Tag: Regine Gilbert

Maurice Cherry:
All right, I am so excited to have all of you back again for this conversation around Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. The first conversation that we had was literally historic. You can go listen to it in the Smithsonian’s Permanent Archives. But before we really jump into this, I want everyone to introduce themselves. Starting off with Reginé.

Reginé Gilbert:
Hello, everyone. I’m Reginé Gilbert. I’m an industry assistant professor at New York University, and I am living in Brooklyn.

Maurice Cherry:
Jordan.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. Hey, my name’s Jordan Green. I’m out here in Seattle, Washington. I work for Boeing in the virtual airplane program as a UX designer.

Maurice Cherry:
And Paul.

Paul Webb:
I am Paul Webb, a designer developer. I just like making stuff currently residing in Cupertino, California.

Maurice Cherry:
And you all know me by this point, but if not, I’m Maurice Cherry. I’m the founder and host of Revision Path. So let’s talk about this movie. And I would say to anyone listening by this point, we are spoiling the whole movie. So if you have not seen the movie yet, you may want to see it before you listen to this episode. If you haven’t seen it and you still want to listen, it’s totally up to you. But we’re spoiling the entire movie. So let’s go ahead and jump into the plot. And I want to give a rundown of the plot, and I want us to go over it before we really get into the deeper meanings and symbolism and things that we all experience in the movie. But let’s start off with where the movie starts. It takes place, I think it jumps right into the big elephant in the room, which is the death of T’Challa.

One thing I thought that was interesting is how both of the Black Panther movies begin with the death. The first movie begins with the death of T’Challa’s father, King T’Chaka. And then now we’re sort of thrust into what almost seems like an emergency room-type situation with Shuri drastically trying to synthesize something to save her brother T’Challa who passes away. So the movie already knows that the viewing public know that T’Challa is dead. And, of course, the actor who played him, Chadwick Boseman, has also passed. And so we go right into it. What did you all think about that?

Jordan Green:
Tears were shed, right?

Reginé Gilbert:
Tears were shed in the theater. And what I felt from that moment was that it was a moment of silence for all of us.

Jordan Green:
I really appreciate that Ryan Coogler and the whole cast really captured the chaoticness of the death, just how sudden it feels, how gut-wrenching it feels, how heartbreaking it feels, right? The whole opening scene was so masterly done. And I think for me, I think that’s the best way you could handle an actor, especially an actor who was really carrying the film, really carrying that franchise. That was his deal. I think facing it head-on and just the powerlessness that all of the characters feel and then having that just be around the meta moment of the powerlessness that everyone felt around Chadwick Boseman’s colon cancer. It was just, I’m getting choked up just thinking about it right now.

Maurice Cherry:
And I think the fact that they, I mean, even worked that sort of into the film to say that. I mean, we hear this I think a bit later on from Nakia about how she knew, but he didn’t tell anybody, which of course also alludes to something we find out near the end of the movie, which we’ll get to in a bit. But very much similar to in real life, where only the people that were really the closest to Chadwick knew of his illness.

And so it takes place, I think if people have watched this movie, they probably, I’m sure have watched Avengers End Game and all that stuff. Shuri was affected by the blip. She ended up coming back five years later. So the beginning of the movie is a little bit, I’m not really sure where it takes place in the whole MCU timeline, but it thrusts us right into this, I guess, franticness of Shuri trying to save to T’Challa. And then of course you have the ensuing funeral procession afterwards, with all the whites and them going through the sort of main thoroughfare in Wakanda, and then it flashes to one year later. So I think it’s interesting that the film doesn’t try to sit in that for too long. It gets right to what we all know, and then it’s now, here’s sort of the rest of the story.

So it picks up a year later. And what we know, I think certainly from the end of the first Black Panther, is that Wakanda is now open to the world in that not so much in a travel or trade or commerce sense, but it’s existence is now a known entity in the world. And so it’s interesting how geopolitics is a big factor in the entire movie. It opens up, well, Wakanda has been under pressure to share their resources with the rest of the world. And it’s sort through this address that Ramonda gives in this really striking purple regal outfit at the United Nations that she gives this address. And we learn about these sort of outside factors that have been trying to usurp Wakanda’s natural resources. That’s where we end up, of course, hearing the Dora Milaje again, we get introduced to Aneka, who’s played by Michaela Cole, and there’s almost like a target on Wakanda’s back in a way because of its resources.

Paul Webb:
That was one of my favorite scenes. She was just like, you all are trying to comfort us. Well, we don’t protect by bringing for fear of weaponry, we protected for fear of you. Talking to all the colonizers in the room. I was like, oh, sheesh. And then made the mercenaries who tried to hijack one of their facilities do the perp walk into the UN, man, France was looking like, and then she spoke in French to that woman, like, well.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah. And that’s one of the things, when we think about the design of this and all the things in this movie being done by design, one of the things that I think is really important about this film is language and the fact that language was used in a way that someone’s mother tongue was used with them. So when they brought those soldiers in to that room, she didn’t say in English, she spoke in French to the French woman. And throughout the movie we saw the transition of language so many times. And I think that’s an important piece, that’s by design throughout the movie.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, I’m getting excited because I’m just like, there were so many great things that were done in that scene. The fact that it’s Coogler’s vision, but the fact that the two countries that were pressuring Wakanda to share vibranium was France and the United States. The fact that France deployed its own troops locally to the Wakanda Embassy as an act of war was such a beautiful master stroke of reflecting world politics. And it was just the, I know Maurice, you’re doing the recount, but the fact that we end up going to Haiti later.

And so you have this really interesting and really beautiful way that Ryan Coogler is like, this is… The whole movie is just like, we’re going to make you sad, and also imperialism is the real enemy. And so the whole movie is this call, really literally a call in response of these are the world pressures, pressuring this African nation to share the resources and not really talking about France and the United States and Britain, really, were exploiting the hell out of Africa and they really didn’t touch on the Dutch or anything like that. But that was really great. The fact that they used, I don’t know if anybody else picked up on this, but the fact that they used different colors to symbolize which language was being spoken at what time.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
I love that.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah, I love that, too.

Jordan Green:
It was just so beautiful and it was just such a beautiful transition for you to know and just a really wonderful way to tell the audience, oh, now in case you don’t know, they’re speaking Talokanil, right? In case you don’t know, they’re speaking Wakandan, and the heroes were in yellow and blue, and then the white was for all of the colonizer places. It was just such a beautiful, beautiful master stroke because they did that with Spanish and English, and it was wonderful. I just thought that was such a nice touch.

Maurice Cherry:
I really love the way that language was so fluid throughout the entire movie. And this sort of effortless switch between, like you said, English and there’s French, there’s Spanish, there’s Wakandan, what was it? The Talokan language that they were speaking. All of that just seamlessly going between different environments and different cultures and different sorts of parts of the movie. Since we’re talking about Talokan, that’s sort of what we get to right after this scene is the CIA is trying to extract vibranium from the source and then they basically come across or they’re ambushed by these Talokan warriors.

And what I thought was interesting, and I don’t know if any of you all caught this, but the sort of siren song that Talokan did that sort of took over everyone to the point where they’re walking and jumping into the sea, which is, I guess, sort of an allusion to Greek mythology of the siren. They have the same sort of almost birdlike chirping thing that they’re doing, but it’s luring people into the sea. They end up taking over this aircraft carrier almost and killing almost everyone and really sending the message that don’t fuck with us, essentially.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. Yeah. No, that was the appearance of the Talokan. Just first of all, I don’t know how everybody else feels, but I have so much love for Ryan Coogler. One, because he is clearly, for me as someone from San Francisco, he is clearly from Oakland. He’s clearly from the Bay, and the way that he had the regalia of all of the Meso American folks, and I think it’s Mayan, but I don’t want to step out of turn, but people have been using Mayan and Aztec interchangeably. And I know that’s a faux pas, but I think it’s Mayan that he based all the regalia off of. And that is what all of the folks who are in Talokan are wearing, right? They’re wearing these indigenous outfits that are very true, and I love the fact that they’re wearing these beautiful crowns of feathers and things like that.

I remember seeing folks, dancers in the Bay wear those things. And so it’s beautiful to see that represented that kind of indigeneity. And then to have both the Talokan and Wakanda connected through vibranium and have that be the thing that sort connects these two indigenous cultures that were able to protect themselves from outside forces of invaders through literally something from outside of the planet, giving them sort powers to protect themselves from colonization. That, I mean, I just thought that was such a beautiful tie into both ways, and just having that be the thread was just wonderful.

Maurice Cherry:
The thing with, and we’ll get of course later to Namor and the Talokan and all of that, but I do get that, I think it was mostly Mayan, but I remember Shuri mentioning it as Meso American. So I think it’s mostly Mayan because the initial of point where they went down to the Talokan was the Yucatan Peninsula, which is Mayan. Even that sort of steep pyramid, terrorist pyramid that you saw in the background with Nakia, that’s clearly Mayan. But I feel like there’s also maybe some Aztec elements in it. There’s like some elements. I mean, that’s all sort of Central America, central Mexico, South America. I feel like it’s a good mix of that. But it is, I feel, probably mostly Mayan.

