Board Thread:Movies/@comment-3048593-20171206004220/@comment-29908830-20180503054341

LoveWaffle wrote: My problem with Killmonger is that he's a pretty interesting character who in the third act turns into just another bad guy with the same/similar powers as the hero. I thought we were moving away from that trope. Kaecilius is the only other Phase 3 villain who fits into that category, but even then the movie offsets that with the unique showdown between Strange and Dormammu. Ghost certainly doesn't, but what are the odds that a character like that will show up in Captain Marvel?

I can see where you're coming from with that, and I have seen people criticize that, but I think that in this case, there's a story-based reasoning behind it. Killmonger has the same powers as T'Challa because he wants to become everything that T'Challa represents. They both have different visions for the future of Wakanda, but they're still visions for the future of Wakanda. He doesn't just want the great power, like characters such as [all of] the Iron Man villains; he also wants the responsibility.

My only real complaint about him is that I feel some of the actions he took after he became king, such as burning all of the herb, were uncalled for. On a more nitpicky note, he also gave the second most cringe-inducing line in the movie for me, when he's sitting on the throne (the most cringe-inducing being Shuri's "What are those" reference); I won't say it to avoid controversy, but I feel that one line almost completely moved Killmonger from having an anti-isolationism stance to having an anti-racism stance, and it kind of came off as narrow-minded and discontinuous.

What really makes Killmonger work, though, is that the film truly makes us want to sympathize with him. Thanks in no small part to all of Sterling K. Brown's scenes, we truly get where Killmonger comes from. Not only that, but Killmonger's genuinely trying to do the right thing, but unlike someone like Ra'as al Ghul in Batman Begins or Zod in Man of Steel, it's not wholly detrimental; it's that he himself is warped. After all, T'Challa basically goes along with Killmonger's ideals at the end of the film, proving that Killmonger caused him to change his ideals - which in my book, is always the mark of a fantastic villain.