[ SECRET POST #4225 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4225 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01. [SPOILERS for Voltron?]




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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #605.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

God yeah, why does anyone feel bad for that asshole? I get he had a rough childhood and he's rightfully pointing out the institutionalized racism that black people outside of Wakanda face. But he's a murderous piece of shit. I didn't even think he deserved a gentle sunset death. I was pretty surprised the movie even went that direction, or why anyone thinks his death scene was poignant.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, I can understand it more with Killmonger because he did have actual redeeming qualities and some kind of justified political arguments. He's still a villain overall but like, you can have people who are undeniably villains and bad people that you still feel bad for.

[(Anonymous)]

Wait, what were his redeeming qualities? Honest question, because I have zero recollection of them. Besides having a sympathetic childhood, I don't remember anything about him being morally gray. His political arguments are literally to kill all the white people as well as all the black people that stand in his way.

[(Anonymous)]

He had a valid point about the neutrality and inactivity of Wakanda being a bad thing overall.

[osidiano]

Uh, I gotta agree with the other anon who replied: while Killmonger might be a more charismatic villain, he didn't really have any more redeeming qualities or justified stance than Thanos. "Murder people to 'fix' the problem" isn't a viable solution to any argument, political or otherwise.

[(Anonymous)]

"Murder people to 'fix' the problem" isn't a viable solution to any argument, political or otherwise.

This seems like a really, really strong overgeneralization

Not that Thanos or Killmonger are justified, but I don't think you can say that kind of statement across the board

[(Anonymous)]

His defining moment for me was him killing his girlfriend without a second thought.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't feel bad for the girlfriend, who was also presumably a murdering criminal, but he was killing innocent people. When he killed that old guy in Wakanda, you knew he was a total sociopath.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you mean Zuri? The guy he knew as Uncle James? The guy who disappeared the night his father died? The guy who knew him and abandoned him? The guy he decided was complicit in his father's murder? I mean, Zuri didn't deserve to be killed or anything, but he wasn't exactly innocent. None of the adults in that situation were making good decisions.

[nightscale]

I liked him as a character but I don't necessarily feel super bad for him?

Like I can see how he ended up like he did and if life had given him a different hand he could have been a different person, which wasn't meant to be which is where some vague sympathy comes in for me, he wasn't really given much of a chance after T'Chaka killed his dad and left him orphaned.

But the dude was still 100% down with murdering anyone that got in his way, his girlfriend included, he had some good points within his rhetoric, but he was still very much a bad dude.

Fun character though.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel bad for him less because he has ~redeeming~ qualities than because he's so damn *tragic*, and I mean that in like...a greek drama sense, more than a freudian excuse woobie sense.

to me the most tragic thing about him isn't the dead dad, it's whole weight of the postcolonial narrative - he wants to return to his wakandan heritage but the only path out of poverty that he sees available to him is the military, which trains him and uses him to commit more atrocities, and even when he's not working for the CIA anymore he's still using their playbook. when he burns the sacred grove and ross straight up admits he learned that from us, from the people he wants most to fight against with Wakanda's strength, but now he's still doing it because that's how he knows how to fight - that's poetic greek tragedy type shit.

And the structure of the film ties it to the inescapable legacy of colonial violence globally, so it has that proper Inescapable Tragic Weight feel to it, even if on an individual level he still always has a choice. And Michael B Jordan sells the hell out of Killmonger as someone who's resonating with and being an avatar for that pain, and it's bigger than one person could ever be and he fails to beat it and be better.

And T'Challa is the hero because he *is* better than the legacy of his forebears - but he had a much better foundation for it.

I suspect that whether people feel sympathy for Killmonger probably comes down to whether they're willing/able to engage with the film on that level, or whether they stick on the literal and individual. And honest to god, that's not a criticism! There are plenty of other pieces of media that I know are doing a thematic thing but I can't get over object-level things that are unforgivable to me.

Different people will be swept away by the evocative choices of some texts but not others, and that's okay.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for saying this so well - it's why I thought Killmonger was an effective villain.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly, great post

[(Anonymous)]

I completely agree with everything you said. I also think the reason why Killmonger made such an effective villain is on some level, he’s kind of right. How much suffering for Black People could have been prevented if, during the time of the slave trade or the era of Imperialism, Wakanda had stepped out of the shadows and was like, “You all are going to stop this right now and if you don’t, our super high tech weaponry is going to make you stop?” His means are wrong and he, himself, is trapped into a toxic ideology born from his time in the US and the military, but he has a point. Movie also works because Killmonger’s beliefs are echoed by Nakia, who has similar beliefs but hasn’t been corrupted by the same kind of toxic ideology that Killmonger has.

In addition, Killmonger is also a compelling villain for reasons that are more personal to T’Challa. T’Challa is forced to accept that his beloved father majorly screwed up. He killed Killmonger’s father and rather than do anything to help his troubled nephew, he abandoned him, leaving Killmonger to work things out on his own. That’s a pretty major step T’Challa has to undergo, reconciling what he knows about his father with his father’s own actions. In doing so, T’Challa is forced to mature, accept that however much he loved his father, his father was human and made mistakes, big and small. In doing so, he comes to a more balanced idea of who his father was.