem to be a normal practice. So M'Baku is probably going to stay King until he dies or retires, I'd guess.

I like to think that there was a challenge but Queen Ramunda kicked their ass.

[Ramza00]

Re: Wakandan Succession

Pretty sure each of the 5 or 6 tribes has their own "royal family", which is why there is a succession challenge ritual at all. Any member of the Wakandan nobility seems to be allowed to challenge, it's just seen as a mere formality in Black Panther 1 due to everyone being happy with the status quo which has seemingly been in place for so long.

The most curious thing to me is that the throne reverted to Queen Ramunda after T'challa's death rather than someone new taking the throne. I suppose it may have been out of respect for T'challa that no one at all took the challenge? They don't really go into it in the film, but that makes enough sense to me, I guess.

I disagree that the challenge can happen at any time, though. Everyone was against Killmonger making a late challenge in the first film. It was only T'challa overruling them that allowed the second challenge to take place, because he felt Killmonger deserved it as a lost heir or whatever. It didn't seem to be a normal practice. So M'Baku is probably going to stay King until he dies or retires, I'd guess.

We do not know how the succession worked during the Blip when T'Challa was gone / dead for 5 years. Maybe we will learn more in the Disney plus show, or maybe we never learned what happened over the last 6 years of Wakanda MCU time.

[Wintermoot]

We do not know how the succession worked during the Blip when T'Challa was gone / dead for 5 years. Maybe we will learn more in the Disney plus show, or maybe we never learned what happened over the last 6 years of Wakanda MCU time.

I, for one, look forward to the flashback scene were we see Angela Bassett beating the crap out of M'baku to the stunned looks of awe around the waterfall.

[Kyberwulf]

I watched this movie. All together it wasn't bad. I agree it felt messy. I almost feel as though this could have been a Disney + series. It had a lot going on in it.

One question I have to ask. What are the Doro Malaje? I mean half the time they seem to be semi supersoldiers. M'Baku seems to take somee serious damage and just shrug it off. I am asking if there is an in universe reason why? Part of me wants to say that is because they have magical metal in their close that helps them be super human.

[Giggling Ghast]

The Dora Milaje are the personal guard of the Black Panther, though in practice they function more like Wakanda’s special forces.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Milaje

M’Baku in the comics has superhuman strength and durability as a result of consuming a sacred white gorilla’s flesh. In the MCU, he’s just a very tough dude, though I would imagine his people might gain some enhanced strength from their worship of Hanuman, the god of the Jabari tribe.

[Palanan]

Watched this the first night it was available on Disney+. And I can’t remember the last time I was so glad I didn’t pay to see a movie in the theater.

—Well, except for Eternals. And Black Widow. And Dr. Strange 2. And Love & Thunder. Just about all of the recent batch, really.

Except those were simply unengaging and poorly conceived. This movie was a bitterly frustrating experience on a personal level—all the more so for having enjoyed the first Black Panther so much, and for having waited so long to see more of Wakanda and its people.

Except we didn’t.



With the exception of a quaint riverside scene or two, we saw nothing more of Wakanda than we did in the first movie—and in fact we saw a good deal less in this one. The first movie gave us some truly spectacular vistas, powerfully evoking the beauty and strength of the land itself. But here there’s only a token nod, in a scene which is a direct copy of a longer and more effective sequence from the first movie.

Otherwise, we only get a few city scenes and a brief glimpse of the Jabari lands, and a campfire on a beach at night. And there’s even less attention to the tribes of Wakanda, with generic happy citizens that give no real sense of the cultural diversity of the Wakandan nation. Despite having the name of the country in its title, there’s a disappointing lack of Wakanda in the movie itself.


Funeral and Tribute

While the opening funeral ceremony was touching, it felt too brief compared to the significance of the character and the real-world legacy of the actor. I would have liked to see how each of the tribes honored T’Challa in their own way—each tribe with their own processions, memorials, tributes, rituals.

It also would have been nice to see how T’Challa was honored as head of state on the international scene. A glimpse of a ceremony at one of his outreach centers, or even just a symbol of remembrance would have added a great deal—to say nothing of a few words from a speech by a young person whose life was changed by T’Challa’s decisions. Sadly we saw nothing like this.


United Nations

The scene at the UN really turned me off, because it felt like a petty and mean-spirited swipe at the international community. It flies in the face of the attitude T’Challa was aiming for, which was sharing through humility. Instead the scene is contrived and nothing like an actual UN meeting, and exists only to point a finger of blame.

Anyone who’s been paying attention to Africa over the past ten or fifteen years knows exactly which large country has been throwing its money and weight around—and this would be the one nation which would be most feverishly searching for vibranium, and whose soldiers Wakanda would be most likely to capture. But there’s not a trace of this here, and instead we have a gratuitous jab at nations based on their past rather than present involvement. It felt spiteful and unnecessary, and for me it put an ugly tinge on the rest of the movie.


Casual Murder Without Consequences

This really bothered me. There was a substantial body count on the streets of Cambridge, but no one seemed to care.

