EVERYTHING Black Panther - Part 2

[RockSP]

Don't be surprised when Wakanda does not live up to your lofty expectations.

I don't think they will make a Black Panther movie, so Wakanda is living up to my expectations just fine.

 

[roach]

I don't think they will make a Black Panther movie, so Wakanda is living up to my expectations just fine.

I think it has to happen like Edgar Wright's Antman. It's not something they are planning to do but if a writer/director wants to do it bad enough they'll let him.

 

[DrCosmic]

But why should Wakanda be toned down....nothing else in the MCU has?

Whoa. Let's pull back a moment. Thor for starters. Not only a shadow of his power, not only powerless for most of the film anyway, but Asgard had it's godhood totally removed. Now, that's a tone down! The others are similar.

The reason is simple: The audience has to personally care about every scrap of the sci fi, or the 'inception' doesn't take and the movie "sucks."

it shouldn't. Explained correctly people would accept Wakanda as another crazy place in the MCU. If people can accept everything else in the MCU so far why do people think they can't accept this

What does explained correctly mean? Why do films show origins? Can't they just narrate them and get right to the part people care about?

Yes people would know about Wakanda but thats about it....much like the country of Tanzania. We know it's a country in Africa but without looking it up on the internet what could you tell me about it. Now imagine if that country purposefully hid info about it.

I can tell you its not one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, I can tell you it's easy to investigate because it's so small. It's thin line... there's some hiding to be done, but it can't be too much or else it's like 'wait... something this epic has no effect on the rest of the world?'

Wakanda isn't run by a crazy dictatorship

Yeah... I can't vouch for any of those guys, but when your country gets embargoed because you won't play ball, everyone gets a little crazy. IRL, Wakanda would be in a very similar position, and likely characterized the same in the media. "They must be planning something, they won't let us in."

Even the Japan of Africa is a stretch. Japan wasn't so technologically superior in WW2 that it didn't get bombed in submission by a technologically and economically superior country called the US. Japan has only became modernized after they changed from their traditional government and received massive investment from US capitalism.

There is a disconnect happening between what works in a fully fictional world and meshing that world within our own. This uncompromising stance to create a hidden world on a modern Earth won't work.

And to touch on something further up the thread, if the people of Wakanda went to schools around the world for their education, they would only be taught to the same degree as everyone else. If Wakanda is supposed to be superior, then they must be superior on their own, otherwise Wakanda is no more advanced than anyone else.

This is why T'Challa as the source of Wakanda's superiority works so well. You avoid all these problems. A relatively normal country/people, and then add a savant to the edge. He goes around the world for education in much the same way Batman did for Martial arts... as with any walkabout, more than the sum of its parts.

As for Wakanda's "origin," Cap's shield would indicate they had metal workers back at that time, and Vibranium, perhaps they traded with Stark for some of his designs... except they got them to work. Cue stable electricity supply base for manufacturing and such. After that... it's Africa... perhaps T'chaka was selling diamonds or platinum or whatever, and refining them there, something rare in Africa. After they started sending kids on Walkabouts and overseas for school, then you started getting tech adopted and revamped... only when Wakanda started showing it's "anachronism" of people with traditional clothing running around with tablets would it scarcely make the news. Perhaps part of it's 'cover' is that it's part of Tanzania. Regardless, it's swift rise would make it a threat though, cue T'Chaka's assassination. T'Challa is the one who makes it a super power.

But it's not our universe...it's the MCU....they had lazer beams and arc cannons in WW2, a man in a cave can build a sophisticated suit or armor....he has an AI house...now imagine Tony Stark's ingenuity expressed on a country level.

In our universe, there were tons of weapons and stuff classified from WWII. It's perfectly feasible for that to have happened and we not know about it. A man in a cave CAN build a suit of armor, and people do have AI houses.

Now imagine a country full of Tony Starks, and none of them ever go off course, decided to become villains, decide to change the outside world. They are all super geniuses, but are all always in perfect agreement that we must be isolationist. Tell me that sounds feasible and realistic?

