History: Shuri is the younger sister of T’Challa, only daughter of King T’Chaka, and thus a princess of the nation of Wakanda. Because she is the younger child of the king there was no expectation of her taking the throne or the mantle of Black Panther but the young girl desperately desired the title. She trained for years to achieve this goal, particularly after her father’s murder and her uncle being chosen to succeed him. Unfortunately, her overprotective mother interfered with her attempt to challenge for the mantle and by the time she arrived she discovered that T’Challa had returned from his studies aboard and won the title, and the kingdom, himself
Undeterred, she continued training and hoping for the opportunity to present itself again (aside from a stint being a party girl due to experiencing a traumatic event, but there’s word limit here). The day came when T’Challa was mortally wounded at the hands of Doctor Doom and Shuri was unexpectedly chosen to undergo the trial to succeed her brother. She completed the trials, but she was denied the powers of the Black Panther by Bast the Panther God who declared her motives to be about pride and not about a selfless desire to protect her people. However, she proved herself worth by risking her life to battle Morlun in order to protect her wounded bother and the people of Wakanda, earning Bast’s blessing at last.
Shuri rose to become the new Black Panther and the Queen of Wakanda, ruling in her brother’s place when the need arises.
Beta Says: I know that the MCU is a little notorious for making change to characters they adapt into movies, but I’m not sure if we’ve seen many who have deviated from the source material as much as Shuri. In the comics she was a serious warrior who coveted the Black Panther mantle and went on a years’ long journey before she eventual earned it, while MCU-Shuri is jokey genius scientist who couldn’t be less interested in replacing her bother. This is all fine and good except that I fear we could be seeing another example of the original character being replaced with the movie version, with all the interesting aspects of Shuri pre-MCU fading away.
More about the deadlier of the species after the jump.
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Let’s see
if I remember how it goes.
Because I’m not going to the movies as much as I used to
(partly due to new fatherhood and partly due to the pandemic that is still
happening goddamnit) I wasn’t able to see a ton of movies in 2022, and a lot of
the ones on this list I ended up catching on streaming or renting them. It’s
all very deflating. So, there were loads of good movies I didn’t get to see that
probably would have made the list if I had. No point in getting all mad at me.
Also note that that this is not a “Best of 2022” list but
rather a “My Favorites of 2022” list, meaning it’s just one dude giving his opinion.
Feel free to share your favorite movies in the comments.
Quick note: while they did not make the list, I’d still like to
make special mention of Downton Abbey: A New Era, as of writing the final installment
of the British TV/movie series that my wife and started watching at the beginning
of 2022, and Do Revenge, which was a fun but flawed dark teen comedy. I think Maya
Hawke has the tools to be a pretty big deal in Hollywood.
I realize that it’s been basically a whole year since my last post, which is bad. In the unlikely event that any of my original readership happen to see this, I sympathize with the radio silence. Here’s the thing; today is the ninth anniversary of the first post I ever made and I figured I might as well throw up my annual Top Ten Favorite Movies list. However, one year from now is the damn ten-year anniversary, which is both hilarious and terrifying. It does seem like I should do something for a milestone that big, but also it feels like it would be very lame to do something for it without having touched the site in years and that there should be content leading up to it. So…food for thought?
Anyway, I somehow managed to watch a decent number of movies this year despite having one of the strangest and most life changing eighteen months of my life. But, as always, I managed to miss several key films over the course of the year, Bad Times at the El Royale being a particularly annoying omission. So if you’re favorite film isn’t on the list then that may be why. Also, this is a subjective list of my personal FAVORITE films, not necessarily the objectively best movies of the year. You may disagree with the list; that’s okay. Your opinion is valid. We’re all friends here. Feel free to post your own list in the comments. Something a little different this year; I’m going to throw up some Panda Scores as well. For old times sake. Before I get into the list, let me shout out a few movies that didn’t quite make the list but that I want to give a little love to. First of all, Avengers: Infinity Wars was actually on the original version of this list but was bumped off at the last minute. Still a great movie, especially if you think of Thanos as being the protagonist. Game Night ended up being a better than it had any right to be and is a comedy that worked on just about every level. The Wife features a killer performance from Glenn Close that may well earn her a well deserved Oscar. And finally, Deadpool 2 in many ways felt like a more complete movie then its predecessor and continues to show that Ryan Reynolds is one of the best actors bringing a comic book superhero to life today. Too bad about its Women in Refrigerators moment.
Sorry, Captain America. Maybe next year... (Also, I don't feel so good)
They've come a long way from being a bankrupt joke
A blog in November? What madness is this? As I suggested a while back I have decided not to participate in National Novel Writing Month this year, partly because of all my work with my book earlier this year but main due to having recently started a new job that would not allow the time to writing 50,000 words in a month and still have anything resembling a life (actually my new job doesn’t leave much time for any writing at all, to my great chagrin). Anyway Marvel Studios formally announced their movie schedule through the year 2019 (and for some reason this is considered a fine move) and apparently it made everyone I know go insane with anticipation. Some of the films sound pretty cool and others one sound kind of “meh”. I thought it would be fun to briefly at all of Marvel’s upcoming flicks and judge mercilessly despite knowing almost nothing about any of them. And hey, maybe you don’t know much about the characters in the film and this may be a nice learning experience. Of course supposedly a list of Marvel movies was leaked earlier this year and I distinctive recall many people on my Facebook feed losing their shit over it; taking it completely at face value. I recall being very skeptical about it, especially with World Word Hulk, Captain America: The Fallen Son, and Avengers: Civil War as none of them really made any thematic sense to me based on what had already been established. (Though, let’s face it, Marvel could have easily changed key details of their films after the word got out but we either way it’s hard to know of sure) In any case I didn’t even want to talk about those rumors until things were verified. Now that the official list of films have come out I thought I’d go through them (and since I had a few friends who asked my thoughts about it I get it all out of my system at once).