During the prolonged, unnecessary chase scene (another echo of the first movie) the local police set up a roadblock—which Riri firebombs in a strafing run, causing a tremendous explosion that sweeps away the patrol cars in an all-consuming fireball. There’s no way that some of those police officers weren’t killed or severely burned. But like a similar scene from the most recent Batman, we’re apparently not supposed to care about the ordinary people our “heroes” just casually killed.

And right after, during the fight on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge, one of Namor’s people quickly cuts through several more police officers, who are never again acknowledged in any way. There isn’t so much as a regretful line from Shuri about civilian casualties, much less Riri—and there’s never a word about accountability for anyone involved.


Shuri

In the first movie I found her downright irritating, the bratty little sister, and during Infinity War she was a bit of a smarmy know-it-all. She’s grown some since then—as M’Baku acknowledged in the best line of the movie—and she’s set up to be an empathetic character. I don’t dislike her; but I don’t feel much of anything else for her, and I’m not especially motivated to root for her.

I’m also still not convinced she’s the best choice either for Black Panther or the next ruler of Wakanda, and the movie itself punts on a key aspect of claiming the throne. The ending felt more like a cheap gimmick than a meaningful setup for another movie—and while I like M’Baku, I’m not sure what he’s hoping to accomplish here, unless it turns out he’s Wakanda’s biggest practical joker.

As for Shuri’s path forward, I just don’t care. I was completely checked out long before the ridiculous giant top-heavy boat appeared (seriously, that thing should’ve capsized with the first ankle-high wave) and her final fight with Namor went from silly to absurd, when she takes a vibranium spear to the gut and then walks it off.

Also, with all the fighting of mer-people in the open air, no one thinks to just pull off their breathing masks? It's hard to care when so much nonsense is flying around.


Riri

In contrast to Shuri, there’s just not much to like about Riri. When we meet her she’s helping other students cheat and getting paid for it. This is outright academic dishonesty, which is a serious problem in the real world, and casually glorifying it here does no one any favors. Riri should be put on probation or expelled for what she’s doing.

And there’s no indication that she has any trace of heroism to her. When Peter Parker was starting out, he was helping people wherever he could, even dressed in his goofy red onesie. Riri is a super-genius tech prodigy who can actually freakin’ fly, but there’s not a word of her using her gifts to help anyone; she’s just boasting about her quantum computer and the YouTube channel that follows her. She seems to have no real personality apart from being extremely full of her own accomplishments. She’s unethical, uninteresting and not really likable, and I found nothing to draw me to the character.

As for her super-suit during the final battle, it looked too goofy for me to take it seriously. Most likely this was drawing on a different aesthetic for power armor, but it didn’t speak to me. Presumably she’ll have a different design for the Ironheart series.

Speaking of which, I’d been mildly looking forward to that, but after this introduction to the character I won’t be in a hurry to watch it. Now that Armor Wars will be a movie instead, that’s two fewer Marvel series for me to care about on Disney+.


Nakia

I’d been strongly rooting for her to be the next Black Panther, since she has experience dealing with the outside world tempered with compassion for many of its people. She’s also a much more interesting character to me, torn between her love for T’Challa and all she wants to do outside Wakanda. I’m not sure what the real-world dynamics were for favoring Letitia over Lupita, but I found Nakia’s second-rank status in this movie to be one more deep disappointment. The character we met in the first movie really deserved better.

Hand it to Nakia, though, for hiding her son in plain sight—among overlooked and abandoned children, in a country the rest of the world tries to forget whenever possible. It’s quietly brilliant, and allows Nakia to do some real good at the same time. Doing good is more of an abstraction for Shuri, and it doesn’t even factor for Riri, but for Nakia it’s deeply personal and central to her life and being. With the possible exception of M’Baku, there’s no one worthier of being Black Panther.


Okoye

She was amazing in the first movie—a character in soul-rending conflict and pain, thoroughly admirable for her devotion, her honor and her conscience.

But here she’s treated very badly for something that was no fault of her own—and I refuse to believe that Wakanda, which has its own satellite fleet and can likely penetrate any security system on Earth, suddenly and conveniently couldn’t access a single video to corroborate what Okoye was saying. Even a bodycam from a casually murdered and unacknowledged cop could have given valuable evidence, but somehow Wakanda can’t get that?

Even without that, this is Okoye, and her word should mean something. That it suddenly doesn’t speaks very poorly of the Queen, the Council, and Wakanda in general.


M’Baku

As much as I respected Chadwick Boseman, for me the true hero of the first movie is M’Baku, because he’s the one that made a heroic choice. In the first movie he was a force of nature and a power player from start to finish, and he didn’t disappoint in Infinity War.

But here M’Baku is almost reduced to a buffoon, whose role for most of the movie is to show how awesome Shuri is by contrast. That may serve a purpose in the movie as a whole, but it’s hardly respectful to M’Baku as a character. He deserved so much more.


That CIA Guy We’ve Seen Before

What exactly is Agent Ross doing here? In the first movie he was brave, loyal, dedicated and risked his life on the front lines to help stop a world war. (And then he sort of vanished, but still.)