The MCU featured a World War 2 that had a Nazi with a red skull for a head, technology far more superior than anything at the time on both Stark and Hydra's end, and vibranium being pretty much indestructible. In modern day they have a giant hellicarrier that's basically a submarine and flying ship, and no one knew a damn thing about it. Wakanda isn't that far fetched when you consider that the SHIELD has a giant floating ship that no one has seen, even Tony Stark who had the most advanced tech of them all. In this world it's not so far fetched that a place like Wakanda could exist without much contact from outsiders.

So a guy lost his skin, some alien tech got used by humans, and they have a really strong metal, and in the modern day we have... classified stealth technology and helicopters... there's a difference between something that simply didn't happen because of money/circumstance/aliens didn't stop by, and something that doesn't make any sense...

And this 'measure of farfetched' argument that we keep coming back to is pointless. It doesn't matter that Tony is simultaneously controlling 20+ Armors... because we've had FOUR entire movies to love him and his creative ability, and we are rooting for him to create ridiculousness. It doesn't matter that Thor has a magic hammer because we spend an hour rooting for him to earn it and reclaim it. The reason the MCU can have all this crazy stuff is because it makes the audience care about the characters and the journey to get to all that crazy stuff. Without that, these crazy ideas would fail like the GL and FF films.

Have Wakanda, let Wakanda be uber and space age. Simply make the audience root for Wakanda, not just throw it out there and hope they do, because that's what the GL and FF films did. I like Wakanda being uber at times, but the proposals you guys are making with "Why not?" and "They like Cheerios so they'll love Toasty-Ohs" and secret lawyers and all this stuff... it shows a serious lack of inception, a serious lack of desire to show the audience how to love Wakanda like you do, to sympathize with its people like you do. And no amount of explanations or precedent will fix that, it's gotta be done like every other film: you take the audiences hand and lead them through all the emotions step by step, and that determines where you start your film, not the latest retcons to 616.

 

[roach]

Everyone in Wakanda isn't in perfect agreement...which is why most of Black Panthers villains are other Wakandans. He's constantly fighting people trying to take his throne.

As for the last part, sympathizing with Wakanda, that will be in the writing and not something that can be conveyed in messageboard posts about how the country should be done.

 

[DrCosmic]

But they all agree that it should be isolationist. No one... in the history of all this space ageness says A) The world needs our help or B) The world needs to be punished. That doesn't sound like a country inhabited by human beings. And that goes over much better when the characters are drawn instead of played by actual human beings.

I understand you have a script, and there are things you don't want to give away, so please, keep all your linchpins, but outside of that, it would be possible to convey in words.

My take is pretty linear: We start with a flashback to T'Chaka giving young T'Challa a commission and told the potential and dream of Wakanda before he is killed. After the opening credits, T'Challa is in the states, having a grand old time, suddenly finds out Wakanda has fallen into the civil unrest so familiar in Africa, we see that kind of instantly recognizable cruelty, and we instantly feel for the estranged son who hasn't been there and feels powerless in the face of this all too common tragedy (kinda like the first few minutes of The Terminal). The newscaster would mention this was supposed to be the "Japan of Africa" and such, so that the audience is immediately thrown into the idea of 'this is not right' and 'someone should do something so that this country can reach it's full glorious potential.' When we get to the ground, we immediately see the plight, but unlike some African countries, this one has hope. These people have all the right resources within reach, and are ready to rally against the dictator M'Baka, if only our hero would step up to the plate and take his responsibility as leader, but alas he doesn't feel worthy or ready, and he is far too involved with his incredible technological ideas and inventions to go back to the traditional ways of rulership by combat, a harem of would-be queens and eating deadly herbs to either get strong or die trying. And so the journey begins... the audience, through T'Challa's experience, learns to love everything about Wakanda, and wants it desperately to become what it should be, what T'Chaka said it would be.

That's just the way I'd do it, by starting out T'Challa very much unlike himself, and much more like a modern youth (in 616 he was 19 when he started) there are others, and I'd imagine there's some non-linear way to deal with it the way Thor did, but I like linear just fine.

