Anthony and Joe Russo Colonize Wakanda and We Will Not Have It
By Che Broadnax
I’m not here to discuss plot specifics, or the fates of any characters in the film, or in the upcoming MCU films. I’m here to specifically talk about how Wakanda and the Wakandan characters were handled in Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War.
When Ludwig Goransson’s Black Panther theme begins playing, the rising interplay of drums before the triumphant horn section kicks in, the energy in the theater is palpable. By this point in Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War, directors Anthony and Joe Russo have delivered some solid spectacle featuring Tony Stark, Doctor Strange, and Spider-Man, a hilarious Thor in the mould of Ragnarok, and the most realistic stubby purple dude I’ve ever seen. The quips are on point, the visuals are dialed in. And a lot of this movie is just straight up in space. I dig it.
I’m ready to get that next Wakanda stamp on my passport.
We cut to a vast grassy hill, where King T’Challa — son of King T’Chaka and Queen Ramonda, the sovereign ruler of the nation of Wakanda, and its guardian, the Black Panther — walks with General Okoye, the greatest warrior of the land. And I wonder, why the king just walking down this random hill? And what these two talking about? And my heart sinks. This is not King T’Challa, this is not General Okoye. Don’t get me wrong, Chadwick Boseman and Danai Gurira are still inhabiting the characters. But something is amiss. They are engaged in conversation, not about the recent coup, or the reversal of thousands of years of Wakandan foreign policy, but rather about somebody. The White Wolf. And here he is, Bucky — The Winter Soldier, the MCU White Wolf — and, oh, T’Challa is presenting him with a new Vibranium arm.
HOLD UP. An arm? Arms? Weapons? Did King T’Challa just hand-deliver Wakandan arms to a Colonizer in his FIRST SCENE IN THE MOVIE? Bruh.
This scene didn’t pass the Blachdel test AT ALL.
Next time we go to Wakanda, it is so the Avengers can — you guessed it, Shuri — get a broken white boy fixed. So, now, we’re just using Wakanda for its advanced technology, right? That’s what it’s about? Open Wakanda to the rest of the world, and now it’s just “lemme get a piece.” I see how it is. The most advanced and secluded vending machine in the world. Well, okay, Shuri’s got more STEM chops than Bruce Banner, and Bruce humbly admits that. Okay. I’m okay. I see you, Bruce.
“Let’s check out a flick that exploits the Color…” — Ice Cube, Burn Hollywood Burn (Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Big Daddy Kane)
And then. Aw man, T’Challa’s ordering around his staff to get CAPTAIN AMERICA A SHIELD. You saw the new Shields they gave him? Those had some offensive capabilities, fam. T’Challa just got another Colonizer some Wakandan weapons.
Let me remind you that T’Challa just spent an entire movie trying to keep Wakandan weapons out of the hands of subjugated and oppressed members of the African Diaspora. And now he’s just giving out Vibranium Arms to any old Colonizer.
T’CHALLA
You killed my father, here, accept this Vibranium arm.
That’s pretty sporting of you.
ALSO T’CHALLA
I have to stop my cousin from arming black liberation efforts!
Whoa, T’Challa, you sure you’re the Black Panther?
ALSO T’CHALLA
Wakanda will not share its weapons, this is because war is not our way. I believe Wakanda can help the world by sharing its knowledge and culture.
Sharing culture? Not in this movie, T’Challa. Which is another good point. In Glasgow and New York we got to see cities, some sense of the culture, even insofar as its architecture. Wakanda is boiled down to a tower and a grassy hill with some woods at the end of them. The vibrant, thriving Wakanda of Black Panther is nowhere to be seen. Just like the Battle Rhinos.
In fact, the only reason the final confrontation of Infinity War takes place in Wakanda, is because the Avengers needed to borrow Princess Shuri’s superior intellect and knowledge, Wakanda’s superior weaponry, and a lot of labor for the coming battle.
So, at this point in the film, I’m basically just, what the fuck? Wakanda got colonized.
I’m not watching my Wakanda. I’m watching that dead British lady at the Museum of London’s Wakanda. I am seeing Wakanda through the Colonizer’s eyes. And what they see is: technology. Labor. Resources. A market for expensive American Coffee. An exotic locale for an NBC Sports tentpole event. Anthony and Joe Russo present us with an Okoye and T’Challa without their own character arcs, without clear needs or wants or story or relevance within the greater plot. They never pass the Blachdel Test. They are not even supporting characters, they are plot devices at best, pandering at worst.
And this, Matt Damon, is why representation matters both in front of and behind the camera. Ryan Coogler told a whole story which was also concerned with who gets to tell our stories. And then the Russo’s sucked the soul out of these beloved characters, and turned them into set dressing. Because Tony Stark needs more character arcs after three Iron Man films, two Avengers films, a Captain America film, and part of a Spider-Man film. How many times can he learn to balance his devil-may-care, maverick, narcissist side with responsibility to the city/woman/team/youthful ward/planet/reality he loves?