Here he’s more of an afterthought, feeding the Wakandans a few dribbles of information before he’s handcuffed by his ex-wife. And the “twist” of Valentina being his ex-wife is utterly idiotic and contrived, exactly the sort of needless connection that just calls attention to itself. It smacks of being cutesy, and only further diminishes Ross—to say nothing of the ugly comment made later at his expense.


Namor

Utterly hated him from start to finish. He and his people murdered indiscriminately and without provocation, and he’s been planning a war for centuries without any real attempt to find an alternative. He’s supposed to be the “bad guy with a point,” but for reasons we can’t discuss here it really isn’t. Namor is just a brutal hypocrite who murders unarmed civilians, condones the elimination of witnesses and threatens an entire peaceful nation with slaughter and subjugation. His last-minute alliance with Shuri isn’t convincing in the slightest, and I have zero interest in seeing him in anything else.

Also, I get they wanted to distinguish his realm from the over-CGI’d monstrosity of Atlantis in Aquaman, but they failed utterly with the design and with basic marine science. Most of Namor’s supposedly glorious undersea realm looked grubby, silty and unimaginative, and it’s clear the director didn’t feel the need to listen to anyone with actual experience in marine ecology. A Caribbean coral reef inhabited by actual merfolk could have been a transcendent wonderland of color and delight, but instead we get…what, exactly? I couldn’t even tell, but it was awful.



This movie isn’t just a disappointment; it feels like a door slammed in my face. In the first movie, I felt like I was being welcomed wholeheartedly into a marvelous new world. But with this movie…I’ll just say I don’t feel that. Much the opposite.

Ever since the Wakanda series was announced, I’ve been eagerly looking forward to it, hoping to explore more of Wakanda’s cultures and biomes. Right now the series is more of a pipe dream than anything, and it’ll be years before it hits Disney+, if ever.

But I no longer care. I’m done with this director and done with Wakanda.

[ecarden]

So, I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but not on Okoye. Her job is to protect the royal family, at which she has singularly failed at that point. It's not that she's disbelieved, it's that whether or not she could win is irrelevant. She took the crown princess into danger (if I'm recalling correctly, directly against orders from the queen) and then failed to protect her. Being fired for that is harsh, but not unreasonable.

[Dienekes]

I was amused watching it, that for a movie that actually involves itself quite a lot with the ideas of sovereignty, ownership, protecting borders and resources the Wakandans do not give a single burning crap about anyone's except their own.

Like the Avengers get away with it mostly because the movies just don't pay attention to it / it could be handwaved away with SHIELD being some sort of international group given access. And after SHIELD falls Avengers just carries on, at least until it suddenly does become a big deal with Civil War. But then, the fallout from that directly interacts with the rest of that movie along with basically everything until Endgame.

This brings up the concepts of sovereignty directly. Straight into the audience's face. And then has their main cast completely ignore it when convenient and kinda sorta pulling covert ops and potential kidnappings on foreign soil. Which is... not a great look.

Now what gets interesting is how this interacts with the show going on. They seem to be taking the idea that T'Challa's attempts at progressive peaceful trade and monetary based interference is in the process of failing. Possibly with the argument that government bodies are inherently selfish, resource consuming, and destructive. And you know. Fair enough. And there's interesting ways to go from that standpoint. I feel the easy kinda boring meaningless way is to completely disregard all the wrongs of Wakanda (as this movie mostly does) and just wag their fingers at everyone else. Or they can analyze how Wakanda is complicit with the various systems of international power, acting basically like any other hegemony throwing their weight around. Which could be interesting, but seems like it would be more work and would probably require adding nuance to Madame Not Hydra.

Though I will admit, I'm actually more interested in De Fontaine as a potential villain than Kang. Sure, she seems poised to slot into generic evil shady government figure, and may be some skrull or something with Secret Invasion, which would be disappointing but, ehh, I'll just say that twist is not without precedent. But I'm curious if they can make another normie threat. I quite liked Zemo, I'll be interested if they can do that again.

[TeChameleon]

So, just watched the movie, and... hmm.

* As a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, I think it was serviceable, and I'm impressed that they managed to sneak what looked to be some genuinely heartfelt stuff through the usual soulless Hollywood meatgrinder.

* Letitia Wright looked like she was struggling a bit to carry the emotional weight of the movie, but I think a lot of that was her being hobbled a bit by the script- the emotional whiplash through what felt like some weird abortive form of the five stages of grief was just too abrupt to be carried off convincingly by even the most talented actor.

* Both Wakanda and Atlantis (I don't care, I struggle to remember even approximately what name they substituted for it) suffered from what I call created-world-abbreviation, where they had to try and make us care about not one, but two separate cultures that have no direct real-world equivalent in less than three hours, so we get happy generic children playing while wearing traditional garb and so forth. Didn't really work, had trouble caring about either much, even though I kind of wanted to.

