BOY: Baba...
MAN: Yes, my son.
BOY: Tell me a story.
- (HANNAH BEACHLER LAUGHING) - RYAN COOGLER: Oh, my God.
This is Ryan Coogler,
co-writer and director of Black Panther. And I'm here with...
BEACHLER: Hannah Beachler, production designer of Black Panther.
COOGLER: And Hannah's having a good time already.
- (BEACHLER CHUCKLES) - The prologue to the film.
This is something that was in the script, and then out of the script,
and we weren't totally sure if we were gonna have it.
But I'm really happy that we did.
That's Sterling K. Brown playing the character of N'Jobu
who's narrating to a young man named N'Jadaka,
or also known as Erik Stevens, also known as Killmonger.
A young lad.
He's asking for a bedtime story from his father.
And through that bedtime story, we get the story of the founding of Wakanda.
That's something that Hannah...
We wanted Wakanda to feel old. We wanted it to feel real,
and we kind of wanted to build a history on it.
And Hannah worked on a...
How many pages was that bible that you made?
BEACHLER: 515.
- COOGLER: (CHUCKLES) 515. - It ended up being 515.
And then the one that you still had in your office was 300 pages.
COOGLER: Yeah.
MAN: Four tribes agreed to live under the king's rule...
but the Jabari Tribe isolated themselves in the mountains.
The Wakandans used vibranium to develop technology...
more advanced than any other nation.
COOGLER: This represents the rest of the world, outside of the borders.
And now you see these enslaved Africans here,
going on that boat towards the Middle Passage,
and then that's the atom bombs.
We gettin' into World War II, and the planes kind of change over time.
So we're really just showing the worst of mankind that's happening outside.
You got wars, you got colonization, slavery.
Horrible weapons of mass destruction.
And then we go to...
Look at that. It's Oakland, California.
- BEACHLER: 1992. (CHUCKLES) - 1992, yeah. (CHUCKLES)
BEACHLER: Lake Merritt, right?
COOGLER: Yeah. This is really important to us, right?
Getting that milk crate basketball court.
The idea kind of came from...
Africans, no matter where you are in the world...
Africans, you'll find, will make something out of whatever they have.
They'll make art, they'll make sport, entertainment
out of whatever they have, and it's something that we do,
Africans in Oakland,
make basketball courts out of milk crates and wood.
BOY: What you got? You ain't got nothing.
COOGLER: You want to talk about where we shot that at, Hannah?
'Cause I think there's an interesting story there.
- BEACHLER: At the apartment building? - Yeah.
BEACHLER: We shot at this apartment building in Atlanta
that was really fitting to
what you would find on Lake Merritt around that time period.
There was actually one building in Lake Merritt
that really reflected that one.
What part? (LAUGHS)
COOGLER: No, it was right across the street from the church
- where Martin Luther King was buried. - BEACHLER: Martin Luther King is buried.
Right? And then, his daughter...
COOGLER: Yeah, that first day we shot this scene.
BEACHLER: Oh, that was amazing.
COOGLER: Yeah, Martin Luther King's daughter came up to us,
and shook everybody's hand, and blessed the project.
It was pretty intense.
BEACHLER: It was super intense. It was fantastic. What a moment.
COOGLER: It's on a set that we built in Atlanta.
The color for colonization in this film was blue.
So you see N'Jobu, he's living in a colonized place.
He's got that blue shirt on.
They won't knock again.
COOGLER: The room, we painted it a greenish blue.
And this is about the introduction of the Dora.
And also, here, you kind of find out that...
We highlightin' the fact that it's hard to tell where Africans are from.
Who are you?
The only thing you really can judge it off of is how they talk, generally.
You know what I mean? What they sound like.
Prove to me you are one of us.
So we really wanted to play with that idea of seeing a man in Oakland
talking like he was from Oakland,
and then the next thing you know, he has his African accent.
Kind of settin' up this idea of hiding in plain sight
and how fragile it is to be African and from different cultures, you know?
Here we meet T'Chaka, who is the first Black Panther that we meet.
You're also introduced to Dora Milaje
who are a big part of the film here as well.
And then getting into the color story real early here,
you see T'Chaka in the black, the purple, the Dora in the red.