It’s interesting that when Namor is giving his backstory, and this is a little bit later in the film, when he’s explaining this to Shuri, how he ends up coming to the surface and sees all the Spanish conquistadors, the Spanish conquistadors wiped out, the Incons wiped out the Aztecs. I think there’s still millions of surviving descendants of the Mayan civilization. So they didn’t completely wipe them out. But I do like that they managed to show that portion of history as part of all of this.

Paul Webb:
And how he got his name in that moment, too. My enemies just like this dying terrible person just said, I’m born of no love. I’ll take it.

Maurice Cherry:
Right.

Paul Webb:
Namor.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, yeah. It’s no longer Namor, they’re like, oh, you all are going to know your R when you say that.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. Sin amor is where it ended up coming from. Yeah. And it’s interesting. I mean, that sort of plays on something that the MCU has been, I feel like they’ve been doing in this phase where the names are coming from, the people themselves aren’t coming up with the names. The names are almost bestowed upon them. Even when we get to the point in the movie, and this is right after the attack when Namor ends up confronting Ramonda and Shuri, right before Ramonda is about to tell T’Challa’s secret, which again we find out at the end of the movie, but right as Ramonda I feel like is about to tell that they meet Namor, and Namor is like, my people call me Kukulkan, but my enemies call me Namor. I thought that was dope. Yeah.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. Oh, man.

Reginé Gilbert:
I mean, first of all, those feathers.

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Jordan Green:
Talk about it.

Reginé Gilbert:
It just coming out and just seeing those feathers. And to me, something I noticed that I really don’t ever pay attention to was the lighting all throughout the movie. There was something about the way that folks were lit that made you really draw your attention to them, which I don’t really notice in other films, but I really noticed the light and how the light would hit people on the side of the face, or the light would hit through the costumes, or the light would focus in on certain aspects of things that made you pay attention to that thing.

Maurice Cherry:
Right.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. I mean, it was beautifully shot. I really liked the way that they did lighting underwater. Building on your point, the scene where Angela Bassett is underneath the water. I have never seen Angela Bassett so beautifully lit before, and that was just like, whoa, okay, well, I’m not sure if the technology is getting better, if people got better access to knowing how to shoot different light, just different folks with different skin tones. But yeah, Reginé when you’re talking about the way that they lit the folks from Talokan was they were always shot. It almost looked like they were almost always this ethereal underwater. Yeah, so that’s so wonderful.

Reginé Gilbert:
I mean, shout out to all the visual artists that worked on this film.

Maurice Cherry:
Absolutely.

Reginé Gilbert:
I mean, because I like to stay after and look to see all the credits and I’m like, look at all those visual artists that worked on this film.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s so funny you mentioned that I was in the theater and I’m looking at the credits and I guess, because I’ve been doing this show for this long, I’m recognizing names. I’m like, wait a minute, that’s Nicholas Smith, he’s an illustrator. I know him. Wait, this is Handel Eugene, who I’ve had on the show before, who’s done work for other Marvel movies. I’m like, this is so dope.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, speaking of the end credits. I’m so glad they got Ruth Carter front end center because she put her foot in it again.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Reginé Gilbert:
Can we just talk about Angela Bassett, every outfit that Angela Bassett wore was, I mean, I’m thinking about that silver, it was like a silver-gray outfit that had her one shoulder out, the purple, the adornments, all the adornment pieces that were added to the dresses. And I mean, we haven’t even started in on Shuri’s. Amazing. And that was in partnership. Ruth Carter did partnership with Adidas, I believe, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Reginé Gilbert:
Adidas.

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah, can we talk about that? I don’t know, Maurice.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m mean, yeah, I want get this-

Jordan Green:
I was like, isn’t Reginé the fashion expert on the panel? Come on

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yes. We will get to all of that. So since you talked about Shuri, to get back to the plot. So we’re at the point now where Namor has confronted Ramonda and Shuri and has set up this almost secondary conflict of the movie, which is find the scientists that was responsible for that machine that the Talokan destroyed that could detect vibranium and kill them. If they don’t kill the scientists, then Talokan is going to invade Wakanda.

And so Shuri and Okoye have to, they use Everett Ross to sort find out who the scientist is. They meet the scientists at MIT, it Riri Williams who, of course, I’m sure later, I think she’s going to have a Disney+ series next year, I believe, probably.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. And so we get introduced to Riri Williams.

Paul Webb:
Ironheart, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Who was this… Well, they don’t call her Ironheart in the film, but yeah, it is Ironheart from the comic books. So we meet Riri, who is also this technological genius, young black woman, younger than Shuri, actually. And so then it sort of takes place with this chase because the FBI has closed in on them. And then there’s like this epic chase scene throughout Boston and it ends up with both Shuri and Riri being captured by the Talokan, and Okoye ends up getting defeated. What did you all think about that part of the movie? That part really, to me, set things off in terms of where is the plot going to go from here?

Paul Webb:
Well, my favorite part was the banter between Okoye and Riri. And Riri said, she had a ashy head and they were going back and forth, and she was like, “Get out of my room.” And then she just brought out the spear, and she was like, “Oh, hell, you brought in a spear into my door room.” She was just freaking, that looks so realistic. And it was hilarious at the same time. I was just like, this is hilarious.

Reginé Gilbert:
What did she call her small, small girl?

Maurice Cherry:
Yes, that’s right.

Reginé Gilbert:
She called her small, small girl, which was just like, whoa, okay. And then her facial expression afterward as Riri is holding a heater, as if, what are you going to do with that heater?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Paul Webb:
Yeah. It was just like, I just sliced your Bluetooth speaker. You just threw at me. Come on.

Maurice Cherry:
Right. Yeah, come on.

Jordan Green:
I mean, so that whole scene, I mean, I’m cracking up at the whole thing. Because the lead up to that where Shuri’s in the lab. So after T’Challa dies, Shuri just buries herself in the work, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Jordan Green:
And it’s one of those things that it’s like I saw myself reflected a lot in that moment, particularly when we’re talking about how do you deal with death? How do you deal with losing someone so close to you? And Shuri is, for me, it was just such an interesting thing because Shuri in the comics is so smart. She’s literally one of the smartest people on the face of the planet. And in the MCU, she was like, even when she was looking at Vision, when they brought her in to look at Vision and the other Avengers movies, it was clear Shuri was like, this is the most ghetto thing I’ve ever seen.

You’ve got this man up here stuck together with duct tape and bubble gum, you all couldn’t have at least called me. That’s how she is to Tony Stark. And so it is like, how does it feel when there was nothing you can do? Literally, you’re one of the smartest people in the world. You’re a genius. You could have figured it out if given enough time, and you couldn’t. So she just throws herself into work and she abandons all of her duties because she has to be the queen.

And of course, Ramonda steps up as Queen mother. And she’s like, okay, well, my baby is grieving. We’re all grieving, but someone’s got to lead this country and someone’s got to protect us and we’re a monarchy, so I’m going to do the damn thing. And that play-off of it. And all three of the women, Okoye, Shuri, and Ramonda, all of them in this dance of, a delicate dance, of maintaining Wakanda. And it was just such a brilliant moment. And then to have Okoye be like, “We got to get her out of this lab.” And to have Ramonda be like, “You better bring my baby back.”

Maurice Cherry:
And she doesn’t.

Jordan Green:
And she doesn’t.

Maurice Cherry:
And she doesn’t. The scene after that, if that’s not for your consideration for an Academy Award, I don’t know what Marvel Studios is just thinking because Angela Bassett-

Paul Webb:
Yes, that made my heart hurt.

Maurice Cherry:
… put her whole foot into that scene, “Have I not suffered enough?” And then strips Okoye of her rank as general of the Dora Milaje. And I think that’s an interesting set piece in the movie, not just for the reasons of, it’s almost like denatures one of the characters. Okoye in the first film is, of course, ever present as the general of the Dora Milaje. But it also indicates something that I think audiences may have muddied about the Black Panther, from the first movie, which is that the Black Panther being the protector of Wakanda, and the person being the ruler of Wakanda does not necessarily have to be the same person.

It happened to be that case with T’Chaka, T’Challa’s father. And it was the case with T’Challa. And of course, since we’re spoiling, it ends up being of Shuri later in the film. But it’s at this point where who is going to protect Wakanda, if the general of the Dora Milaje, who at this point is the, I almost would say the next in line in terms of protector of Wakanda, can’t even protect the soon-to-be queen of the nation, then what’s next? What’s left? That was such a great pivotal point in the movie.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, God. I mean, the thing about the, sorry, I want to circle back to the ashy head because it keeps being on my mind just having Okoye asking Shuri being like, “Is it the matching the right skin tone?”

Reginé Gilbert:
And then Fenty got a plug in the movie.

Jordan Green:
Yes, Fenty 440 or something like that.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah, something like that.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, that’s right. And just all of these ways in which black women have to be in consideration of how they’re appearing out of the world and just having that be naturally just part of these characters lives. You can tell that it was-

Maurice Cherry:
You can tell it was written by a Black man or a Black people, and you can tell that the Black women got to add in as well. Right? This is an experience that we would have. Also, I love the looks that they have for a Okoye and Shuri out in the world. And calling MIT a Wakandan primary school.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah.