** As others have stated, the random murder of extras felt weird and wrong.

* Namor. Namor, Namor, Namor. This is where the movie really fell apart for me. Ergh, not sure how to start...

** Why no widows-peak or angry-Spock-eyebrows? If you're going to include his stupid little ankle-wings, you may as well include all of his 'classic' look. And I haaaaaaaaaaaaated that douchey little chinstrap he had going on.

** A lot of the Maya stuff looked somewhere between ludicrous and idiotic underwater. Where the hell did they even get those feathers from? And loose robes while swimming? Uh..? Would it really have been that hard to preserve the general aesthetic while making it even marginally practical underwater? Although I did like the touch of having some kids playing ulama (pitz?) that we saw briefly when Namor was showing Shuri around.

** Speaking of Maya... making Namor Maya while keeping a lot of his comic trappings rendered the character kind of incoherent. Him yelling "Imperius Rex!" ended up having a Mesoamerican character randomly shouting in (mangled) Latin. Having him take his name from (mangled) Spanish for 'no love' is nonsense- where did he learn Spanish?, and having him be set up as immortal god-king is bizarre. It changes his motivation from 'I must protect my people' to 'I have a xenophobic grudge based on stories that I heard as a child and have nursed it to rabid raving hatred over the course of five hundred years with a grand total of one shown interaction with the surface world prior to the movie'.

** His magic spear, that could kill (vibranium?) airplanes with the flimsy excuse of being 'raw vibranium'. If 'raw' vibranium could slice right through processed(?) vibranium, why not use that with all your weapons? Or at least edge/tip them with it?

** This is mostly a personal preference thing, but having Namor be so speedy and nimble in combat felt... odd. Comics-Namor is tanky as all get-out, and prefers to just walk/fly through blasts and shots. He's really not much of a dodger.

** Namor's characterization felt inconsistent, with only one unifying touchpoint. His jumping from wanting to ally with Wakanda (to murder the surface world) to psychotic rage that Wakanda had dared to act to rescue a member of their royal family (so he decided to murder that specific bit of the surface world), to grudgingly allying with Wakanda at the end in a Machiavellian scheme that, long-term, Wakanda would be isolated and turn to them as allies (to murder the surface world) was sort of jarring. Especially since he really hadn't shown much indication of being clever prior to that point.

** Speaking of inconsistent... why the heck did Namor show up in Wakanda, murder a bunch of people (including the Queen) and then just... leave? He clearly had the upper hand at that point, already wanted to murder everyone, and was in a prime position to do so. And then he just wandered off after making vague threats and telling Shuri that she was the queen now. What.

Going back to other stuff...

* With how isolated Atlantis was supposed to have been, where on Earth did they get the breathing masks from? Especially in the 16th Century? And how did they do any kind of metallurgy? And how did they maintain genetic diversity with a starting pool of what looked like less than 20 people?

* Did... did the Atlanteans sink the piece of land they started from? Because their variant of the heart-shaped herb was growing on land, in 'vibranium-rich soil' (and then it was growing in salt water?). Then all of a sudden their vibranium mound (vein, whatever it was supposed to be) was deep in the Atlantic. The geography in this film hurts my brain, with characters zipping back and forth across the Atlantic like they were splashing through a puddle on the sidewalk and major landmarks wandering around like they'd gotten lost at a convention.

* With the Midnight Angel suits... I kept thinking the Predator had wandered into this movie by accident. Potentially neat concept, unfortunate design.

* Riri was kind of disappointing- it really felt like we could have gotten a 'Science Sisters' to equal the Banner-Stark Science Bros if she'd been given a bit more screentime with Shuri. Instead she was just sort of... there. And then she left, despite being all excited about being 'recruited' earlier.

* How did the Contessa bug the beads, exactly? They're beads. It's not like there were internal electronics (at least that non-Wakandan science could access) she could slide a transmitter into.

* T'Challa, son of T'Challa felt both clever and lazy at the same time. It lets later screenwriters timeskip a little, and all of a sudden we have T'Challa the Black Panther again.

Overall, the slower, more contemplative pacing was good for a lot of things, but also let a lot of the cracks show through, and Namor was a weirdly garbled-feeling villain, with his 'more complex' origins not bearing up under scrutiny (at least as presented). And Shuri's plan at the end was dumb.

[GloatingSwine]

So, just watched the movie, and... hmm.


* How did the Contessa bug the beads, exactly? They're beads. It's not like there were internal electronics (at least that non-Wakandan science could access) she could slide a transmitter into.


Alien science. Even bet that she's a Skrull. In fact I think it's reasonable to assume that everyone Ross speaks to in person in his scenes is a Skrull and if he hadn't been sprung at the end of the movie he'd be replaced as well.

Basically all his scenes after the first are MCU tax to set up Secret Invasion.

[Talakeal]

It's my understanding from the comics that raw vibranium is stronger but a lot less stable, and once it absorbs too much kinetic energy it will simply explode.

Also, I would hazard a guess that the Eternal or one of Marvels other "ancient aliens" are to blame for any of their anachronistic technology.

