Major spoilers below for Black Panther.
Like most people in the world, I saw Black Panther this weekend. Given the reviews, I expected to like it, assuming the hype machine hadn’t built it beyond reasonable expectation. And in fact I did like it.
But it also emotionally wrecked me. I not only cried more during the movie than I think I’ve done since Life is Beautiful 20 years ago, I kept thinking about it hours after the movie ended and crying again.
What devastated me in this movie was not the (supposed) death of T’Challa, the film’s hero, or the death of Zuri, T’Challa’s beloved uncle and mentor. It was the death of the villain, Erik Killmonger.
Disney obviously has a thing for humanizing its villains (see: Kylo Ren or Maleficent) and we’ve certainly seen villains before who are a little sympathetic or who make a decent point, but what was so bold about Black Panther is that it didn’t just make you feel bad for Killmonger or give him a line or two that made you think — the movie made a powerful argument for his point of view.
When another character tells Killmonger, “Your heart is full of hatred; you’re not fit to be a king,” they’re right. He’s not. But his approach, however hateful, did achieve results. Wakanda wouldn’t have opened their borders if he had never burst through their gates. In some ways the trial by fire he put T’Challa through is what made him the worthy king he was destined to be.
Even though Wakanda “wins” in the end, there’s a powerful sense of loss for the man that Killmonger could have been if T’Chaka had made a different choice that night in 1992, and though his violent, self-centered approach made him unfit to be king, it did open T’Challa’s eyes to a perspective he sorely needed.
That said, Killmonger is not a good guy. It’s important that he’s presented as a worthy and frightening adversary to T’Challa. This is why it’s crucial that Killmonger wins (or seems to win) his initial battle with T’Challa so that we see him as a formidable opponent. If he had only been presented as a wounded young man, he wouldn’t have made a strong villain.
An important moment for his character as a villain is when he kills his love interest. He does it in cold blood, with barely a thought, because she’s disappointed him and is in his way. This is almost like a reverse “save the cat” moment – instead of a moment that drives empathy for his character, it’s a moment that cements him as frightening and beyond reach.
Another critical moment like this is when he orders all the heart-shaped herbs burned. It’s an upsetting moment because we know how important this plant is to Wakanda. He even physically attacks an innocent woman when he orders it done. Most movies with a villain have a “burn the heart-shaped herb” moment – something the villain does that has seemingly irreparable consequences and truly drives home their power and menace.
I don’t know if every villain needs to be this sympathetic or if every argument in a story needs to be this complex, but as our world grows more and more divided, I find I’m less interested in stories that paint conflicts as a simple right and wrong.
A TV show I’ve been loving, CW’s Black Lightning (coincidentally also about a black superhero with a cast that’s almost entirely people of color), does this really well. Almost every argument between two characters on that show, no matter who it’s between or what it’s about, makes a solid case for both sides of the conflict. It makes the story more engaging because I genuinely don’t know who is going to win, or even necessarily who I want to win.
My takeaway for my next script is to create a villain who doesn’t just have a sympathetic backstory or a decent zinger or two, but has a truly understandable point of view, even if the story ultimately rejects it. I also want to make a point in scenes of conflict to give both sides of the argument some solid ground.
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I see your point and you are not wrong with your perception but I think a better villain with a more sympathetic view would be Magneto in the mutant vs humans debate. His arguments and revolution basically parallels the oppression homosexuals and Jews have endured and he opts to take a stand (albeit an uncivil one) for his position.
We saw it last night, and it just broke me open. It did such a good job of showing the different ways and dimensions in which power can be abused. When T’Challa goes after Klaue in Korea, he’s George W. Bush, right? He doesn’t have to do it, he knows it’s risky, and he really has no business intruding on foreign soil — and Wakanda, still mourning the death of his father, really does need a king more than a warrior. Klaue wasn’t even behind the act of terror that killed T’Chaka! But T’Challa is too intent on what has become a personal vendetta for him. And his failure to see it through, and more importantly to focus on his people, helps open the door for Killmonger to win the support necessary to challenge him. He’s such a good villain, he almost made me feel some empathy for Donald Trump. Modeling these guys, in these ways, after old white Republican men is just a smart way to show that the point here isn’t that black people or citizens of other countries are somehow innately more noble than Americans.
But the movie refuses to settle for a simplistic, straightforward metaphor. It’s so confident about explicitly saying, “Black people are oppressed every day, all over the world, because the tools they need are kept from them.” It doesn’t deny that other people are oppressed, too, but it centers the particular struggle that a movie named Black Panther needs to center. God, how I hope this is all the beginning of something and not just a blip.
(I also really loved what a good villain Klaue became over the course of just two movies. There’s a touch of Hans Gruber in him when he lets the one museum security guy run a little ways before shooting him and then explains why he did that. You understand that yeah, this guy is greedy and awful, but that he’s also having a ton of fun being so creatively greedy and awful. I was sad to see him die, even though it was time.)
I was sad to see him die too! I agree that he was a super fun Gruberesque villain. (Sorry it took me so long to approve these comments, I realized I don’t have email notifications set up to tell me when someone comments!)
That’s a really good point that T’Challa’s mistake is what opened the door for Killmonger to get in and that that mistake was centered around T’Challa’s own personal growth and a key theme in the movie. It would have been way less satisfying if Killmonger had just bulldozed in without T’Challa basically leaving the door standing open.