watching black panther 2. secret blue underwater mayans is a choice
i am not sold on life in talokan. am i supposed to be taking it seriously that this is some grand splendorous marvel? it looks depressing as shit. it's tiny and there's almost no one and nothing to do. am i supposed to believe this is equal to wakanda but wet? god i can't believe they're trying to do secret underwater mayan wakanda worried about being imperialism'd by the western world, and addressing that fear by GOING TO WAR WITH EVERYONE why are all these movies like this
ALSO WE'VE GOT OUR TOKEN WHITE MAN SPEAKING TO THE DIRECTORS OF THE CIA TRYING TO CONVINCE THEM NOT TO DO A SOFT COUP. i just cannot believe that these movies have a good guy cia man i cannot believe these movies that position themselves as radical black power monuments expect us to believe in the good will of a man who WORKS FOR THE CIA
spoilers
they killed angela bassett with water grenades
why do wakandans and wet mayans and americans all agree that it's called "vibranium"
the general setup of black panther 2 is interesting because it takes the idea of wakanda being powerful because of its access to vibranium and says, what if there was a smaller wakanda in the ocean that also had vibranium but didn't have the continental position to shield itself from colonization in the same way once its existence was revealed.
unfortunately namor's solution to this problem is 1. kill an underage american scientist or 2. go to war with literally the entire world
i know that's the Bit with underwater civilizations, like oh we're gonna destroy the surface world or whatever. but i don't think you can get away with that in a movie that's otherwise concerned with the geopolitical standing of highly-advanced isolationist nations increasingly viewed as a global threat by the UN. like you have a scene where a CIA guy straight up says "we need to infiltrate and destabilize wakanda" so i know you know something about some history! the ideology of these movies man
namor says that talokan's position has been compromised now that its discovery is on the horizon specifically because wakanda revealed itself to not be an impoverished nation but rather a space age nation built on vibranium, and now all the western powers are hungry for vibranium. he's worried about colonization and destabilization. he also says we have more soldiers than you have guns, and we're going to destroy the nations of man
soooo what's the threat of being discovered then
i'd buy it if namor was bluffing in the face of some wakandan diplomats, but this whole thing is played completely straight. it's like what if cuba was north korea but they're a secret race of wet blue mayans who escaped colonization by eating a vibranium weed and also they have a guy with wings on his feet who can punch super strong
which, you know, when i lay it all out like that i can't but acknowledge that if i'm looking for political coherency i am definitely barking up the wrong tree lmao
if i seem overly dismissive about the cultural aspect of this movie it's because i'm insulted that it is trying to graft a serious reckoning with colonialism on top of a truly nonsensical revenge plot involving two separate sets of characters independently saying "i know our countries only exist uncolonized because of our historic isolation and internal ideological unity, but what if just this once we waged all out war on our enemies with vibranium superweapons in full public view"
oh my god they did it again they deliberately hit the absolute bare minimum of their allotted gay content
"black panther is the most powerful person in the most powerful nation on the surface. but she has no allies. now she has empathy for the people of talokan. we'll be stronger than we've ever been for our partnership" well shit okay i guess that part sticks the landing
OH MY GOD THEY DID IT AGAIN the post credits reveals that tchalla had a son, whose name is also tchalla, who is being framed as the rightful heir to the thone, someday. and we're supposed to be really, fulfillingly into that. disney's favorite moral: hereditary monarchy is good
@sarahzedig how are you still watching this film
@irisjaycomics i had like fifteen minutes left and wanted to get high
@sarahzedig oh hey btw wanted to ask: is black panther in this movie or is he just like out to lunch due to the actor passing away
@irisjaycomics @sarahzedig hes there on the side next to stan lees shambling corpse to give a wink to one of the protagonists for the reference before disappearing into the crowd
spoilers lol
@irisjaycomics oh the film opens with everyone panicking because he's dying off-screen from an undefined illness. shuri's trying to engineer a last-second cure and fails, they have a big funeral sequence, and then the actual movie starts a year later. by the end shuri becomes black panther
spoilers lol
@sarahzedig wow uhhhh that is. a weird way to handle it. but good for Shuri I guess, that might lead to some interesting comics if anyone gave a shit about those
@sarahzedig you're right etc., I don't know, it feels bad to come down harder on Black Panther 2 than something like Avengers 3 that didn't even TRY to be good, but somehow the skeleton of a good movie makes a body made of candy instead of meat even more of a jarring, shambling horror.
...that sounds like a homestuck reference but I swear it isn't
wait actually hold on this movie was about namor going to war with wakanda to take their resources for self defense. "you help us or we make you help us." that only just clicked for me, and it would actually make a lot of this story make sense. so why in the hell does namor frame it so heavily as him going to war with the world with wakanda as the first stop? those are the stakes as presented to us and it completely dilutes what could be some interesting speculative political drama