OK, it’s been a while since I saw the movie but there’s been one sticking point in the plot I didn’t quite follow.
If Killmonger’s ultimate motivation for working with Klaue was to murder him and drag his corpse to the Wakandan border just to get an audience then why did he even bother teaming up with Klaue for the museum heist and subsequent shenanigans/prison break in South Korea? Why not just pop the guy and be done with it?
This is the backup plan/improvisation in the face of changing circumstances I think.
He was going to use Klaue’s knowledge of Wakanda (as the only outsider to successfully steal from them) to get him there and make contact, get the lay of the land, etc., before taking the actions he eventually did anyway. After Hong Kong, Klaue was not in any way amenable to any of this, so he jumped ahead a few steps and took a more direct approach.
Maybe it’s just that Mahershala Ali is so much better as an actor than the walking, talking ham that they got to play Diamondback.
(Seriously, dude’s performance was bordering on straight up buffoonery; I halfway expected him to start “shuckin and jivin’” every time he had any dialog.)
Cottonmouth was “just a regular human criminal,” but it’s not like Diamondback wasn’t … he was just a dude with some souped-up tech and a serious case of misplaced aggression.
I think he needed Klau (and his hand) to help him steal the Wakandan artifact.
OH I agree, and maybe if he was on screen longer I would have tired with Diamondback. Perhaps they should have had him provide Cottnmouth with the power armor, but then you couldn’t have had Mariah take her revenge… or maybe she should have sabotaged him during the fight. I dunno, just ideas. I liked it overall, even if it is for the wrong reasons 
Write down on your calendars, season 2 starts Jun 22nd.
That’s what COULD have made Killmonger a great villain.
I honestly found the movie fell a bit flat for me.
Killmonger’s primary motivation seemed to be killing people, acting psychotic, and becoming a dictator with only lip service to his supposed ideals. Even a populist cynically seeking power with false promises would have been more interesting.
The Wakandans went from a happy stable society to being inexplicably happy to throw in with a madman. Only the general had any real justification to her backing of Killmonger.
The Black Panther himself didn’t really grow or change over the course of the movie, the policy change was fairly unmotivated. He seemed to get more character development over the course of Captain America: Civil War which actually had the policy change already starting.
It was still a fun movie, but they seemed to miss out on a lot of potential depth.
I remember a movie where the entire populace rebelled against their new king and were weeping and crying when he became the ruler.
Same here.
In fact, I recall there was something like a civil uprising…
Why did Killmonger need the artifact though? The only explanation I can think of is that he wanted to draw out T’Challa and screw up the capture of Klaue so Killmonger would look good by comparison, but if that was the plan all along it still seems like a convoluted one.
Much like Magneto. It’s not that he’s wrong, it’s just that he’s not going about getting what he wants in a good way. A more interesting villain than “I want to kill half the universe because I like Death”, anyway.
And I cried my eyes out at his last line. Heartbreaking.
Agreed. Just started watching a show I missed way back, “The 4400”. Great actor. Loved him in Cage as well.
Good question.
Thanos’ real beef with the universe is the everyone keeps mixing him up with Darkseid.
I got the impression it was a formality carried over from long before, making the actual challenges that much more surprising.
I agree and i thought that was nicely exemplified in his and t’challa’s respective visions, killmonger’s vision is from the only life he’s ever known: poverty and violence. While t’challa’s vision contains his entire ancestry and the homeland which made him. I think it’s a key scene that shows you exactly where killmonger is coming from and makes him a sympathetic villain, but still a villain.
Also moonlight. Well worth a watch if anyone hasn’t.
Not just comic books, old comic books written with a very, um, colonial mindset. The Lost African Kingdom is hoary old chestnut indeed and that’s what Wakanda is, in its genesis. Fair for its day, as they say, but now? The fundamental terribleness of the concept shines through. And, really, if you wanted Afro-futurism, why not go with the fractious autochthonous republics of the Yoruba, say (wrong coast of Africa, I know, but still!) but extrapolated suitably. I’d watch the hell out of that.
If Marvel and DC weren’t constantly stealing from each other, this wouldn’t happen to nearly every character 
But I felt that was the entire point — that the story took a colonial fantasy trope and turned it inside out. Wakanda is indeed a classic Lost African Civilization after the old H. Rider Haggard / Edgar Rice Burroughs models. But then the story 1) posits aggressive resource extraction forces from the outside [colonial powers after the Vibranium] as the biggest danger to Wakanda, and 2) places the audience in the position of identifying with the Wakandans. Even accepting the premise means affirming the basic truth of colonial history, and the validity of the experience of those who have been colonized.
A CIA backed autocrat with a dastardly plan for gentrifying Oakland, thank you very much. Perhaps the children can fight in ritualized combat on the basketball court to see who gets to join the technical college or whatever.