You want to talk about the color story a little bit, Hannah?
(SPEAKS XHOSA)
Come, baby brother.
BEACHLER: Yeah, well, the one thing is setting this up.
You see Zuri in the purple, which you see him at the Warrior Falls
in the purple, like you were saying, the Dora in the red, Panther in black.
That's the beginning of the color story.
I remember when you had put this up on your office wall,
- and we were talking about them. - (COOGLER CHUCKLES)
COOGLER: Yeah, what we found
Baby brother.
In writing this with Joe Robert Cole and with Nathan Moore, our producer,
we realized we got a ton of characters.
So a big thing we wanted to do,
and Hannah and I had done it on our other films as well,
was kind of come up with a color story. But for this,
we really wanted to color-coordinate per character.
'Cause there's so many characters in the film, to help keep track of it.
We really wanted to make each color tell a story
and associate characters with those colors.
You'll see young Zuri has on purple,
which is the color that you always see associated with him.
Purple represents spirituality in Wakanda.
It represents royalty. It represents high rank.
And another motif in the film, too.
Ruth's not here to talk about it, but chains, necklaces...
You'll see necklaces in the film a lot.
Tell him who you are.
In this shot right here, all of these three African men have necklaces on.
It's something that we're known for as African-Americans,
but it goes back deeper than that. It goes back to the continent as well.
And the color of the necklaces tell a story as well.
All of these men are members of Wakandan royalty.
They all have gold necklaces on, gold versions of those necklaces.
And the herringbone-style necklace is...
It's a style that's popular in California, popular in the Bay Area.
You see Tupac with the herringbone on a lot.
And we kind of based Killmonger's look with the herringbone
off of some of Tupac's chains.
We wanted to put that big herringbone on his father,
just to try to plant that seed early.
T'CHAKA: Prince N'Jobu...
you will return home at once...
where you will face the Council...
and inform them of your crimes.
COOGLER: Go back outside. BEACHLER: Outside to the kids.
COOGLER: So, Martin Luther King is buried in that building
- right across from there. - BEACHLER: Right. Yep.
COOGLER: We actually touched it up with CG,
so that it would look like a building in Oakland.
- BEACHLER: Yeah, not so brick. - Mmm-hmm.
BEACHLER: And then there goes the Royal Talon Fighter.
COOGLER: RTF.
We get into this, and like a big sound thing, man.
This was one of the ways that Kevin Feige helped us a lot.
He was real adamant about hitting that note right on that cut.
And I think that it was really effective.
We actually had to manipulate the normal Marvel logo music
to get it to sync up with the cut a little better.
But once we did, we were really happy with it.
We went back and forth over whether to have an African-style theme here,
but we thought the contrast would be good.
Comin' out of that Too $hort
to start it off with, and get into that big Marvel sound.
Start that contrast off tough.
The text and stuff too.
Hannah, I don't know if you want to talk about that.
BEACHLER: The Wakandan font that you see in the intertitles,
switching from the Bano font to the Wakandan font,
that was designed by myself
and Zachary Fannin, who is a graphic designer.
We based it off of the Nsibidi a little bit,
in the sense that we pulled from shapes
from the earlier versions of Nsibidi.
So the more 4th century, more than the 1800s
is when it was recorded by the British.
We wanted it to share a language together, but be different.
Like you knew one was modern, and you knew one was a script.
Like we have that, so we're layering, adding layers already.
This is one of my favorite parts too. I love this part.
- The sand tables. (LAUGHS) - COOGLER: The sand table, yeah.
We were trying to find ways for the Wakandan technology to be tactile.
A lot of things in the African culture are tactile.
They have multiple uses.
I like to think about the Fufu dish that's in West Africa.
How it's food, but it's also a utensil.
We wanted everything to have multiple purposes
and everything to be contact-activated.
Just don't freeze...
COOGLER: Right now, they're flying over the Sambisa Forest,
which is in Northern Nigeria, the Borno State, I believe,
but it's a part of a little hit on
things that's goin' on in the real world.
It's inspired by the kidnapping that's happening in that region.
It's actually still going on.
So, for folks in the know, they'll recognize the Sambisa Forest.
