Wakandan Diplomacy
November 17, 2022
By NZB3
I don’t do spoiler warnings; That was your spoiler warning for Wakanda Forever (2022) which I’ve just come from viewing. There’s plenty of disappointment to go around about this film but I have not seen anyone else take my angle which is the terrible culture of diplomacy on show in this latest Marvel sequel film.
The main plot revolves around the elites of two advanced and highly xenophobic nations. One is the imaginary advanced African state of Wakanda, the other the imaginary advanced underwater state of Atlantis (renamed for in the film itself for some sort of trademarking reasons.)
The subplot revolves around the characters played by Martin Freeman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Apparently they’re government spys who used to be married to each other around about the time Seinfeld was wrapping up in 1998 and The Office (2001) was getting going. The routine involving these two was uneventful and boring. It relied heavily on Freeman’s character putting some weird debt of honor he didn’t convey at all, or ‘sell’ to the audience, above and beyond his duty to his country or boss or ex-wife or even himself.
The gynocentric main plot consists of elite women alternating between condescending at people who don’t come from their country while also being useless themselves. The protagonists mock regular folks for having primitive technology like cars and mobile phones which is supposed to show us how advanced and futuristic and clever they are. Yet when it comes to being wise and in particular diplomatic they suck!
Perhaps they should suck. Wakanda is a culture based on a Feudal system of compeeting lordships who choose their soverign by a trial-by-combat ritual. The Atlantis culture has seemingly been culturally arrested for some 400 years doing what their God King tells them to which seems to involve a lot of playing with seaweed in the dark deep ocean. For reasons unknown both of these isolationist states that never make contact with outsiders are also martial societies able to field large and proficient armies. You’ll have to just let that one go the same way Atlantis has never had a visitor yet happens to have a handy supply of deep sea visitor suits ready to go.
When the Wakandan King died in Captain America The Winter Soldier (2014) his son, Black Panther, got a whole vengence subplot. He resolved it so well, transitioning from revenge to justice that I put it in my post about the historic Polynesian Panthers in 1970s New Zealand. Apparently BP missed the essential last step in The Heroes Journey though because he did not take these ‘learnings’ back to his people. So, here was a sequel movie where all new people get to make the same old mistakes over again.
You would like to think these ‘highly civilised’ ancient people at the top of planet earth’s human food chain would have elite rulers more diplomaticly adept than anyone. Instead, like the Atlantis flying ‘fish man’ they only know about threats and revenge. You’d have to watch the movie again to get exact notes on the Game Theory strategic trees involved but I can tell you the basics.
The surviving members of the Black Panther family along with Atlantis Fishman are threatened by a clever black American girl who thinks she’s the next Iron Man. At no point do they negotiate with her to contain her invention which threatens to break their global duopoly on magic metal (“vibranium.”) The 500yo fishman insists she be killed and Black Panther’s Mom insists she be kidnapped back to her country. Force.
To settle this dispute about who gets to kill/kidnap the two parties get together to discuss the situation fight each other. This is followed up by a kidnapping and a murderous escape during another scene where Black Panther’s Mom and Fishman threaten each other on the beach. “I’ll tell the world about your secret country!” she says. “Oh yeah,” he leans in, “well I’ll kill your daughter and burn your country down if you don’t do Thing-I-Want so there! It’s petty and ridiculous. More people die.
By Act 3 all the Black Panther family are dead save one. Mom drowns trying to swim with one arm in a dress saving some unknown kid in trouble because they wouldn’t listen. Apparently more important than Wakanda’s Queen. But, then, a the Wakandan Government is apparently very short-handed when it comes to good help. The Royal Family seem to have to do everything, especially after they give the sack to their one General/Bodyguard. Had to recruit a school teacher to be their rescue team and even the recruiting had to be done personally by the Queen!?
The last Black Panther family member takes a performance enhancing drug and carrys on with the fighting and the threats. Vengance has consumed her. Lots of people on both sides die but this is downplayed by the film. The last Royal Panther kills Fishman to within an inch of his life and now she’s won demands he be essentially a vassal king to her in exchange for his life. “Yeah, deal!” he readily agrees. And we’re done.
I don’t think anybody learned a damn thing. If Martin Freeman had been aware of how he had been repaid for siding with Wakanda he should have been apalled with their low-decile-primary-school-level problem solving skills. They cry, they yell, they blame, they fight, they kill, they plot, they mock. They make a mess of the world, wipe out the people they’re supposed to protect, all while talking about how amazing their civilisation is compared to the others.
It’s a scary statement on the world we live in where audiences don’t have a problem with this sort of thing. No wonder the world is full of Statists. For a better audience, a more Libertarian audience, a better film would have had to be made with characters and plots that behaved like grownups. Civilisation is about who people are not about how good their AI is or that they have flying cars or amaing Kung Fu. Not about how they prioritise costume changes and hair re-organisation opperations that take hours when every second counts! Not about how they can 3D print plants and blow things up with water bombs. The Feudal elites in this film had all those things and more so we were supposed to think they were good, better, civilised. The clothes make the man? You are your shoes, your haircut, your mask, your ride? No way. They were all petty idiots who happen to have fancy tech and fine clothing. I wish audiences would see that because if we can’t see it in film we wont see it in real life either.
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