The juice they gave him before both challenge fights removes the benefit of the purple berries.
Yeah, but just like before the fight with Gorilla Grodd, Whittaker gave him some goo to drink, his veins turned black, he fell to his knees and then lost his powers.
To get them back he had to get re-juiced. The first time it was in the red sand, and the second time in the snow.
Okay. That explains it better. Why did they give it to him for the first fight then? He hadn’t already drunk the purple heart juice at that point, had he? This is all very confusing to me. I thought he was supposed to get the juice when he became king. Why did they need to remove it from him before the first challenge, before he even became king?
Sure, he was powered up for the intro fight with the slavers.
I had forgotten about that. But why? He hadn’t been made king at that point, had he? It was before the challenge that made him king?
He was already the Black Panther at that point – his father had retired from that role, but not from that of king. T’Challa also had the the juice for Civil War
The heart-herb stuff is like an on/off switch. T’Challa starts the movie powered. In the first challenge, he drinks the herb and his Black Panther power is turned off so that it will be a fair fight for any normal human challenger. He wins, and then he drinks more juice to turn his power back on and see his father in the dream world. Killmonger then challenges him, so he gets another shot of juice to once again turn his power off. He “dies” and then Killmonger gets the juice to gain the BP power as the new king. T’Challa’s mother and sister steal the last herb and bring it to the unconscious T’Challa. He gets powered up and has the final fight with Killmonger.
I think it went something like this:
- T’Chaka dies unexpectedly in Civil War. They hurriedly make T’Challa king, giving him the suit and the berries and whatever. I think you have to accept that this happened offscreen.
- Now that Civil War is over, T’Challa returns to Wakanda so they can do everything right and make T’Challa a legit king – do the challenge fight and all that. They undo the berries and they have the fight.
- T’Challa wins and gets to keep his kingship. They feed him more berries.
- Killmonger shows up to challenge T’Challa. They undo the berries again, and they have the second fight.
- Killmonger wins, gets more berries. T’Challa gets the stolen berries. They fight again.
I think this is correct, but I’m not sure they are always very clear about the King/Black Panther demarcation. Is the king always Black Panther? Can the Black Panther be separate from the king? If they are separate, then do they challenge for BP and king separately?
So now they’re out of purple heart berries? Or I suppose they can always just say that they’re at the top of some remote mountain somewhere, in order to get more.
It’s never wise to store everyone in one place. Losing and gaining powers again, no matter how it’s done, is a pretty regular superhero kind of theme. It’s kind of a fun one too… if they do it right.
Ah, I think you’re right. T’challa ate the last one! No more Black Panthers after him. :(
-Tom
So I finally saw this last night. I enjoyed it, but like many here I thought the last 1/3 or so was kind of a let down. Also the King by combat thing was well, stupid. A modern society ruled over by a WCW cage match winner didn’t make much sense.
I also questioned why when Killmonger shows up with Klaue the BP doesn’t mention that he took Klaue away from them to begin with. For all BP knew Klaue never got out of his chair before KM killed him.
Wouldn’t Wakanda technology kind of make Tony Stark’s Iron Man seem like old technology?
I look forward to finding out in about a month!
I imagine Captain America (based on the trailers) is now wearing a suit with the properties of the Black Panthers suit. Bullet proof and energy absorbing.
Nah, that’s pretty clearly just his Avengers suit with the star blacked out. Sort of symbolic that he’s not part of that team anymore, but if Wakanda made him a whole new suit you’d have to think it would be a completely new style.
Now the new shield from the trailer is obviously completely Wakanda.
Kinda like how the background premise of Logan super bummed me out to the point of not being able to enjoy the movie, I felt myself unconsciously tuning out after Killmonger burned the berries. As ludicrous as some parts of Wakandan throne ascension rights were (very much with @Scuzz on the WCW Cage Match thing), the ceremonial passing of the dual titles of Black Panther and Monarch, the journey to a land beyond death which could possibly be opening the door to the existence of souls in the Marvelverse if we’re to believe it’s not pure hallucination, and indeed, just a bedrock element of the culture of this fascinating nation just gets wiped out.
Sure, it does a great job of selling Killmonger’s bonafides as an asshole and an effective nation-toppler, but I just couldn’t get over how sad that moment made me!
P.S. - I finally saw this over the weekend and apart from the above complaints more or less loved it through and through. Easily one of my top Marvel movies, full stop.
Also one of like 3-4 movies I’ll watch from 2018, so strong contender for best of the year already!
Yay! Glad you got to see it in the theater Armando. I feel you. I’m the same way. I watch about 3 movies in the theater each year, so I want those 3 to be totally worth it. In this case, the decision was taken away from me. My brother bought tickets, so I arranged to be “at work” so I could get away without my wife finding out and being jealous that she was looking after our son while I was out watching a movie.
Nah, you know they will find a single plant of the monarch-berries growing in some rocky soil in the mountains somewhere, and carefully transplant it back to their grove. In fact, that will probably be the entire plot of BP 2: The Quest for Frankenberries.
You know, we never actually see how the mantle of Black Panther is passed down.
I don’t think it’s necessarily simultaneous, as T’Challa implies in Civil War that he was already operating as the panther and now will be ascending to king as a result of T’Chaka’s death.
I wonder if you still have to be in line for the throne to be the BP, or if that could be someone else entirely.
I thought the death battle for a crown thing just helped emphasize that isolation doesn’t mean perfection. Who knows if they would have changed their ways if the rest of the world knew about and said something like hey… doesn’t seem too democratic to us. The exclusion of the fifth tribe and the obvious bigotry against them was also telling.
Without those these internal conflicts Wakanda might have seemed perfect and why mess with perfection?
It’s a non-violent country armed to the teeth that doesn’t really fight anyone…