Paul Webb:
That made me feel primitive, bro. Does that mean My high school was a preschool?

Maurice Cherry:
And I think also what’s interesting…

Paul Webb:
I am D-U-M-B, just dumb.

Maurice Cherry:
And I’d say an interesting presentation fashion wise is in the first movie when Okoye, when they’re in South Korea, Okoye has to wear the certain dress and this wig. And you can tell this time I guess because now Wakanda’s open to the world, she just has on a blazer over whatever her Dora Milaje-esque sort of like body suit is. I thought was really interesting.

Reginé Gilbert:
What about the bridge scene? We haven’t talked about that. When they’re on the bridge. Right before they get taken.

Paul Webb:
I was holding my breath. I was like just, “Get up, get up, get up.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Jordan Green:
I was just like, it’s hard for me to watch that scene because you kind of don’t know who to root for, right? Because the general of Talokan is doing the damn thing.

Paul Webb:
Attuma.

Jordan Green:
Tuma. Yeah.

Paul Webb:
Attuma. Yeah.

Jordan Green:
Attuma. Yeah. Yeah, Attuma. I was just… On a real, for me, Attuma being… That was the first person you see that’s heavy set and bare chested in any Marvel movie that I’ve ever seen. Hollywood heavy set, dude is still stocky. Still sturdy. It was just, I was really… They were trying to present them as a villain, but the more and more you learn about why they’re doing what they’re doing, you can’t see them as a villain. They’re literally just trying to protect their people. So I was just like… And at the same time, I was like, “Y’all going to tell me Okoye can’t kick this dude’s butt?”

Reginé Gilbert:
When he kicked her spear to her as if to say, “Come on, let’s keep going.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Reginé Gilbert:
Right?

Maurice Cherry:
And interestingly, him and Okoye are kind of peers in a way. They’re both sort of the main warriors of their individual cultures. So them going head to head was really sort a clash of peers in a way.

Jordan Green:
And plus when they meet later, it’s like she sees him and goes, “Warrior.” And they have that mutual respect like, “I don’t like you but I’m coming for you. But I kind of respect you a lot because you’re my equal.” They finally found that equal so I found that very pleasant to watch.

Reginé Gilbert:
And Namora is the one with the feathers.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. She has these almost like lioness kind of feathers, like lion fish kind of feathers for her sort of headdress I guess is what you would call it. Yeah. Beautiful.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. I really wanted them to… I know we only had so much time and two hours and 40 minutes is not enough time to get everything. But if there was one thing I guess I really wish we saw was more of Namora. I wish we understood more of her and her motivations, but it is what it is. And I’m not mad at it, but it was just she was equally a powerful woman. And I think that if we could do something else, it’s seeing Indigenous women of all different backgrounds being powerful and being complex characters. That would be the next thing that I would want to see is that because it would’ve been even cooler if Namora was the one going up against Okoye. But I’m not sure what they got in store for her in the MCU.

Reginé Gilbert:
And that was another place where language, the Gria was translating for Shuri to say, “Don’t kill her, take me.” And they obliged. So it’s this, I think throughout the movie we were like, “Do we hate them? Do we like them? Are we rooting for them? Who?” It was for me a back and forth, like I feel for you, but I don’t want to because I don’t like what you did. It was a back and forth.

Maurice Cherry:
And so here we kind of see the…

Paul Webb:
Their whole world is beautiful too. Just built on the same base stone and creating this architectural marvel, bringing the sun to his people, that line and just seeing that palace, I don’t even know what you would call that. Some underwater architectural marvel, that gave me chills and I was just like, “Ah, I like him.” Damn.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So at this part in the movie, we sort of see this split, what you’re talking about is when they end up taking Shuri and Riri down to Talokan and then Shuri gets to see Namora’s kingdom for her own eyes. And I’m pretty sure by seeing that, she saw in that protector role the same thing that she saw in her brother. I see that you’re someone that is trying to protect your civilization, protect your people. And then on the other end you see Ramonda who is just concerned about getting Shuri back. And so Ramonda ends up going to Haiti. I’m glad they called it Haiti and didn’t just say Haiti. So Ramonda goes to Haiti, meets up with Nakia and asks her to retrieve Shuri, which ends up happening kind of… It happens at an interesting time because you start to feel, at least from Shuri’s standpoint down in Talokan, that they’re starting to come to some sort of understanding and agreement. And in this case, Wakanda sort of forces the hand of the Talokan by basically rescuing Shuri and Riri and kind of bringing them back to the surface world.

Paul Webb:
And killing some people in the process. That part right there was just like, “Ah, if only you didn’t do that.”

Jordan Green:
See. Okay. Here’s the thing though, y’all couldn’t let Shuri call Ramonda and just let her know she all right? You know what I mean? That’s my thing. Y’all got all this advanced technology and y’all can’t just send a text message? You know what I’m saying? How you going to steal a Black woman’s child?

Paul Webb:
Yeah, because she has the Kimoyo bead earrings.

Jordan Green:
Right? She got the Kimoyo bead earrings down there, they got the sun underwater. You telling me y’all didn’t have no way of communicating? Okay. Okay.

Paul Webb:
I mean they had a conch shell, but you got to blow into it and throw it in the ocean.

Jordan Green:
You couldn’t send a SOS through the conch shell or something? That’s not a plot hole for me. It’s more like I don’t know if anybody’s hand was forced because Namor up here kind of forgetting basic etiquette. You know what I’m saying? Oh yeah, we got the princess. She’s doing a diplomatic tour of our country. She’ll come back, don’t trip. But you show up at somebody’s house, threaten them and then all of a sudden they baby go missing. And they know that they in your hood. Oh yeah, we going to send somebody. If there was one big mistake, that was it for me. It was like y’all just been communicating more. If y’all had just been establishing some communication and trying to do some trust. But Namor is arrogant. In the comics, he’s just the most arrogant son of a person you’ve ever met. Right?

Paul Webb:
Well, when you put it like that, he has been alive since what, 1471. Yeah, he should’ve known.

Jordan Green:
He should know better.

Paul Webb:
Yeah, he definitely knew. But maybe he just has not gone out that much in centuries. I don’t.

Jordan Green:
Okay. Okay.

Reginé Gilbert:
And the cave where they were holding them was so beautiful to me. I thought what? Again, going back to the lighting and setting a mood, that seemed like a very… Although they were being held captive, it was still a welcoming place. And again, there’s this duality throughout the film of like, do we want it? They shouldn’t really be there, but it’s okay. And then getting to go and see the city, obviously after putting on a… Well, I mean… Yeah, after getting the… You got to put on the suit, otherwise your bones will break because of all the pressure from the water. So yeah. That cave was just so beautiful.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, it was really beautiful. Also, I think one thing that was really clear to me was the humanity of your enemy is still in consideration. Right? Which is something that we don’t really see in a lot of other non… For me, this was a lot. I saw a lot of threads of Indigeneity. I saw a lot of threads of the basic humanity of a person is still considered. You’re our prisoner, but we’re not going to torture you. We’re going to make sure you get some… Are you hungry? Have you eaten?

Maurice Cherry:
Well, and also there’s a mutual respect. The Talokan brings Shuri a garment befitting of royalty. She’s not in any sort of prisoner garb or anything. They’re like, “We see you. We see you. We know who you are. We know what this is.” The Talokan’s are treating Shuri and I guess Riri by proxy with a level of respect and humanity that quite frankly you don’t see on the surface world towards Black people.

Jordan Green:
Or toward really any Indigenous person. I would make the argument that if we’re sort really looking at this with a little bit of a political lens, I don’t know if Shuri was captured by France or Russia or any of those nations that have been colonizing nations. If we would be seeing this kind of treatment, especially Black women, especially other women of color and Riri being kept alive and safe and whole. And that whole scene where they bring her Shuri, the dress and Riri was like, “Don’t put that on because what happens in these white films when you put that dress on.” And not having that happen to Shuri, not having Talokan try to… Or sorry. Namor try to force himself on her, try to marry her, anything like that. But just being like, “I’m going to treat you an equal. And I’m going to show you…”

Maurice Cherry:
He even gives her that bracelet from his mother, which ends up becoming an important part throughout, near the end of the film.

Paul Webb:
As soon as that happened, I was like, “Wait, what did he say that bracelet was made with?” Okay, so this is how we’re going to get the Black Panther back. I knew it. I was just like, “Ooh, I can’t wait for this part.”

Maurice Cherry:
So Nakia helps Shuri and Riri escape and then Namor and the Talokan’s completely retaliate against Wakanda. And I like that they did it in this almost river market type of setting. Because that’s not something that we really saw in the first movie. We saw these sort of grand, almost drone shot overhead vistas. Of course, you saw the main royal courtroom and Shuri’s lab and such, but you didn’t really get to see that much on the ground. And so the Talokan’s attack Wakanda, Ramonda is killed trying to save Riri or she’s drowned by trying to save Riri, the part you mentioned with her in the water.