 

[roach]

But they all agree that it should be isolationist. No one... in the history of all this space ageness says A) The world needs our help or B) The world needs to be punished. That doesn't sound like a country inhabited by human beings. And that goes over much better when the characters are drawn instead of played by actual human beings.

the United States went to war in Iraq....did every American agree with that?

I understand you have a script, and there are things you don't want to give away, so please, keep all your linchpins, but outside of that, it would be possible to convey in words.
I don't have a script for Black Panther....just a general idea


My take is pretty linear: We start with a flashback to T'Chaka giving young T'Challa a commission and told the potential and dream of Wakanda before he is killed. After the opening credits, T'Challa is in the states, having a grand old time, suddenly finds out Wakanda has fallen into the civil unrest so familiar in Africa, we see that kind of instantly recognizable cruelty, and we instantly feel for the estranged son who hasn't been there and feels powerless in the face of this all too common tragedy (kinda like the first few minutes of The Terminal). The newscaster would mention this was supposed to be the "Japan of Africa" and such, so that the audience is immediately thrown into the idea of 'this is not right' and 'someone should do something so that this country can reach it's full glorious potential.' When we get to the ground, we immediately see the plight, but unlike some African countries, this one has hope. These people have all the right resources within reach, and are ready to rally against the dictator M'Baka, if only our hero would step up to the plate and take his responsibility as leader, but alas he doesn't feel worthy or ready, and he is far too involved with his incredible technological ideas and inventions to go back to the traditional ways of rulership by combat, a harem of would-be queens and eating deadly herbs to either get strong or die trying. And so the journey begins... the audience, through T'Challa's experience, learns to love everything about Wakanda, and wants it desperately to become what it should be, what T'Chaka said it would be.

That's just the way I'd do it, by starting out T'Challa very much unlike himself, and much more like a modern youth (in 616 he was 19 when he started) there are others, and I'd imagine there's some non-linear way to deal with it the way Thor did, but I like linear just fine.

My idea isn't that far off from yours.

 

[blalex620]

What does explained correctly mean? Why do films show origins? Can't they just narrate them and get right to the part people care about?

You said it yourself, people have to care about this "world" they're trying to create. That's why they do origin stories. And that's why it has to be explained correctly. take GL for example. The movie sucked because the "world" wasn't explained correctly. No one cared about the characters therefore they had no attachment to the film. All these other films worked because we were made to care about the people and places. If they translate that correctly to a BP film no matter how "far out there" Wakanda and it's people may seem people will care about them thus enjoy the film.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I don't like the idea of T'Challa bring technology from the Western world like Prometheus bring back fire from the gods.

There's a difference between suggesting advanced technology is impossible without trade and saying Africans need Western nations to learn how to be advanced.

 

[chamber-music]

There has generally been a cross pollination of ideas in human history. If there wasn't the human race wouldn't be as advanced as it is now.

 

[metaphysician]

So, Japan can go out into the world and acquire and import foreign knowledge and technology to uplift their society, but for an African nation, such is forbidden? Because that is *exactly* what Japan did in the late 1800s. Is it "lame" that they did not reinvent everything from scratch before becoming a global power?

Anyway, Wakanda doesn't need to be a global superpower for this scenario to work; they just need enough technological and social development to avoid being conquered during colonialism, which I would entirely say they should have had on their own merit. Then, opening up, import of foreign knowledge, and once the rest of the world starts to really understand that Wakanda has some unique mineral resources, they are too powerful and too public for conquest efforts outside the purview of supervillain schemes. Which, again, doesn't mean they need space ships with atomic death rays, anymore than Japan does to keep the Russians or Chinese from invading them ( though I would be inclined to make their military less "vast conventional and nuclear arsenal" and more "smaller and proportionate military, supplemented with various extra tricks mostly based in vibranium" ).

 

[metaphysician]

Oh, and as far as the whole "Why can't Wakanda be isolationist, other nations are" issue, of the other potential hidden nations. . .