[Trafalgar]

Has surviving being impaled through the stomach become a Disney thing?

Shuri survived being impaled.
Reva survived being impaled twice.
Tony Stark survived being impaled.
Kylo Ren survived being impaled.

Are there others I have forgotten?

[TeChameleon]

It's my understanding from the comics that raw vibranium is stronger but a lot less stable, and once it absorbs too much kinetic energy it will simply explode.
... from where I sit, that sounds like an argument in favour of using it, at least for projectiles.


Has surviving being impaled through the stomach become a Disney thing?

Shuri survived being impaled.
Reva survived being impaled twice.
Tony Stark survived being impaled.
Kylo Ren survived being impaled.

Are there others I have forgotten?
Not sure that's a Disney thing, necessarily- it really feels like the modern variant on the old 'shot in the shoulder' injury, right down to the quietly ignoring all the various hideous complications.
One thing I forgot in my various ramblings was my utter disappointment that Namor didn't use any of the enormous, stupid-looking monsters that were his stock-in-trade for most of the Silver Age. Frankly, a couple of url=https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Giganto_(Atlantean_Beast)]Gigantos[/url] could have gone a long way towards making the Atlanteans a more credible threat, given that one of them can facetank a direct nuclear strike. But noooo, the magic fish-people had to be 'realistic' :smallannoyed:

As an aside, one thing I did like was Tenoch Huerta repeatedly striking Namor's signature 'one leg straight, one leg bent' hovering pose. Even the kid playing lil' Namor did it.

[Kyberwulf]

Well, the problem with using the stuff as projectiles. Is they don't want any of the magic metal to fall into anyone else's hands.

[gbaji]

Not Movie Spiderman. Catching cars seems to be close to the upper limit of his ability.

That's comic book Spidey too. Some of the portrayals have some serious variation in his strength level. He's "strong", and clearly in the "super human" level. But nowhere near Thor/Thing/Hulk/Namor levels of strength.


On the average, Spidey is treated as really strong. He doesn't rely on it in the way that the Hulk does, he's very much about using his wits first, but examples like him holding the ferry together or holding back a collapsing building are pretty common to just about any movie he's in. It's definitely somewhere significantly north of car level, though he can also definitely lift a car. He usually will dodge attacks even if he could tank them, though, and is very agile. Namor is sort of similar in that he's also nimble, and both move in 3d space effectively. Namor might be slightly stronger, but he also might just rely on strength more. We don't see him do anything terribly clever. Of the two, Spidey is definitely more likely to pull his punches.

Again. There's "really strong", as in, if you punch a normal person with full strength, your fist will go right through them. That's where Spider Man is. Then there's "absurdly strong", as in, if you punch a building with full strength, you'll pulverize said building and kill everyone in it. That's where the "top hitters" in the Marvel Universe are. The Hulk once held up a freaking mountain (yeah, just don't think too hard about it though). Spider Man is significantly stronger than a normal human (I'd say "can pick up a car and toss it a short distance" is accurate), but his main power is his speed and agility and spider sense that allows him to just not get hit by things.


I do think the Namor in the film was a significant departure from the comic book version, and not all in good ways. I suppose they needed to differentiate him from Aquaman. It also felt like they really really really felt the need to drum up yet another "indigenous people/victims who've grown powerful in secret" bit, so as to bookend Wakanda itself. But then kinda took a left turn, then another, then fell into a dump truck, and more or less lost the whole point they were going after.

The cosmetic stuff, being more nimble than he should have been, etc, were annoying, but I could get past that. And I honestly didn't initially have an issue with the whole "I'm at war with the surface world" bit either. That's actually pretty accurate to the original Namor, as introduced back in the day (he was more or less the aquatic version of the freaking Mole Man if you stop and think about it). It's the direction they took with it after that point that was... well... weird. There was rationalization after rationalization given, but when you got to the end, none of it really made any sense. We're left not quite being sure of the motivation for their actions. Do they want to remain hidden and fear discovery? Then why do any of what they did? They could have easily sabotaged the deep sea thingie, and just moved on, and none would have been the wiser. The entire conflict was completely unnecessary.

Which leaves us with: They really want to come onto the world stage and be a presense. In which case, they did it kinda exactly "wrong". Are the concerned because they are vulnerable to attack? They suggest that's not the case, but then seem super worried if anyone even knows of their existence. If they really are that powerful, then why not do exactly what the Wakandan's did, just laying claim to all Vibranium on the ocean floor instead? If they wanted to openly reveal themselves, that is. As it is, his actions really make zero sense.

And that's before we get into questions about population growth rates starting from a relatively small tribe of folks in the 1500s to today, yet claiming he had more soldiers in his army than Wakanda had blades of grass. Then also seeming to be able to sense anything and everything going on everywhere in the worlds oceans, but we never seem them traveling via any means other than hitching rides on whales. It's implied (sorta) that having access to vibranium some how gives them great power, but we're not shown *how*. Unlike Wakanda, we're not shown that they have any technological capabilities, except when we see advanced tech breathing masks and water bomb thingies (and apparently sufficient metalurgical abilities to work vibranium). It's a bit disjointed. Like they really wanted to show these people being very "one with nature", but also needed them to have special weapons and tech, so they just kinda punted?