And then Namor kind of gives this ultimatum. Basically he’s going to come back in a week and completely wipe Wakanda off the map and the Wakandan’s have to retreat to the Jabari land for safety. And that part of the movie, I mean this of course is really setting up whatever the next main conflict is. But it also thrusts Shuri right back into this grief cycle almost. Not to say that she really got over the death of her brother, but then a year later to lose her mother too. Oh my God.

Reginé Gilbert:
Being in the movie theater with folks when Ramonda died was, again, it was like the air was taken out of the room. Are you serious? Is this real? More tears are shed because one, Angela Bassett acted… I mean award winning no matter if she gets an award or not. In my book, she gets an award. But this is the matriarch. This is a person that we’ve seen fight for their family and go through hardship, lost their son, did everything that they could to get their daughter back, gets their daughter back and then dies. And now the daughter is left holding the bag. What? And being so young still and being consumed with revenge and vengeance.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Reginé Gilbert:
And grief.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So at that moment, she basically retreats back to the lab. Of course, she has the bracelet from Namor’s mother. And like Paul said uses that to kind of synthetically end up reconstructing the heart shape herb. And so reconstructs the herb, 3D prints the herb, which I thought was pretty dope. 3D prints the herb, distills it into a tincture and then Shuri ends up drinking it so she can go to the ancestral plane. Because I think one, of course, is to try to seek knowledge about what’s the next step. Because I have no one at this point, no one else in my family is alive. And maybe the intention when she drank it was that she thought she would see her brother or she thought she would maybe see her mother. But then she takes it and end up seeing Killmonger.

Jordan Green:
Hey, little cuzo.

Maurice Cherry:
In the ancestral plane. I was like, yo, no way.

Jordan Green:
That was such good scene too. Because that confirmed to everybody that he’s dead.

Reginé Gilbert:
But yes, that one. But I really think about her being under the water, which water was a common theme, but being in the water, coming out of the water dry. Right? And seeing, again, the beautiful colors of the astral plane and then turning around and seeing, knowing someone’s in the chair and saying, “Mother.” And then walking closer and then seeing it’s not. That was so powerful.

Jordan Green:
So what was interesting about that, and I’m not sure if anybody else picked up on this, but in Black Panther one, when T’Challa takes it, he sees T’Chaka, who was the last Black Panther before. So when Shuri takes it, she sees the last Black Panther. Which was in N’Jadaka, right? So I was like, “Oh, that’s how that’s going to get around showing Chadwick Boseman.” Because he wasn’t the last Black Panther before he died.

Paul Webb:
That makes sense. Okay.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Jordan Green:
So in terms of lineage. Yeah, in terms of lineage. And I was like, that’s such a master stroke. The whole movie is genius, but that is such a beautiful little detail. And then there’s this overlay of Killmonger is set for revenge and that’s where Shuri is going and all that stuff. But of course, Ramonda wouldn’t be part of one of the people. Because the ceremony is that you get to talk to the Black Panthers that will give you guidance. Right? Ramonda was never a Black Panther. And Shuri doesn’t know that because Shuri’s actually… There’s no priest of the Black Panthers guiding her through that journey.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Zuri passed in the first movie, right? Chancellor person.

Jordan Green:
And then the other Black Panther priests who come in later in the film toward the end, they’re nowhere to be found. So it’s Nakia who knows how to do the grinding ritual part of it, which is beautiful too. To have these three highly intelligent, highly skilled Black women making a way where there is no way. That’s a beautiful moment. But also there’s this layer underneath that of Shuri being like, “Oh, fuck tradition. I’m doing this so I can get my revenge.” And that is actually what Killmonger was doing too. That is these beautiful little parallels that are set up throughout the entire movie that are just so rich. I love that whole feat. That was so good. Oh man. So good.

Maurice Cherry:
So Shuri comes out of the ancestral plane, sort of fueled, I guess in a way of revenge from having spoken with Killmonger. And then she realizes, oh, she has the strength of the Black Panther. So she becomes the next Black Panther. And it’s interesting because she talks with… I think she talked with M’Baku after that, I want to say. And M’Baku was almost kind of giving her, you would think would be contradictory advice. The Jabari tribe being more kind of shunning technology and things like that. M’Baku almost giving her advice for peace. And instead Shuri wants vengeance and orders this immediate counter attack on Namor and the Talokan. Of course, Okoye is no longer the general of the Dora Milaje. Now, it’s Ayo who’s the general. And then Shuri gets the New Armor, the midnight angel armor that she had been making. Gives it to Okoye and then Okoye recruits Aneka to join her. So then the Wakandan’s all set out on this big ass ship to try to set a trap for Namor, to try to lure everyone to the surface. And it’s a huge epic battle.

It’s funny because you’re like, “Oh, the Wakandan’s got it.” And they’re like, “Oh no, the Talokan’s got it.” It really sort of goes back and forth. It’s interesting how when she talks with Riri, how of they get the idea of how to weaken Namor by just exposing him to heat, to dry him out. So there’s this whole interesting elemental symbolism cycle, which I do want to talk about, between earth, fire, air, and water that goes throughout the film. And so then it comes to near the end of the movie, both the Black Panther Shuri and Namor are fighting on this desert beach. You think that Shuri is about to kill him. And then she gets all these flashbacks and I guess messages from the ancestors and spares his life. And then they make an alliance. Namor accepts that, the battle ends. And so Riri ends up going back to Boston.

And the movie kind of mostly ends off, I would say, at that point. Of course there’s this mid credit scene which happens afterwards where Shuri goes to Haiti to finally do the ritual that she was about to do with Ramonda at the top of the movie, which was burning the funeral robes, the funeral ceremonial robes. And she does so on the beach, is finally able to grieve. And then Nakia is joined by a young boy who is her son, Toussaint. I think it says Toussaint in the movie, but Toussaint. And Toussaint tells Shuri like, “Toussaint my Haitian name. My Wakandan name is T’Challa.” And it’s like in this moment Shuri’s like not only do I now have family, family that I didn’t even know that I had, but now this young boy very well could be the next Black Panther, which I thought was a super clever way to recast in the future whomever the Black Panther will be.

Reginé Gilbert:
Prince T’Challa. He’s Prince T’Challa.

Maurice Cherry:
Prince T’Challa. Yeah.

Paul Webb:
Opens the door for future films with the same name. Brilliant.

Jordan Green:
Brilliant.

Paul Webb:
Brilliant story work.

Maurice Cherry:
And I stayed till after the credits hoping there would be another scene and it just said, “Black Panther will return.” I’m glad they just left it open like that. They just said Black Panther will return. That’s it. I don’t know what an after credit scene could have done outside of that because once I saw that part with Toussaint and them on the beach, my jaw was on the floor. I was like, “What?” That was so brilliant.

Paul Webb:
More tears were shed.

Reginé Gilbert:
More tears were shed. Well, that last scene of her sitting on the beach, and again it was almost like the beginning of the film and the end of the film were the same. And it was a tribute to Chadwick who Ryan Coogler beyond loved.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, loved, loved.

Reginé Gilbert:
Loved, loved. Like this isn’t just, “Oh, good working with you.” This was true love. And to me, this was the biggest love letter he could give.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Paul Webb:
I am so glad they did not do some 3D deep fake model of Chadwick to have him act in depth. I’m so glad they didn’t do that.

Jordan Green:
Oh my God. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
No Star Wars force ghost or something.

Reginé Gilbert:
No Tupac hologram thing. No. I was very happy. I was very happy about that too.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, it feels disrespectful to do something like that. Yeah. And it felt disrespectful when they did that with Tupac, to be quite honest with you. Anyway. We talking about Black Panther, I’m going away from…

Maurice Cherry:
So yeah, that’s the movie. I mean we spent a good bit of time going over the whole plot of everything, but then the movie actually was much longer than the first one and there was so much introduced. I remember seeing this interview where Ruth Carter said that nine new superheroes were introduced in this movie. And I was really like, “Namora, Attuma, Riri.” There were a lot of people that were sort of introduced. And so it was a lot to cram into one film. But I think it did a great job overall. And granted, this episode is not about dissecting really the plot of the movie. We’re here to talk about design, which we will get into right now. So let’s start with the fashion. I think the most striking thing for me is… Well, I mean there’s so many striking things, but the one that stands out to me, because we just talked about it, was Shuri as Black Panther in her Black Panther suit.

It had been intimated, I think through earlier interviews and such that Shuri was going to be the Black Panther. And you could tell, of course, there’s like the dots around the eyes that were very similar to the same ones that Shuri had in both the first and the second movie. I like how her suit was kind of this mix of black and gold, like Killmonger’s suit was gold, T’Challa’s suit was black. And so hers was kind of a mixture of two, I guess with that gold sort of symbolizing the sort of revenge or vengeful parts that she probably shares with Killmonger at this present time.

Reginé Gilbert:
But there was the scene where she was going for the… Looking at the face mask of her brother and then she moved forward to her own. It was a passing of the… Not a passing of the torch, but in ways, “Okay, I’m honoring you and I have my own.”