1. Atlantis: Is on the bottom of the sea. That makes it very easy to be isolationist regardless of how advanced or not you are. I seriously doubt that the MCU will have Atlantis as a vast ocean-spanning superpower, though, which means it can be isolated just fine.

2. Attilan: Has something resembling a bronze age social structure, bolstered by alien technology. Giving the descendents of an old alien colony/experiment enough alien technology that they don't have to follow the same economic rules as everyone else passes the sniff test, and also gives them a damn good reason to be isolationist.

Wakanda, by contrast, is neither isolated from the rest of the world be a hostile environment second only to outer space, nor possesses a fully functioning alien technology infrastructure.

 

[DrCosmic]

My idea isn't that far off from yours.

I didn't think it was, I was kinda amazed that we had managed to disagree. Stopping the Iraq war was impossible for even a gifted citizen. Stopping isolationism or a country being hidden... very possible. I think Wakanda works better as an overlooked region than a hidden country.

I don't like the idea of T'Challa bring technology from the Western world like Prometheus bring back fire from the gods.

There's a difference between suggesting advanced technology is impossible without trade and saying Africans need Western nations to learn how to be advanced.

I don't know if I like it either, but they are both true statements. Heck, it's already happened. The difference with T'Challa is that he's not bringing back anyone else's tech, he's making his own tech. And like you guys were saying earlier, the tech isn't what makes Wakanda, the culture is what makes Wakanda, the tech is just a tool T'Challa uses to defend the culture. The tech hasn't made them better, just... more explosive.

 

[roach]

I didn't think it was, I was kinda amazed that we had managed to disagree. Stopping the Iraq war was impossible for even a gifted citizen. Stopping isolationism or a country being hidden... very possible. I think Wakanda works better as an overlooked region than a hidden country.

I am hard headed like that sometimes. Maybe they are overlooked because they hind their potential from others....there's that hard headeness

I don't know if I like it either, but they are both true statements. Heck, it's already happened. The difference with T'Challa is that he's not bringing back anyone else's tech, he's making his own tech. And like you guys were saying earlier, the tech isn't what makes Wakanda, the culture is what makes Wakanda, the tech is just a tool T'Challa uses to defend the culture. The tech hasn't made them better, just... more explosive.

Perhaps the herb that gave him his powers also increased his intelligence...after all a smart leader is a good leader...and this is how Wakanda has remained on the curve of technological advances or just above.

 

[Jerkofwonder]

Oh, and as far as the whole "Why can't Wakanda be isolationist, other nations are" issue, of the other potential hidden nations. . .

1. Atlantis: Is on the bottom of the sea. That makes it very easy to be isolationist regardless of how advanced or not you are. I seriously doubt that the MCU will have Atlantis as a vast ocean-spanning superpower, though, which means it can be isolated just fine.

2. Attilan: Has something resembling a bronze age social structure, bolstered by alien technology. Giving the descendents of an old alien colony/experiment enough alien technology that they don't have to follow the same economic rules as everyone else passes the sniff test, and also gives them a damn good reason to be isolationist.

Wakanda, by contrast, is neither isolated from the rest of the world be a hostile environment second only to outer space, nor possesses a fully functioning alien technology infrastructure.

You do know there are actualt REAL isolationist countries right?

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Perhaps the herb that gave him his powers also increased his intelligence...after all a smart leader is a good leader...and this is how Wakanda has remained on the curve of technological advances or just above.

I actually think this a fantastic idea and compromise.

It pretty much solves any plausibility issues and satisfies both sides of the argument.

Well done.

 

[InternetPeople]

Agreement? What!?!?!?!?

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Agreement? What!?!?!?!?

Incoming asteroid in 3...2...