Although, to be fair, we're kinda left with the same gaps with Wakanda anyway. We're shown super tech, and buildings, and fllying vessels, and it's all waved away with "vibranium" as the explanation. But, uh, not everything is made out of vibranium, right? I mean, the buildings are presumably made from normal materials, like steel, aluminium, plastics, etc. Where is the industry they would need to make this stuff? Where are the mines? The foundaries? The factories? We're supposed to believe that it's beautiful lush natural lands, and high tech buildings, living in harmony, but nothing exists in between? Er... It's a very "first world, I drive my electric car to the organic market, while wearing modern fabricated clothing, and listening to music on my iphone, with ear buds, all while clapping myself on the back for being so eco friendly or something". Um... You get that this stuff all comes at a cost of the "dirty" bits being offshored somewhere else, right?

But Wakanda isn't presented as offshoring its industry. Again though, to be even more fair, we could say the same thing about every high tech/magic civilization in the MCU (well, or a lot of made up universes). We saw the same sort of thing with Asgard as well. So I get the hand-wave bits. Kinda. But if you're actually making a point about a civilization somehow being "better" because they live in greater hamony or something, that's the kind of hand waving that does bother me a bit.


It's mostly an issue with every plot being a "save the world" type thing.

Nobody really has an issue with the more street level comics, or adventures like Strange's where other heroes have no real way to participate.

Big ol' world threatening apocalypses are harder to justify. Both in comics and on screen, some comics are definitely frigging crazy, no argument there.

Eh. Have there really been any huge "save the world" stories in this phase? It's all been much like phase 1 was. More introductions and origin stories, with a small amount of interlinking going on to build up to something.

The catch phrase is "Avengers Assemble" for a reason. It's also a team that was somewhat unique all along in the comics in that their membership constantly changed over time, often included characters who had their own books, going off on their own adventures, and then "assembled" for major things (well, sorta). So yeah, I'm not bothered by their apparently absense. It's following the pattern in the comic books (well, earlier comic books before every other story was a massive crossover).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by gbaji
The Hulk once held up a freaking mountain (yeah, just don't think too hard about it though).

It was an alien mountain on an artificially assembled planet, though, so it probably had some funky crystalline structure that prevented it from shearing and crumbling all around him. Or something like that.


Originally Posted by gbaji
It also felt like they really really really felt the need to drum up yet another "indigenous people/victims who've grown powerful in secret" bit, so as to bookend Wakanda itself. But then kinda took a left turn, then another, then fell into a dump truck, and more or less lost the whole point they were going after.

Wait, they had a point?


Originally Posted by gbaji
There was rationalization after rationalization given, but when you got to the end, none of it really made any sense.

Yup, they’re brutal thugs who casually murder innocent bystanders who might be witnesses, but we’re supposed to be all “awww” because they, I dunno, tickle whales or something? Despite the fact they’re clinging to a five-hundred-year-old grudge.

At the very least, Wakanda had people who were out in the modern world and could see its value, case in point being Nakia. Namorlandia doesn’t even have that, just “murder the witnesses, and unarmed women and children too.”

Really, what was the point again? Because the final effect is to convince me to avoid any future Namor-related media if at all possible.


Originally Posted by gbaji
It's also a team that was somewhat unique all along in the comics in that their membership constantly changed over time, often included characters who had their own books, going off on their own adventures….

Sounds like the X-Men, who were constantly gaining and losing members, and with characters pursuing solo stories in separate titles.

[gnownek99]

It was amazing!! Little tiny, foot wings are cool.

[gbaji]

It was an alien mountain on an artificially assembled planet, though, so it probably had some funky crystalline structure that prevented it from shearing and crumbling all around him. Or something like that.

Ok. It's impressive that you caught the exact reference. And to be fair, IIRC, Iron man's arm was being used as a lever to "help" as well. And yeah, we just let physics weep over in the corner over there...


Wait, they had a point?

Now you're forcing me to think. Er... They were trying to prevent the surface dwellers from using vibranium. Because, see, the moral of the story is that only certain nations are responsible and "good" enough to handle the awesome responsiblity that is the power of vibranium. And apparently, those nations are not ones which choose their leaders via democratic processes, or have checks and balances to "supreme executive power", but rather either worship them as god kings, or select them via ritual combat, and said kings are all powerful and can't be overruled even if they are doing incredibly dangerous/dumb/harmful things.

Hmmm... Yeah. Maybe that doesn't actually make sense as a moral concept after all.



Sounds like the X-Men, who were constantly gaining and losing members, and with characters pursuing solo stories in separate titles.

Yeah. I thought of this right after writing that. X-Men did have the whole "mutant" niche though. And there weren't the same degree of membership changes back in the original series. It wasn't until they started spliting off into an extra 3 or 4 of them that things got kinda "silly" (X-force. Seriously...? Loved them in Deadpool2 though!). I actually stopped collecting comics back in the mid 90s due to how silly Marvel got with things in pursuit of more money.