Jordan Green:
Yeah. And the comic Shuri does become the Black Panther at a time. And also she ends up having her own role and she doesn’t have any sort of code name, but she does become the keeper of the Wakandan history, the oral history. And when we’re talking about fashion, in the comic, she has these beautiful long, they almost look like elephant tusk earrings and she’s wearing them in the funeral procession for that. And so I thought that was a nice touch to sort of harken almost, if you’re a comics fan, like foreshadowing you know Shuri is going to have this role, this very prominent role. And so it was really cool to see the Black Panther suit. I really liked how it was like gold inlaid and having the speckles of white throughout it. So it really is Shuri’s instead of a recreation of Killmonger’s.

Maurice Cherry:
Reginé, our resident fashion expert…

Maurice Cherry:
Our resident fashion expert here. What did you think of how the costumes and everything were in the movie?

Reginé Gilbert:
I love all of them. I think that Ruth Carter and team did such a brilliant job of taking, not only the influences from the African culture, but influences from the Mesoamerica, from the Mayan cultures and really blending those and bringing those together. I thought the opening scene where they’re in the all white, which is traditionally in a lot of cultures, white is worn for funerals, and typically not in the West, people wear black, and so acknowledging that, I think was so important, and again, the colors, the scenes of the folks who are walking in the streets of Wakanda, everything is so colorful and bright, all their clothing. There was one person who was just wearing this really nice sweater, dressed in heels. I remember just seeing little pieces of everybody and the blue, I don’t know, striking colors of blue and the reds, again, the colors were popping throughout the movie.

Maurice Cherry:
You definitely had the color white as kind of this symbolizing thread, I feel like, throughout the film. Of course, with the funeral procession, I think Shuri, in a later scene, you see her in this white dress, I think this is after she becomes a black panther. Riri is wearing white at one point in the lab. So you do see whites used in a lot of places, but more so where I think it was really tied to T’Challa, tied to Chadwick, I felt like white kind of represented him throughout the movie and the ways that we saw it being presented.

Reginé Gilbert:
And I want every outfit Shuri had on in that movie. Every one, every single one was, when they went to the MIT campus, that jumpsuit was, I wanted it.

Paul Webb:
No, that was a fire jumpsuit. I was [inaudible 01:00:24] called and I am picking up, give me five of those.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, it’s very, it’s tech wear. It’s this really nice kind of fitted jumpsuit that of course she was saying it, I can blend in with the students, but I would even say her hair, I mean you to talk about just Shuri’s hair journey, in the first movie, her hair is always presented in this very, almost regal, braided up do’s and things of that nature, and then with the second movie, it’s more, I guess, relaxed in a way. She has just these front curls at the top of her head. It’s very almost casual in a way, I guess, growing into her womanhood, because she’s what, a teenager, supposedly a teenager in the first movie? I think she’s probably what, maybe 21, 22 in Wakanda Forever.

Jordan Green:
I think she’s mid twenties in this film.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Also, I’m just thinking about the blip too, because there’s like a five year gap…

Jordan Green:
Yeah, that’s why I was saying that, yeah. I think she’s mid twenties, but as they say, black people age in plateaus. There’s not a linear.

Paul Webb:
I’ve never heard that, but I love it. I’m going to keep using that moving forward.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. So I do think that. I’m still stuck on Okoye’s outfits, to be quite honest with you, because they really put her in some very, very sharp looking suits, and I’m of a good looking suit on anybody, and they just really made it work. It’s just great.

Maurice Cherry:
And then further pushing that sartorial point, even when you look at the Talokan, you look at Namora and the people of Talokan, I feel like there’s so much that had to have gone into making sure that they got a lot of those elements as closely as they could culturally write. You’ll notice they’re not really wearing fabric, of course, as they’re underwater, but then the neck pieces are shells and coral and thinking about how they might have used vibranium to create what it is that they have and what they wear in their civilization. They obviously have to have things that allow for great mobility underwater. Even the face mask kind of thing that has water in it, I thought was pretty cool.

Paul Webb:
Yeah, I did know notice that…

Jordan Green:
Beautiful design.

Paul Webb:
… every time the Talokan were just moving around underwater, the things they were carrying were always in a mesh bag, which made a lot of sense as I was watching it, but I was just like, “Huh, I guess if I lived underwater, I was just doing groceries or whatever, I would want something that could just move freely with me.” And it was just a weird out of body thought I had while watching that, and then I was just like, “I don’t think I’m going to live in the water.” But that’s neither here nor there. Hannah Beachler’s production bible for the first Black Panther had to have been massive. So for this one, I still wish we could get a hold of it, but it’s still probably going to be top secret until maybe a decade from now, but I’m just so inspired by all the visuals that come out of that, and all the research that goes into just everything, because it is a lot. It has to be to make this film look and feel as great as it does.

Jordan Green:
Yes. Was Hannah Beachler part of this one as well?

Maurice Cherry:
She was. She was production designer for this. Shout out to her for that, and if you all want to listen to her episode, it’s episode 300 of Revision Path, you can listen to that on the website, but yeah, she was a production designer for this film too.

Paul Webb:
Great.

Maurice Cherry:
And as I found out later, came up with the Wakandan like glyph language that we also see throughout the film.

Jordan Green:
Oh wow, so also a typographer. Okay.
Also a typographer. Brilliant, brilliant, just killing it. I like with Namor and with Attuma and with Namora, how you started to see all these traditional sea elements as part of, just part what they were wearing. Namora was wearing pearls. He was wearing pearls in his necklace and in his kind of neck piece, and then Namor had these sort of big fish fins with her headdress as well as her kind of neck piece. Attuma, I think, had a sharks jaw on the top of his thing, that spread out. It was interesting to see how they utilized those as part of their armature, which really solidified them as being these underwater dwellers, as part of this underwater civilization.

Paul Webb:
Namor’s throne also looked like it was a mouth of a shark, and I was just like, “Oh, this guy’s badass.”

Jordan Green:
Yeah. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Even his headdress, that big, huge circular headdress, majestic.

Jordan Green:
Oh yeah.

Reginé Gilbert:
And again, him coming down into the throne, that scene, where they’re about to…

Paul Webb:
Oh yeah.

Reginé Gilbert:
… go battle. So him coming down and again, just the lighting, the whole scene of coming down and then sitting…

Paul Webb:
Fire.

Reginé Gilbert:
… was just beautiful.

Jordan Green:
I love that. That whole speech was so good too, because what was great about it is he said, “I made a mistake. This is my bad, but now we got to go to war. So we doing this?” And everybody was like, “Yeah, let’s go.” How often do you see leaders be like, “Yo, actually I know I’m charged with protecting you and I made a mistake, so forgive me.”

Paul Webb:
Yeah, that never happens.

Jordan Green:
Right? Just all of these little bits were just so good.

Reginé Gilbert:
And another scene I’m thinking about from a fashion perspective was when they’re on the ship, and they’re about to start fighting, and the Dora Milaje start running to jump off that boat, and all you see are these red suits, right?

Jordan Green:
Right.

Reginé Gilbert:
Flying in the air and you’re like, where are they? Are they jumping in the water? You didn’t really know until they got caught and you could see them, and to me, that scene, and again, going back to the colors and the outfits and seeing the blueness of the bodies, in contrast with that red, it was an amazing scene to watch. It really was.

Jordan Green:
I really loved, and I’m not sure whose idea this was, and if anybody that was working on the Black Panther want to just reach out and come on the podcast and just let us know. That’d be great.

Reginé Gilbert:
Oh please.

Jordan Green:
But I’m not sure whose idea it was to make the Talokan people appear brown underwater, and blue when they’re on the surface. That was such a brilliant touch. I’m going to go see it again today, but the fact that there are these deep, rich stills, sort of these deep rich browns of the indigenous folks of Mesoamerica underwater, they can be how you remember them underwater or how we would remember them underwater, but when they come up to the surface, they’re changed into this blueness. That was dope, dope, dope, dope, dope. I loved that so much. It was my favorite bit.

Maurice Cherry:
I think they did a really great job. I talked about this earlier of showing, if we look at Wakanda, for example, just the architecture of Wakanda, how they really show more of what you would see on the regular, just surface level of being in the country, I would say, because I don’t think they really talked about any specific cities in Wakanda. They just sort of talked about Wakanda as a country, but I think it was near the end of the movie. It was the first time that I saw a car driving on a road, in Wakanda. This happens near the end of the movie where you see these Wakandan, the best I’d call them are like lakefront houses, they’re on stilts, right? But you see a car driving on a road, I was like, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone driving in Wakanda. What the Wakanda traffic rules look like?

I don’t know. But you didn’t see stuff like that. But I thought that even showing the sort of marketplace where that fight took place and you started, you saw the bridges, you saw kind of the towering skyscrapers and buildings, but then on the ground it still feels and looks very, the best I could describe it is African, in that it still felt like it was very of the earth, even with all these technological advances, but then you see this other part out near this sort of lake house, honestly, that could have been Hilton Head in South Carolina. That could have been the Keys in Florida. It just looked and maybe it was, just in terms of actual physical setting, but I like how it showed you these different aspects of Wakanda. It didn’t give you what I think people would stereotypically think of as “Africa.”

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Paul Webb:
I did see that’s in the beginning of the movie when they were flying into Wakanda, in the lower right of the screen, there was a subway. There were, that a train car coming in. I was just like, “Huh, okay, that’s cool.”