“How would you feel about playing a controversial negro?” — Joe Russo to Danai Gurira
I won’t lie. After I saw Black Panther, I knew there was no way Infinity War was going to be one fraction as powerful. But I wasn’t expecting a film which basically only included Wakanda and Wakandans to check off the list of “everything is in this movie!” I wasn’t expecting a film that if you took T’Challa out of the movie, literally nothing would change. The Black Panther legit did nothing but act as a courier. Okoye got to sass, and then get sidelined with all the other women during a special GLOW segment in a ditch. And the Russos saddle her with one of the worst lines of dialogue anybody could ever write for Okoye.
“When you said you were opening Wakanda to the rest of the world I thought we would get the Olympics, or maybe a Starbucks.” Fam. Did Okoye legit just say she thought they were opening up Wakanda to gentrification? A coffee shop? A seattle-based coffee chain, in Wakanda. Funnelling Wakandan resources out of Wakanda. Where them beans come from, Starbucks? Is Okoye really gonna buy some Rwandan coffee from a Colonizer company, so that primitive gun-toting Americans can siphon money out of Africa? You think Killmonger didn’t let the inner circle know how Starbucks been known to treat us? Why would Wakanda need any American businesses? They have no need of American anything. In the words of CIA Colonizer Agent Ross, “You guys have hover bikes?” Shuri thinks the work of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner is cute. You think these next level negroes want to eat at Denny’s?
And I can’t even begin to unpack the Olympics thing. Maybe Wakanda wants to give tax breaks and public funds to the construction of an NFL stadium there, too. What Wakanda really wants to do is open itself up to a whole bunch of Colonizer Corporations to swoop in and profit off of Black Excellence, then peace out. Let me remind everybody that within the MCU, Wakanda is so advanced, and is actually blessed with a variety of natural resources, that it has thrived for longer than the history of the nation-state. Wakandan developers aren’t scrambling to get rich off of Wakandan tax coffers by convincing Wakandan municipalities to host the Olympics. According to the academic study which assembled and analyzed the largest ever dataset regarding Olympic costs and cost overruns, “[T]o host the Olympic Games is to take on one of the most financially risky type of megaproject that exists.” (Flyvbjerg, Bent and Stewart, Allison, Olympic Proportions: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Olympics 1960–2012 (June 1, 2012). Saïd Business School Working Papers, Oxford: University of Oxford, 23 pp.. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2238053 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2238053)
Wakanda is so advanced, in fact, and so wealthy, and has operated without outside influence for so long, that their economy may simply look nothing like what we in the outside world would consider an economy.
For Okoye, such a fierce believer in Wakanda and its ways that she is willing to give everything for it without hesitation to casually joke about the globalization of Wakanda makes no sense. It’s out of character. And it’s just a retread of Shuri’s Coachella/Disneyland joke from Black Panther (which makes more sense, since Shuri is more familiar and accepting of outsider culture than the somewhat conservative General Okoye, and since T’Challa takes her to California).
So. Yes, Joe and Anthony Russo traveled to Wakanda, and actually Columbused a Wakandan joke, tried to tell it again, and broke they own anks, because they didn’t understand the characters or the joke. Did they think that all Wakandan Women got sass and it doesn’t matter which one sasses? My eyes hurt from all that rolling. And this movie isn’t without funny jokes (I see you Rhodey, and Thor knows he my guy). So, I know the Russos and writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus understood some of the characters. Just not Wakanda. And I think I know why.
Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War has already crossed the $1B global milestone, and its done it faster than any other film in history. It’s obvious that a lot of people are seeing it, and it is not without merit. The film evokes the colorful, imaginative, multi-panel battles of superhero crossover event comics, with a diverse cast of quirky characters, and plenty of banter. The spectacle was legit, different powers and fighting styles rendered creatively and (as) believably (as one can expect given the content). There were even some solid character moments for several folks between the slugfests, including the first attempt in three films to make me care about Gamora (I still don’t, but that’s because the film burdens its alleged most dangerous woman in the galaxy with the triple weights of daddy issues, a love interest, and being a device by which other, more man-esque characters are motivated and/or developed).
And that’s what makes this betrayal of Wakanda and its characters so much worse. Two months after Black Panther showed the world Wakanda, Infinity War drew the veil right back over. The film doesn’t attempt to give Wakandans complex inner lives (or even, really outer lives), culture, or motivations outside of “help good guys, fight bad guys.” Infinity War capitalized on our love of Wakanda, while giving nothing back. Empty, misappropriated gestures. It casually ignores the questions and promises of Black Panther, the most successful individual superhero movie to date, relegating self-actualized Black characters from an inspired and varied un-colonized Black culture to the roles of sassy black women and royal golf caddy who all have the same sense of humor and philosophical point of view and make interchangeable jokes. I have written at length about the museum heist sequence from Black Panther and its role in contrasting the ways in which Colonizers tell the stories of Black cultures with the way that people of the African Diaspora tell their own stories. The difference between Ryan Coogler’s Wakanda and the Russo’s Wakanda feels as stark as the difference between the crowded market streets and hover monorails of The Golden City’s Steptown, and the cold British exhibit — a few tools and weapons set out for perusal, decontextualized, not for celebration.
Thanks guys, for including us this time.
