I just rewatched Captain America: Civil War for the first time since seeing
Black Panther (several times.) It was good to go back and revisit the
introduction we had to T’Challa, along with the tiny hints we got of
Wakanda. I remember how much I flat-out
adored T’Challa when I first saw Civil
War, and how the film got me even more pumped for Black Panther than I already was.
But watching it again, I was really struck by how, while T’Challa is
still pretty great in that movie, I love him so much more in Black Panther (some spoilers for both
movies.)
We’ll start out with the
fact that trying to kill Bucky in a misinformed attempt to avenge his father –
while the ink on the signatures of the Accords is still drying, no less – isn’t
particularly in character for the T’Challa we know in Black Panther. There, the
young king shows himself to be bold but also measured; he frequently takes time
to ponder his next move, to worry over whether he’s doing the right thing, and
even his mission style often takes a more covert approach. I don’t really fault Civil War T’Challa for that, though. After all, no one is exactly doing the
reasonable thing throughout basically the whole of Civil War – it’d be hard to end up with the superhero-on-superhero
battles if the characters weighed their decisions more. So, it’s a product of the narrative, not to
mention tying into the movie’s overall theme of the corrosive effect of vengeance,
leading to the great scene of T’Challa’s literal mountaintop epiphany when he
confronts Zemo.
However, I do have a
couple complaints when it comes to T’Challa and Wakanda’s intros in Civil War, having now seen them as they
ought to be in Black Panther. First, on the matter of Wakanda itself, the
pre-Black Panther hints we get of the
kingdom are kind of all over the place. It’s
first brought up as an easter egg in Age
of Ultron, where Bruce has seemingly never even heard of it and Tony and
Cap know about it mainly through the connection of Cap’s Vibranium shield that
was made by Tony’s dad. Meanwhile, Civil War first shows us Wakandans on an
outreach mission to Nigeria, and when some of their people are caught in the
crossfire of an Avengers operation gone south, T’Challa’s father seems to
emerge as one of the key voices behind the Accords. At no point in that movie does anyone treat
T’Challa like they think he’s from a third-world nation (not even unsympathetic
characters like Thunderbolt Ross,) and no one questions Wakanda’s major role in
pushing the Accords.
This doesn’t really gel
with Black Panther, where Wakanda is
known for being reclusive but incredibly “poor” (little does the rest of the
world know.) Where Everett Ross is
polite-ish but fairly condescending to the Wakandans he meets, until he
actually goes there and realizes the astounding advances they’ve been
hiding. I don’t think we can make an
argument that Civil War didn’t have
time to touch on this idea at all, since they took the time to make Wakanda a
bigger player within the Accords than would make sense for the world’s
perception of it at the time (given the recent incident in Nigeria, I could see
T’Challa and T’Chaka being invited to the signing, but not T’Chaka giving a big
speech and certainly not him talking about finally wanting to share Wakanda’s
resources.) I feel like this is the sort
of oversight that comes from different perspectives – it’s far more likely that
patronizing attitudes from unknowing Americans will occur to a Black
director/screenwriter than a white production team.
Similarly, other than
the Wakandan cryo-chamber in the credits scene, we don’t really get any sense
of Wakanda’s technology (and even then, the same movie features a shot of
Siberian cryo-chambers old enough to be in an abandoned, seemingly-forgotten
facility.) There’s T’Challa’s Vibranium
suit, but as Shuri points out in Black
Panther, this version is “functional,” without a fraction of the cool-ass
technology she uses for his suped-up version in his own film. It could be argued that Marvel was saving the
awesome Wakandan technology for Black
Panther, and that makes sense, because the technology in that movie is
endlessly awesome. Still, I would’ve
liked to see at least a few veiled hints of it, or at least no scenes of
T’Challa using low-tech western stuff.
Watching Civil War this time,
I was really struck by the shot of T’Challa looking at a smartphone. Given Wakanda’s stylish sand tables and
holographic communicators powered by kimoyo beads, I have to think T’Challa’s
thoughts about smartphones would be similar to Okoye’s about guns: “so primitive.”
Finally, the Africanness
of T’Challa (and Wakanda, obviously,)
stand out so much more to me in Black
Panther. I love that Shuri’s lab is
decorated with African designs, and I love the amazing costuming for everyone
in the film. Nothing about Wakanda or
T’Challa apologize for their Africanness, and what’s more, they don’t have the
barest sense of any reason that they should.
The confidence and self-assurance that comes from never having been
colonized is palpable, and T’Challa’s well-tailored but very western clothes in
Civil War don’t have nearly the same
flair. Again, this is maybe something
that never occurred to the Russo brothers, or perhaps dressing T’Challa in
suits was their way of showing that he’s sophisticated. (Side note:
I also seemed to remember a scene where T’Challa dismisses Wakandan
beliefs about the afterlife as something his father believed in, not him, but
the scene is more ambiguous than I thought – it could be that T’Challa is only
making the distinction in that his father thought the afterlife was peaceful, responding to Natasha’s remark
on it. Either way, the impression does
distance T’Challa a little from Wakanda’s religion.)
But T’Challa – and
Wakanda – has never needed western trappings to be sophisticated, to be
“modern.” That’s the whole point. I love that T’Challa uses phrases like, “For
Bast’s sake!”, and that Wakanda’s techonologically-advanced weapons are based
on spears, not guns. At the end of Black Panther, when T’Challa goes to the
UN to open up Wakanda to the world, I love that the Dora Milaje who escort him
still have neck rings to go with their inconspicuous dresses, and I love the
glorious scarf T’Challa drapes over his chic black suit. I don’t think that’s something that Civil War quite understands about
T’Challa and Wakanda, and I’m not sure if it ever could have. Now that T’Challa and Wakanda have made their
proper debuts in the MCU, I hope Infinity War uses them (and the other Black Panther characters appearing in
that movie) as they ought to be.