Jordan Green:
That was there, in the first one too, the subways.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh yeah. They had to transport the vibranium from the Great Mound.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Paul Webb:
Oh right.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. And it’s interesting with Wakanda, because again, I would love to see, if someone wants to come in and set me straight, just let me know, but I would love to see the production bible because there’s this whole movement of what’s called solar punk versus cyber punk, which is dystopian and the world is just going to end up the matrix. Solar punk, and they’ve been doing this in the comics too with Wakanda, is the integration of technology with the natural environment from the earth, and so that is a lot of what they have with Wakanda, right, is just this very sort, bright, hopeful future of it, and then you see that mirrored in the technology in Talokan actually, when it’s like, we’re going to be working with our environment instead of being distinct from it. I loved all of those productions to look at, those set pieces and things like that. I would pay so much to just spend time on that set. Just look at it.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. When you said solar punk, that did really capture, I think especially in Wakanda, that kind of hopefulness of what the future could look like, not what the future necessarily is, and I would say in some way with Namor bringing the sun to his people in that sort of way, is probably an allusion to that as well, we did see there was some, I guess, primitiveness in Talokan City where you saw children playing and things of that nature, but it also was still very technological. So it’s almost like an underwater Wakanda, or maybe Wakanda is an over-world Talokan, but there’s definitely similarities that are going on there, as above, so below, that sort of duality.

Reginé Gilbert:
That’s what I felt. There were a lot of parallels between the two, in essence, countries, that they used what they had and made the most of it.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. I feel I know how to put this, but I feel like there’s this way that we, in Western mindsets, we kind of look at things as primitive and things like that, but I’m also, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You know what I mean? There are designs that haven’t changed for millennia. I think about just other places in the world that ,are older than the Western world, that use designs that have just been passed down over generations and generations, and you can’t build a better mouse trap. You know what I mean?

Maurice Cherry:
Well, no, go ahead. Go ahead, I want to say something after that.

Jordan Green:
Oh, okay. Yeah, and just sometimes I think what’s sort of cool and radical about both Wakanda and Talokan, is they’re using indigenous technologies as equally as they’re using what we would consider Western or modern technologies, and it’s cool to see those designs held in the same regard, and that’s kind of the whole thing about what I really loved about this movie. It was the ways in which we’ve learned about native or indigenous folks, is that they were lower in technology and backwards and things like that, or primitive or things like that. And it’s just like, “No, actually they were actually fairly advanced and they don’t need to have all of these different design languages of the west to still be considered advanced.” I really, really loved that about all of the little pieces that I kept seeing throughout the movie.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
No, go ahead. Go ahead, Reginé, go ahead.

Reginé Gilbert:
I was thinking about what we see a lot of in the movie, and we saw this in the last movie too, was a lot of gesture based things, right? Hand tracking gesture based things, which right now in 2022, we’re seeing that a little bit in VR and a little bit in AR too, but this movie takes it to another level. I mean, when Ramonda raises her hands and you see all these…

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Reginé Gilbert:
… you see all the planes, I don’t know what you call them planes, but the planes come up and she’s in control of everything with her hands. It isn’t a control board and all of that stuff. So I think, again, looking at things from the lens that’s been applied to this, is a futurist lens for the folks of Wakanda and their technology, and I think it will influence what people end up making in our real world.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, I hope so. I’m still waiting for kimoyo beads.

Paul Webb:
Listen man.

Reginé Gilbert:
We’re all waiting for those.

Paul Webb:
Please. I have so many notes on those. They continue to be dope. You can take them off and have them as earrings, they can be flying bugs, they can be defibrillators.

Reginé Gilbert:
Exactly.

Paul Webb:
Are you serious.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Well, all right. Well you know?

Jordan Green:
No, no, no.

Paul Webb:
With my kimoyo beads.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, you were supposed to be on that from the last movie. What’s going on?

Reginé Gilbert:
You had four years. What’s happening with those?

Maurice Cherry:
Are you okay, Paul? Is this an intervention?

Paul Webb:
No, man. So I was thinking about this again last night. I was like, “Okay, they’re all magnetic. How do they work together?” There was something else, I was like, “Okay, they must use Piezoelectric properties and all this stuff.” And then I was thinking about, “Cerbo Motors, accelerometers. How can we manufacture them to be as tiny to fit in these things? How would they connect to each other? Oh, well maybe the magnetic connection between them that keeps them together could also provide electricity towards in them.” Then I was like, “How would they be a defibrillator now?” I was like, “Okay, maybe if they can detect being on a body, that’s when they’ll do something or whatever. And then you present to them and then it would just release all the electricity stored in each and every one.” There’s so much that you can extrapolate on all this, which is why we need Hannah Beachler’s production bible.

Maurice Cherry:
Miss Beachler.

Paul Webb:
Please, just like, I will pay her. I don’t know, I just want all her notes on that, and another thing that bothered me about the film was, “How did the CIA bug them?”

Jordan Green:
Yes.

Paul Webb:
Can you bug kimoyo beads?

Jordan Green:
I’ve been thinking about that the entire…

Paul Webb:
I was like, “Really?”

Jordan Green:
I’ve been thinking about that the entire time.

Maurice Cherry:
Really?

Jordan Green:
I’ve been thinking about that the entire time.

Maurice Cherry:
Maybe that’ll be revealed in a future Disney Plus thing, because I get what you’re saying. What was her name in the film? Val Allegra de Fontaine who, who had her debut in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was the Disney Plus series from last year, is reintroduced in this film, not only as the director of the CIA, but also Everett Ross’s wife, I kind of felt that was, maybe again, that’ll be explained in another movie, felt a little throw away to me, felt like we got to put some other white people in here, so we got to tie it in some way to Disney Plus. But it kind of felt a little, “I don’t know if you can really get one up on the Wakanda like that?”

Paul Webb:
Yeah, I was just like, “Come on bro.”

Jordan Green:
I’m glad that the only plot magic that happened, that is the United States is somehow able to bug what a content technology like that, because everything else feels, we’re talking about people flying through the air and we’re like, “Yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense”, but how you going to bug kimoyo beads?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I wasn’t sure about that.

Paul Webb:
I can see how someone could become a muted by his mother drinking some fancy stuff, but I mean, come on, let’s be real, technologically speaking.

Maurice Cherry:
So I want to touch on something that Jordan, you said earlier around solar punk, which I think was an interesting, I guess, treatise throughout the film. Solar punk is sort of this vision of a future that embodies what humanity can achieve, but I think another key element of solar punk is, sustainability. It’s a point where humanity sees itself as a part of nature, which is what the Wakandans have done by using vibranium to build their civilization. It’s what the Talokan have used to build their civilization, and so you have these other cultures, Western cultures that are like, “Yeah, we want some of that too. You need to share with us”, when we all know it’s not about sharing, “We want to take it for ourselves. So you have nothing. We want to strip it from you so we can have it.” And I think it’s interesting when you think about that saying move fast and break things, how that is completely antithetical to solar punk ,moving fast and breaking things is pretty much just new school manifest destiny. We want to take what you have and make it our own thing.

So what I think is interesting, which with both Namor and Shuri, even at some points, mulling over this idea of an alliance, it’s like, “Look, we have more in common than you think with the rest of these people. The rest of these people just want to take, take, take.” Namor has seen it firsthand with the conquistadors. Shuri definitely has seen it with now the outside world wanting to take what Wakanda has, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That sort of thing, I thought was a really interesting tie between both of these civilizations that I would love to see how that plays out in future films, because at the end of the film, they do come to an alliance, but I would love to see how that plays out.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, I would love to see how that plays out. I’m also just thinking about, in a lot of activist movements, and especially in things like restorative justice, and things that are actively crediting like indigenous folks and actively crediting, unlike the United States who, our constitution is based on the indigenous people that our countries came in contact with, and we just janked it. We just ripped it off and tried to copy off the homework and all that stuff, but here, there’s this really great thing that’s happening where there is this, the thing that really made my heart sore about this movie is there’s this undercurrent, really truly of indigeneity, and indigeneity and working together and really thinking about the ways that we approach each other is very, very important, and even the main conflict for both of them happens, because these outside white Western forces are like, “We want this rare mineral and we’re going to use a young, a brilliant young black woman’s invention that she didn’t even [inaudible 01:23:45] to use.”

She did it to prove her professor wrong, and the professor who, we don’t know what he looks like, but he might get a little palm colored, sold it to the United States government from MIT, right? And so there’s this young black, and that the whole conflict is black women protecting this young, brilliant black woman from consequences of being brilliant, and people misusing her brilliance. You could definitely have that interpretation of the movie.

Maurice Cherry:
She was definitely exploited.

Jordan Green:
She was exploited, and so you have, the whole conflict comes from the fact that these white nations want to take something that is sacred to both of these cultures, and that they have sacred rights and sacred engagement with, and it was like, I loved that whole thing. I love solar punk because solar punk draws a lot from indigeneity and indigenous ways of knowing, and so does Afro futurism. All of these threads, I highly recommend people read a lot of, I highly recommend people read, period, but I highly recommend that people so long been dreaming, which is like post-colonial science fiction or reading the bones, sorry, what’s it called? Dark matter, Reading the Bones, which has also done some black Afro futurism stuff, because you’ll start to see these seeds and threads that connect black people and indigenous people together, around the ways in which we’re relearning how we approached each other and how we had our humanity preserved.