Congratulations, suckers; you f**king fell for it!
So today we’ll look at all of Marvel Studios’ upcoming films. This does not include the upcoming X-Men, Spider-Man or Fantastic Four flicks as they are produced by different studios (Fox and Sony respectively) nor will be looking at DC Comics' line-up partly because they probably deserve their own topic and partly because I don’t want to angrily ramble right now. I mean, I may still do that today but at least this way I’m not starting out already being annoyed and pissed off at the source material. (Doctor Doom is an angry hacker? Really?) Marvel Studios’ future after the jump.
[WARNING: While most of my ramblings are just conjecture I may be spoiling plot points for future films simply by taking about the comics they're based on. Read at your own risk.]
Background: The latest in a long line of rulers of the highly advanced nation of Wakanda T’Challa operates as The Black Panther, a ceremonial title that not only gives him control of the various tribes in the country but also access to a special heart shaped fruit (And a panther god I guess) that grant him superhuman senses and peek physical abilities. With these powers, in conjunction with his highly trained skills in martial arts, strategy and science, he battles evil in Wakanda as well as abroad as a member of the Avengers and trusted ally (And sometimes member) of the Fantastic Four.
Beta Says: Created by Stan Lee and Jack “The King” Kirby Black Panther is the first modern black superhero, with super powers and everything. That alone makes him the most important character I’ll be talking about because he paved the way for everyone else. Also, despite being the first he completely avoids the trap of offensive stereotyping that many black characters in other media had fallen into in the years before and since; he is neither an “uneducated thug” nor is he a “jungle dwelling primitive”. He is a well educated and worldly noble who is one part scientist and one part warrior. In a lot of ways he’s like Batman if the latter was the head of his own country (Which would likely be called “Batopia”). He is also something of a heroic counterpoint to Doctor Doom, ruler of Latveria, and the two have indeed battled each other over the years (But really Doom will fight anyone given the chance).
He’s also managed to stay relevant throughout the last 40+ years. While wouldn’t receive his own owning comic for another seven years following his debut (In the critically acclaimed cult classic Jungle Action) he continues to appear regularly to this day, though unfortunately all his solo titles were eventually canceled. Currently he stars in Black Panther: The Man Without Fear, a book he recently inherited from Daredevil, though he’s currently depowered and strangely not actually calling myself “Black Panther” despite the book’s name. He is also married to the sometimes leader of the X-Men, the mutant known as Storm in a move that completely baffles me to this day. I assume that the writers and editors said to themselves one day “Hey Black Panther is black. You know who else is black? Storm. They should totally get married!” More on that another day.
Coming Soon..."Black Panther: One More Day"
In which his marriage is magically ended and we don't have to explain it
Sadly Black Panther, despite his historical relevance and unique look and origin, has probably never really been more than a second-tier hero in Marvel Comics. While I’d like to think of T’Challa being able to stand at the same level as Spider-Man, Captain America and Iron Man, but the cold fact is that he’s just not there. A lot of this has to do with the fact that his solo titles don’t ever last long enough for his to reach such status, probably because his solo titles don’t earn the numbers they need to keep the series going that long. That is such a shame because the character has so much potential within the Marvel Universe. For the longest time Black Panther was Marvel’s top black character but that status was fairly recently, and arguably I guess, usurped by another, jive talking, character in the pages of New Avengers (But more him another time). Still things are getting better for the character as he has had a recent cartoon series on BET (Which has since been canceled) and appears as a regular on Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Its well known that Marvel tends to push character when they have strong media attention on them. After all Blade was a third-tier character at best for most of his existence but became a household name when his movie came out in 1998. So that said it is likely that the best chance the Panther has on being a “Top Guy” is the successful release of the constantly delayed/trapped in movie hell film that has been talked about since 1992 with no real results. Recently there has been some rumblings of things moving on that front meaning there’s still hope. So long as a good script can be written, a good director can be found, and Wesley Snipes is kept far away from everything hopefully within the next five years things will have turned around for for the King of Wakanda…both in the comics and in pop culture.
By the way I despise the idea that anything outside of the comic book themselves can potentially affect the characters so drastically but that’s basically how the medium has worked since Superman started showing up on the radio.
In any event Black Panther is one of the few black characters starring in their own ongoing series so if you’ve ever thought that there aren’t enough high profile black superheroes in comics the best way to tell Marvel this is to go to your local comic book store and check out Black Panther: The Man Without Fear and possibly some older trade paperbacks as well. Next time we’ll be taking a look at another character who uses a big cat motif but who is a far more morally ambiguous character.
Because "The Incredible Black Panther" just doesn't pop, you know
For more on the Black Panther click here. Also check out BLACKSUPERHERO.COM for a giant list, and profiles, of black comic book characters for many different companies.