Prior to that point, they had a single roster for the "original" group, then went more international with their "new" group (introduced Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Collosus, etc). Then they trimmed out some of the original team (Beast, Angel, and Iceman), and dropped a few of the new folks (Banshee, Polaris, Havok? (can't remember)). Uh... then they killed of Thunderbird pretty early on, cause everything he did was already present on the team between Collosus and Wolverine, so...

That core team stayed around for a pretty long time, with the occasional addition (Kitty Pryde, and Rogue much later on). Some heroes came along with them for a while during a story arc or something, but that was about it. Oh, and of course, there was the whole New Mutants thing. But they were always in their own book and kinda off to the side.

The Avengers kinda kept a core membership. But that was pretty much Captain America and Iron Man for the first 2 or 3 decades of the comic. The rest really fluttered around. But they always had a pretty strong roster. Usually had a heavy hitter (Thor, Hulk, Hercules), people with odd powers (Scarlet Witch, Mantis, Vision, Quicksilver), and various sneaky/skilled folks as well (too many to list here).


Oh. And speaking of X-men. I did notice that they did actually use the "M-word" in this film. So that happened.

[Joran]

Oh. And speaking of X-men. I did notice that they did actually use the "M-word" in this film. So that happened.

Yeah, they're referencing the M-word more often. I assume they'll enter the MCU eventually, although, the fake-out in Wandavision was hilarious.


They used the m-word during Ms. Marvel, along with the cool 90's guitar riff from the X-Men cartoon.



And of course Professor X shows up, along with Blackbolt, as a member of the Illuminati. I think this is the first reference to Inhumans existing since the Inhumans TV show flopped and Agents of SHIELD got sectioned off from the rest of the MCU.

[Kornaki]

T'challa would have recognized this guy for the psychopath he is and killed him.

This movie does raise a somewhat interesting question. If the US found out that Kim Jong Un was personally in Boston, covertly meeting an MIT scientist, what would they do? Would they arrest him? Somehow the Boston swat team is what broke my immersion, because I couldn't decide if it fundamentally made any sense.

[gbaji]

Yeah, they're referencing the M-word more often. I assume they'll enter the MCU eventually, although, the fake-out in Wandavision was hilarious.


They used the m-word during Ms. Marvel, along with the cool 90's guitar riff from the X-Men cartoon.


A buddy of mine, who's really into following all the MCU gossip, made a big deal out of it. But if you notice, she says it's a "mutation". Didn't actually use the word "mutant".



And of course Professor X shows up, along with Blackbolt, as a member of the Illuminati. I think this is the first reference to Inhumans existing since the Inhumans TV show flopped and Agents of SHIELD got sectioned off from the rest of the MCU.


Yup. But that was in an alternate universe. It was nice to see (even though the actual actions of the folks there, including professor X, were frankly stupid and insane for <plot reasons>). But doesn't say anything about introducing actual X-men style "Mutants" into the main MCU setting.

Not that Namor calling himself a mutant has any direct bearing on introducing modern mutants as a source of superpowers into the setting either, but it at least stepped over that legal hurdle (they literally couldn't use the word "Mutant" as a type of character due to trademarks/rights/whatever issues). So... progress?


T'challa would have recognized this guy for the psychopath he is and killed him.

Maybe. Maybe not. The problem is that Namor is initially presented to the Wakandans as someone very similar to themselves. Hiding from the rest of the world. Holding huge power due to vibranium. If you think back to the first film, he's not acting towards outsiders much differently than T'challa did. Well. Except that he acts that way towards the Wakandan's too, and insists on them joining his "side" or being an enemy. So there's that.


This movie does raise a somewhat interesting question. If the US found out that Kim Jong Un was personally in Boston, covertly meeting an MIT scientist, what would they do? Would they arrest him? Somehow the Boston swat team is what broke my immersion, because I couldn't decide if it fundamentally made any sense.

Not a great analogy. More like if Prince Harry was meeting a student at MIT, would a swat team be sent to go in guns blazing and arrest them all? She's the daughter of a head of state, of a recognized nation, which is not an enemy to the US as far as we know (more complicated than that, but still).

The point of that scene is to show the evils of western colonial powers, who can't help but be over the top ridiculous and violent for no apparent reason at all. You do get that the entire theme of the Black Panther films is to turn the power structure upside down and show a nation(s) from colonized rather than colonial geographical regions holding all the actual power, and then show the ramifications of that. So yeah, you kinda have to go full on with the "we can't allow this!" bit. And yeah. They have to hit you over the head with this. But then, honestly, run afoul of their own theme, because they have to also somehow show Namor's people as "enemies", but also "victims" at the same time.

Which makes the whole thing a muddled mess. Real people in the real world don't actually behave like this. Only on TV and in films do they do so. And usually it's precisely because the writers are trying really really hard to get a socio-politcal "message" out there, but then have a hard time writing a coherent story along the way (which maybe suggests that the "message" has some issues, but I'm not going further than that). It's too bad too. Because they could write some great stories with these characters and peoples. But they can't help but do it "wrong".