And it’s slower, it’s not as action packed. It’s not as exciting for Western audiences, because we’ve been primed for war. But I do want to imagine what it would’ve been like. That’s kind of why I’m upset with Namor, showing up on somebody’s beach, and I’ll pass it off, because he was a kid and nobody taught him the ways to do that, but you don’t show up to somebody’s house, not bring, oh, but he did bring a gift, he brought the vibranium thing, nevermind, he brought a gift, but you know, don’t show up threatening people, but it looked like, to me, I could have really interpreted this film as two indigenous nations, trying to fight off the effects of imperialism, and getting messed up along the way. Sorry, I saw it once and I was like, “I got a whole art, a couple of articles in a book in me, I guess about this. This is beautiful TV, it’s a wonderful show, it’s a wonderful movie. I loved everything that Ryan Kugler put into it, hannah Beecher put into it.

Jordan Green:
Everything that Ryan Coogler put into it Hannah Beachler put into it that Ruth Carter put into it. They did it.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah. And it’s so layered from a political perspective, from a social perspective, from a historical perspective. There are so many different layers to it that to me, just all equal brilliance. I thought that this was a very well written script with knowing.

Jordan Green:
Yes.

Reginé Gilbert:
That this script was written in grief.

Maurice Cherry:
Yes.

Reginé Gilbert:
And it shows to me. It shows to me.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, it does. But it was written in grief, but also with all of these layers. And it’s done with such care. I said this before, about this nature of the elements being symbolized throughout the movie, like fire, water, earth, air. It’s interesting. One, with the Talokan being this underwater civilization, but also most of Wakandan’s major ceremonies take place around water, at the Warrior Falls. When that’s happening, for example, to determine who’s going to be the next Black Panther, Killmonger’s quote at the end of the movie about being in the ocean. So water clearly plays this sort of pivotal role about, it’s a symbol of life. It’s a symbol of change, of flexibility. Just how all the Wakandan’s are saying that death is never the end.

So water is kind of this rebirth and reincarnation. Namor is born underwater. So I found there’s that interesting symbolism. Then there’s the opposite of that, which is fire, which is destruction. The Heart-shaped Herb was burned up. The final battle happens of a hot desert with things on fire.

Jordan Green:
Vengeance, destruction.

Maurice Cherry:
Namor is ultimately sort of defeated by fire. And you can even channel that into the rage that Shuri feels when she goes to the ancestral plane and she’s talking to Killmonger. She’s like surrounded by fire that happens to be in water, but she’s surrounded by fire.

Jordan Green:
And she wanted to make the world burn.

Maurice Cherry:
Make the world burn. Yeah.

Reginé Gilbert:
And he said, “Let’s do it together.” Right, earlier in the film he said, “Let’s do it together.”

Jordan Green:
So yeah, no, please continue. I want to hear air and earth.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I mean I think with Earth, certainly Earth is, we think of Mother Earth, the foundation, the symbol of fertility, the Heart-shaped Herb of course comes from the earth. So does the same herb that I guess Talokan has. That comes from the earth. But also the earth is something that we all share. All of us, all of our cultures share the earth. We share this planet. We share in its resources. And so you think of Earth as the symbol of humanity. Yes. We’re all fighting for resources. I think that’s said at one point in the movie about fighting over resources.

Jordan Green:
Yes. It is.

Maurice Cherry:
So you have-

Jordan Green:
Yeah, Namor is saying it to Shuri. It’s like, this is why they’re coming after us, this sacred resource.

Maurice Cherry:
And then air is used a lot I think. Well, I mean of course name Namor can fly, but a lot of the music around the Talokan-

Paul Webb:
And Riri.

Maurice Cherry:
And Riri, but a lot of the music around like the Talokan and Namor and everything is air instruments. It’s flutes.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s conch shell that’s used as a trumpet, it’s ocarinas, there’s all these sort of airy, wind elements that symbolize the Talokan. And then of course the Kukulkan with the feathered serpents. That whole siren song you sing into the air, et cetera. There’s all these interesting, just sort of symbolic things around elements that are things that we all share on this planet that I feel really were woven very deftly throughout the film.

Jordan Green:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Even honestly, even the hand symbol, and this doesn’t necessarily apply to the elemental sort of thing I was talking about, but Wakandan’s have the crossed storm salute and it’s sort of close to the chest, an X almost. And then the Talokan have this open palm symbol. One palm is opened up towards the earth and then one is towards the person. And that’s actually represented in Mesoamerican art and things.

Jordan Green:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
So they’ve got their own symbol that is open.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s an O almost.

Paul Webb:
I had no idea.

Maurice Cherry:
So you have X’s with Wakanda, which is keeping things close to themselves. You have O which of course could symbolize openness, but also symbolize the planet earth that we all live on. That is mostly water.

Jordan Green:
And it’s a greeting. It’s a greeting and it’s receiving. Right. So there’s this thing around, I’m here. I receive. It was so good. That was such a good bit of design right there, where the ways in which we greet each other-

Paul Webb:
The literal Yin and Yang.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. The reciprocity, the mirroring of the two worlds, Wakanda being on land Talokan being under the surface. What we haven’t really touched on is the writing that was done for Talokan. So we’ve talked about Hannah Beachler doing the symbology and the type for Wakanda, but I want know who did it for Talokan. Because they’re really drawing from Mesoamerican art with that stuff. It’s amazing.

Maurice Cherry:
I wonder if that was part of, I mean she had to have had a hand in it, I’m sure. But even those intricate drawings that Namor was doing on the wall and that’s history. At one point, I think near the end they show the clash of the panther and the serpent, which is Wakanda and Talokan.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. Wow. I missed that bit.

Jordan Green:
Yeah. Oh man.

Reginé Gilbert:
Again, this is something that I don’t know, for me, I need to see this movie multiple times because there are so many little things that happen in the film that each time I watch it, I see something new.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, I’m going to go see it tonight. I’m kind of wish it was streaming because if you’re going to wreck me this, I’d like to be the comfort of my own home where the food is a little free or it’s already bought, so I can eat my feelings a little bit more.

Reginé Gilbert:
Yeah. The first time I saw the movie, the woman next to me was very emotional. [inaudible 01:34:20].
I was like, what are we in for here?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean huge props to Ryan Coogler and the entire cast for not just persevering through obviously a gut wrenching loss to their entire casting crew, but then to also pull out this amazing story with all these lush, symbolic elements out of that. I mean, I think that is something which hopefully as creatives all of us we can really be inspired by.

Jordan Green:
Yeah it was inspiring.

Reginé Gilbert:
They turned their pain into art.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. They really did.

Reginé Gilbert:
They really did.

Maurice Cherry:
The last thing I want to touch on is the music. I don’t know if you all have had a chance to listen to either the soundtrack or the score. Of course with the soundtrack. There was the Rihanna song “Lift Me Up”, which came out I think maybe about a week or two prior to the movie’s premiere, which was her return to music. Shout out to Riri-

Jordan Green:
Shout out to Riri.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s also interesting. Rihanna’s called Riri, there’s a Riri in the movie, anyway, but…

Jordan Green:
She’s named after Rihanna.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh she is?

Jordan Green:
She’s named after Rihanna.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. That I didn’t know.

Jordan Green:
The character, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
I didn’t know that. Rihanna also has a second song in the movie, which was just added. It was just added to the soundtrack, I think Friday, the day the movie came out. She has a song, I think it takes place near the end of the movie called Born Again. So it’s another sort of ballad piece. But if you haven’t listened to the soundtrack or the score, go check them out. They’re both on streaming services now. But even both of those pieces are just these rich cultural tapestries. There’s English, there’s Spanish, there’s Zulu on there, there’s the South African Xhosa language on there. There’s a poem near the end that’s this indigenous Mayan language that’s being spoken. And of course when you hear it, it will take you back to the movie because the soundtrack is what’s used for the vocal music and then the score is what’s used for the instrumental music.

So you’ll hear a lot of these elements from it. But I just heard about how much research went into putting together the score and making sure that it wasn’t just, I don’t want to say one note, but I think from the first movie, what the first movie did was really bring a lot more Afro beat artists into American mainstream.

Reginé Gilbert:
Right.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean after the first movie, of course we know about TEMS, we know about Mooski, Burna Boy, Rotimi, Beyonce had a whole Lion King soundtrack. It’s very prevalent now to have Afro beats as part of mainstream music in a way. And it’s interesting how with this soundtrack, you can really hear the different cultures that he’s trying to pull from in order to make these individual soundscapes. I think this happens maybe kind of near the end of the movie where you hear the flutes and the flutes are kind of symbolic of the Talokan going to war almost.