 

[tvor03]

But that's once again thinking too hard about this because it's fake. They had a giant floating fortress that nobody but SHIELD and maybe a few governments knew about. Just look at this big ass thing:

You mean to tell me that no one knew this existed, not even a guy like Stark that has eyes everywhere? Of course no one questioned this because it is a cool ass part of the comics, and because everyone knows that there are things in the Marvel U that are fictional. Wakanda wouldn't be so hard to accept when you consider that there is a giant fortress somehow maintaining perfect balance over the air. Why isn't this thing falling out of the sky when it's nearly impossible to make it in real life? Oh yeah, that's because it's fake. Wakanda is fake too, so it wouldn't look silly at all unless you really wanna play the realism game all of a sudden after seeing so much fake **** in Marvel movies.

Except that's not how the helicarrier looks in the comics, is it? Traditionally, the helicarrier looks like this:

Joss Whedon specifically mentioned the glass blimp shape of the helicarrier in the special features of Avengers. So why did they change it to the design you mentioned? To make it more plausible!

Lesson to be learned: Comic book logic does not translate to screen. Real world reason and logic must be behind every decision, even in a sci-fi fantasy movies.

 

[tvor03]

I don't like the idea of T'Challa bring technology from the Western world like Prometheus bring back fire from the gods.

There's a difference between suggesting advanced technology is impossible without trade and saying Africans need Western nations to learn how to be advanced.

So what if he goes to Western school? Science is science. It doesn't matter if he learns it in Africa, Europe, America, or China. It's the same everywhere. What would you rather have him do? Reinvent the wheel a million times over to take Wakanda from the stone age to the information age in a matter of a few years?

Also, in the comics, T'Challa does attend Western schools. So there's that.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

So what if he goes to Western school? Science is science. It doesn't matter if he learns it in Africa, Europe, America, or China. It's the same everywhere. What would you rather have him do? Reinvent the wheel a million times over to take Wakanda from the stone age to the information age in a matter of a few years?

Also, in the comics, T'Challa does attend Western schools. So there's that.

I don't think it has to be emphasized.

Maybe a quick line about "studying abroad" but they don't have to make it look like Wakandan advancement is simply the product of outside influence.

 

[RockSP]

Joss Whedon specifically mentioned the glass blimp shape of the helicarrier in the special features of Avengers. So why did they change it to the design you mentioned? To make it more plausible!

Lesson to be learned: Comic book logic does not translate to screen. Real world reason and logic must be behind every decision, even in a sci-fi fantasy movies.

Okay they changed the shape. It still wasn't "realistic". And if comic book logic didn't translate to the screen then there wouldn't be any superhero movies. Green gamma men and armor powered by psuedo science are not reasonable and logical.

 

[roach]

I actually think this a fantastic idea and compromise.

It pretty much solves any plausibility issues and satisfies both sides of the argument.

Well done.

You are welcome.

 

[roach]

Except that's not how the helicarrier looks in the comics, is it? Traditionally, the helicarrier looks like this:

Joss Whedon specifically mentioned the glass blimp shape of the helicarrier in the special features of Avengers. So why did they change it to the design you mentioned? To make it more plausible!

Lesson to be learned: Comic book logic does not translate to screen. Real world reason and logic must be behind every decision, even in a sci-fi fantasy movies.

Um...it's still not realistic...an aircraft carrier can't fly by putting four turbines on it

 

[E-Man]

Except that's not how the helicarrier looks in the comics, is it? Traditionally, the helicarrier looks like this:

Joss Whedon specifically mentioned the glass blimp shape of the helicarrier in the special features of Avengers. So why did they change it to the design you mentioned? To make it more plausible!

Lesson to be learned: Comic book logic does not translate to screen. Real world reason and logic must be behind every decision, even in a sci-fi fantasy movies.

Um...it's still not realistic...an aircraft carrier can't fly by putting four turbines on it

I think they changed the designs to make it look more appealing rather than plausible. The original comic design of the Helicarrier looks a little in those pics with the big glass windows. It seems to be something changed more from appeal than realism. Also Roach pointed out that it's still not realistic, so the finished product we saw on film should be held to some serious scrutiny if we're going to play the realism game.

 

[RockSP]

Didn't the Ultimates do the flying aircraft carrier thing? That was just another carry over from the Ultimate U like black Fury.