[Joran]

Not that Namor calling himself a mutant has any direct bearing on introducing modern mutants as a source of superpowers into the setting either, but it at least stepped over that legal hurdle (they literally couldn't use the word "Mutant" as a type of character due to trademarks/rights/whatever issues). So... progress?


It's because Marvel had sold the movie rights to the X-Men to Fox. There was some weird partitioning of the Marvel properties, including allowing Quicksilver in both studios' movies, but only using some portion of their backstory.



We both have [Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch]. There’s a specific arrangement with those two characters that would allow us to use them with “Avengers,” but not discuss or reference their mutant or Magneto-related lineage. They can use them as mutants and as Magneto’s relatives, but cannot have anything to do with “The Avengers.”


The MCU couldn't use any mutant characters or use the concept of mutants. Earlier on, it looked like Inhumans would be the mutant substitute in the MCU with the movie (later turned into a TV show) and Agents of SHIELD using them. I remember there being some controversy where the Inhumans played a more important role in the comics, with the X-Men taking a backseat, because Marvel didn't own the movie rights (someone who is more familiar with the comics can weigh in if this is true.)

In 2019, Disney purchased 21st Century Fox and along with it, the movie rights to the X-Men, so they're free to start using the X-Men (and Fantastic Four) again in the MCU.

Spider-man movie rights however are owned by Sony, hence why they haven't reverted back. There is an agreement between Marvel and Sony to collaborate and use each other's characters, but as long as Sony keeps pumping out Spider-man movies, they can hold onto the movie rights.

[Kornaki]

.
Not a great analogy. More like if Prince Harry was meeting a student at MIT, would a swat team be sent to go in guns blazing and arrest them all? She's the daughter of a head of state, of a recognized nation, which is not an enemy to the US as far as we know (more complicated than that, but still).

They were fairly convinced wakanda was behind the attack at the start, so I think my analogy is closer, but not perfect.

[Clertar]

God forbid that a Marvel movie remind us that today's post-colonial nations were and are built on the genocide of indigenous people :smallbiggrin:

[ecarden]

This movie does raise a somewhat interesting question. If the US found out that Kim Jong Un was personally in Boston, covertly meeting an MIT scientist, what would they do? Would they arrest him? Somehow the Boston swat team is what broke my immersion, because I couldn't decide if it fundamentally made any sense.

I mean, even accepting the analogy...of course we wouldn't? He's the leader of a nuclear power and has neither been indicted nor convicted of any crimes in the US? Arresting him would be insanely risky for essentially no benefit? Exactly the same as Shuri, in fact.

But my impression was they weren't after Shuri at all, but after Riri, in order to make sure she wasn't killed (after all, she'd invented the tech which had ended in a massacre). Which made the whole 'let's murder a bunch of people thing' sort of worse...

[GloatingSwine]

T'challa would have recognized this guy for the psychopath he is and killed him.

This movie does raise a somewhat interesting question. If the US found out that Kim Jong Un was personally in Boston, covertly meeting an MIT scientist, what would they do? Would they arrest him? Somehow the Boston swat team is what broke my immersion, because I couldn't decide if it fundamentally made any sense.

No, it doesn't make any sense at all.

Even if the US decided to take official action in a case like that local SWAT would not be involved. It would be DHS or Secret Service.


The MCU couldn't use any mutant characters or use the concept of mutants. Earlier on, it looked like Inhumans would be the mutant substitute in the MCU with the movie (later turned into a TV show) and Agents of SHIELD using them. I remember there being some controversy where the Inhumans played a more important role in the comics, with the X-Men taking a backseat, because Marvel didn't own the movie rights (someone who is more familiar with the comics can weigh in if this is true.)


The focus on the Inhumans on the comic side was down to Ike Perlmutter. His influence over the MCU ended at Civil War which was the point where Kevin Feige went to the overbosses at Disney and said "get him out of the picture or I walk".

Perlmutter is, alongside being bitter and vindictive about not having the X-Men license, amazingly tightfisted. He was the one who pushed Terence Howard out as Rhodey after Iron Man 1 because he was asking for too much money (and he figured the audience wouldn't notice swapping two black guys anyhow), and he wanted Hulk to lead the pro-reg side in Civil War because Mark Ruffalo was a lot cheaper than Robert Downey Jr, which was what prompted Feige to finally issue his ultimatum which led to Marvel Studios being completely disconnected from Marvel Comics rather than subordinate to it.

It was also him who insisted on Scott Buck as showrunner on Inhumans and Iron Fist because Buck's reputation, alongside ruining the last season of Dexter, is doing stuff fast and on the cheap. (Why do you think they throw Medusa under the bus in episode 1? The most expensive character to include because of the need for CGI hair, and why do you think nobody on Iron Fist got any training for fight scenes at all? That ****'s expensive and time consuming just shoot wide angle in the dark!)

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: closed for review.