Jordan Green:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
There’s this really beautiful song, I think it’s on the soundtrack, not the score, but I think it’s called, I don’t know the name of it, I’m not going to try to say it. I’ll link both the soundtrack and the score in the show notes. But it’s like this underwater where, it’s the music that’s playing when Namor takes Shuri through the city. This really beautiful, almost like, synths and harps kind of thing going on.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s a beautiful soundtrack. It’s a beautiful score. There’s parts of it that I was, when I listened to the soundtrack, for example, there’s this one song called “No Digas Mi Nombre”, which means “do not say my name”, which I attributed it to Namor. And it is very much a traditional kind of Mexican song. It’s a Mexican Mariachi song. Wasn’t used in the movie. I didn’t hear it in the movie. Maybe it was used somewhere, but I didn’t hear it. But when I heard the soundtrack I was like, where are they going to put this in the movie? Because it’s so thematically different from everything else. I mean E-40 is on the soundtrack. Stormzy is on the soundtrack, of course Rihanna is on the soundtrack. So you have all these-

Paul Webb:
Did you say E-40?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, shout out to the Bay.

Jordan Green:
Ryan Coogler is from Oakland, y’all/

Maurice Cherry:
But it is, I mean both the score… I remember from the first movie how I was saying that I felt like, I think I said the score to me felt more like T’Challa and the soundtrack felt like Killmonger. I didn’t really feel like any specific characterization from either the score or the soundtrack. But I do think they both did a good job of symbolizing, you know you hear the term World Music thrown around a lot. And normally when I think World Music, I think of, I don’t know, something you’d hear at a massage parlor or something, like some pan flutes or some stuff like that. But this really felt like a mixing of Africa and Mesoamerica as well as the U.S. Just kind of all mixed together in this huge just, I don’t know, musical gumbo in a way. Both the soundtrack and the score are really great. I hope people get a chance to listen to them.

Jordan Green:
Yeah, touching on that, I know that Ludwig, whose last name I can’t really pronounce very well…

Maurice Cherry:
Göransson.

Jordan Green:
Göransson. Who did the soundtrack for this one and for the first Black Panther movie. It was, I really appreciate that he was very clear, I had to stretch myself a lot. And it’s really cool to see “World Music”, which is really just folk music of different people being incorporated into orchestral music, which is often used for scores and often used to… Orchestral music is often very, very white or that’s its perception. And so to see them bringing in African instruments, Mesoamerican instruments and using them to give dignity and render dignity to the scenes that use indigenous folks and African folks, it was, it’s wonderful. Yeah, I hadn’t listened to the score yet, so thank you for saying that, because I’m going to go check that out now.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Göransson had said about the soundtrack, he said, “If we use the song in the film, we wanted it to be the entire song and to be connected to the story thematically. We wanted to move the audience from grief to celebration. When you listen to the soundtrack, you can close your eyes and relive the experience of the movie, that was the intention.” Which I… mission accomplished.

Reginé Gilbert:
I agree, because I felt sad listening to it and then I didn’t, right. Because I was like, is there going to be an upbeat song? if you listen to the music, you’ll be taken on a journey. In the movie you’re taken on a journey and it’s life’s journey. Life’s journey is bittersweet. We have these ups and these downs, these deaths and these rebirths. And that’s what this movie is.

Jordan Green:
We rise and we fall.

Reginé Gilbert:
We rise and we fall.

Jordan Green:
We’re just ordinary people out here in Wakanda. I’m sorry…

Maurice Cherry:
Like I said from the first movie, I had said that I want to get the director’s cut and see what’s been cut from the movie and everything. And I say that because of two songs on the soundtrack. Tracks 18 and 19, when Göransson said that he wanted to move from grief to celebration. I don’t know if there were that many celebratory moments in the film. It was definitely a meditation on grief and how you persevere through that. But the last two songs on the soundtrack, and this is, well really it’s, I guess the next to last two songs on the soundtrack since they added Track 20, which was the second Rihanna ballad. But “No Digas Mi Nombre”, like I said, it is very much a Mexican Mariachi, you might hear that at a quinceañera, kind of song. And then Track 19 is called “Mi Pueblo” by Guadalupe de Jesus Chan Poot.

And when you listen to it, it is a poem. I want to know what the translation is because they don’t list the translation. But if you listen to it, you hear waves crashing and then you just hear this woman reciting this poem, which has been done in this traditional Mayan tongue. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if that’s something that they meant to put in the movie and they cut it out. I want to know what it is because I got to the end and I was like, what is this? And when I watched the movie, I was listening for those two distinct pieces of music and did not hear them. So I’m like, what was cut that had these things in them? I’m just mad curious about what those things were, considering I know how much love and care and craft was put into the soundtrack. Why they ain’t the movie? What happened?

Reginé Gilbert:
I mean, things get cut. That’s why, I think things get cut. And then sometimes, I mean the movie was long. And so what is really going to, I think shout out to story editors because they really bring things together and in amazing ways. But I hope one day, Maurice, you get your answer because then you could tell us. I’m very curious too.

Maurice Cherry:
Listen Hannah, if you’re listening, put out the production bible. We want to know. We want to hear it.

Paul Webb:
Please.

Jordan Green:
Please. What I got to do. Do we ever get a director’s cut of Black Panther one? Because I’m like, did that drop?

Maurice Cherry:
We have to look into that.

Paul Webb:
I don’t remember.

Maurice Cherry:
I the DVD, but I don’t remember.

Paul Webb:
But I have the Blu-Ray.

Maurice Cherry:
Me too.

Jordan Green:
Oh, you have the DVD, I should get the DVD and Blu-Ray.

Maurice Cherry:
We got to check that out.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Final thoughts about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I asked this question at the end of the first time we did this for the first Black Panther movie. And I want to ask it again for this one. The question really being, what do you hope comes out of this?

Reginé Gilbert:
My hope-

Paul Webb:
I have a couple things.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh no, Reginé go for it.

Reginé Gilbert:
Oh, I was going to, my hope is that we get to hear more indigenous stories, because I feel that we are, so much of history has been forgotten, hidden on purpose. There are so many things that we don’t know about these cultures and we’re getting a glimpse. And even though this doesn’t exactly align with the comics, this is exposing us to a culture that we were not familiar with, a majority of us. A lot of people don’t know about Mesoamerica or anything about the cultures or the, people are made out to be savages and all these things that are not actually accurate. You know who the savages really are. And so my hope is that we get to hear more of the stories that we haven’t in the past.

Maurice Cherry:
Okoye said, “A colonizer in chains.”

Reginé Gilbert:
That was a great-

Maurice Cherry:
That was a great line. Paul, what about you?

Paul Webb:
Oh man, I forgot about that. Oh, that was damn good. I was like, yes. What would I like to see? Obviously another film, please. These things take time, so they got to take all the time they need. We already mentioned we would love to see the production Bible. Definitely. Yeah. I think tagging on to what Reginé said, yeah, just more stories. I would like to have more information about Namor’s background and people in his city or country more, just more of that because man, those visuals, I feel like 40% of the movie was just underwater and I would like to see more of that.

Maurice Cherry:
Jordan?

Jordan Green:
I actually want to kind of come in right in between Reginé and Paul, I would love for Marvel, I kind of like how DC has been doing with their Earth Prime comics. I would love for Marvel to release an MCU line of comic books that were written by indigenous people with black people. And they’re kind of doing that with Wakanda Forever. But I do think that Talokan, not being Atlantis, but being Talokan and really being citied in Mesoamerica, that in and of itself is brilliant. And I know that the MCU under Kevin Feige has been really expanding the stories to be super diverse.

And you don’t see that reflected in the comics as much and you don’t see that reflected in the current lore of the comics, so I would love to see those stories and I would love for folks to really get curious about Mesoamerica art, art of the Pacifics in general and just getting curious about the stories that are hidden from us and are locked away in academia and not really accessible. Not really accessible anywhere outside of that. And really taking them again and making them their own. Yeah, I think the greatest thing about this film is this. It shows what happens when stories that come from people from the diaspora are given the proper care and treatment and budget to tell their stories the way that they want to be told. And so I hope that that is what continues to happen.

Maurice Cherry:
And for me, I feel like I’m piggybacking on everyone’s points here, but I definitely want to see Marvel tell more of these types of stories that really dig into different cultures of the world. I think for so long, particularly from the inception of Marvel comics, what we’ve been shown has been through a white lens. We get Greek mythology, we get Norse mythology. And I feel like I just know this from honestly playing the Shin Megami Tensei persona games. There are so many other world mythologies out there with amazing characters and stories and how it all sort of ties into the thing with that I think is very interesting in the movie, because we talked about the fluidity of language. All of these myths were created by humans to understand the world around them, which means that in a very primitive way, we all kind of experienced the same feelings.

We may call it different things. We may have different representations for them, but they all boil down to the same core feelings of loss, love, regret, anger, vengeance, et cetera. I want to see Marvel tap into that more throughout continued works throughout the MCU. And I hope that that encourages other people to do the same thing with their storytelling. Be more creative, be more experimental, be more hopeful. We talked about how this movie is really sort of a meditation on grief, but then we also flipped it to talk about how it has these solar punk hopeful elements to show us a future where we are one with the world and humanity. And we do that to try to become better people in general. So that’s what I hope really comes out of this is that it becomes sort of a clarion call similar to the first movie, but in a different way, for people to just get more creative.

Jordan Green:
Yeah.