MILITANT 1: What's going on?
COOGLER: This is a Steadicam shot here.
Crazy enough, this was done on a set in Atlanta.
- Hannah had... - We built the size of a football field.
COOGLER: Yeah, Hannah turned the Atlanta set into the Sambisa Forest.
BEACHLER: We brought in over 150,000 plants and trees for this set
and about 20 tons of dirt, red dirt.
COOGLER: Yeah, and Pedro,
- who's a brilliant greensman. - BEACHLER: Yeah, fantastic greensman.
COOGLER: He actually had some of these plants giving off fruit.
They were flowering.
- BEACHLER: Yeah, they were blooming. - It was intense.
And Geoff Baumann and Rachel Morrison,
our amazing cinematographer, finished it off.
BEACHLER: And filled it out, yeah, absolutely.
COOGLER: And here you meet Lupita Nyong'o,
this character, Nakia, and it's really just,
again, hiding in plain sight, this idea of espionage,
that Africans can be everywhere.
This idea that you can't tell Wakandans apart
from other people from the continent.
We wanted to set that up.
This is Bambadjan Bamba right here. He's actually a dreamer
who came out and spoke about working in the industry as an immigrant.
Bambadjan did a fantastic job for us here as leader of this convoy.
Over there! Look back!
Watch out!
COOGLER: This whole idea of Panther coming out,
getting them to look one way and coming out from the other side.
Here, we really wanted to show... We had a lot of story to tell here.
We had to show that the suit is bulletproof,
show how Panther fights,
but also show that Nakia's a force to be reckoned with as well.
We wanted the scene to feel like you're in the perspective of these guys.
The key light is coming from the muzzle flashes.
It's pretty dark.
NAKIA: T'Challa, no!
This one's just a boy.
COOGLER: And then here, just showing the contrast
of how Nakia is ingratiated with this group.
She knows who's innocent,
and who shouldn't be harmed and who should.
Panther doesn't. If Nakia's not there, that kid probably gets Panther's claws.
So, we're setting up this scene of how Panther works,
and how these women have his back, in different ways.
That's really what this scene was about, introducing these characters.
Seein' the contrast. Color story, again.
You see Okoye in the red and gold, as a high-ranking official in Dora Milaje.
Nakia, we see, is always in green. This environment is green.
This represents her being from the River Tribe.
And also, her kind of blending in to these circumstances.
You see the women are dressed in green on back in the truck.
Nakia sees herself as part of the outside world as well,
even though she's Wakandan born.
And I wish for you to be there.
COOGLER: Black Panther, you see, is here in the black.
We used to have a scene where he got all those devices back,
but we ended up cutting that part out for movement.
Thank you oh.
COOGLER: The women here are speaking in the Hausa dialect,
as well as a little bit of Arabic.
You will speak nothing of this day.
Yes.
Thank you.
COOGLER: This scene sets up the outside world.
Panther here is taking a look at
the impact that he's had on these women's lives.
And they look up at the ship leaving,
but Okoye's told them not to say anything about this.
You know what I mean? Not to speak of this.
And this idea of planning in the script of...
People don't talk about Wakanda. People don't know about it.
Other Africans all over the world, they don't know about it.
But if they did, what could that mean for them?
Just to know.
So we planned that early.
(WAKANDA BY BAABA MAAL PLAYING)
A lot of emotion in this scene, though it's non-dialogue.
She's just found out that he lost his father recently.
She loved T'Chaka as much as he did.
She's kind of showing that she's there for him
even though they are estranged right now romantically.
And there are some really important lines there about being home.
We're gonna talk about where we shot some of those places.
- That's all South Africa here. Hannah? - BEACHLER: (LAUGHS) South Africa...
A lot of it is Winterton, which is Northern KwaZulu-Natal
up by the Sentinel Mountains and the Lesotho border.
That's where this is. That's where a lot of our plates were shot.
But there's also plates shot in Zambia and Uganda.
And the impenetrable forest on the Uganda side.
COOGLER: This is the impenetrable forest right here.
You want to talk about this? Going to the Golden City?
- You should take it away. - BEACHLER: Here we go, the hologram.
That was one of the first things that you even talked to me about.
When we started designing Golden City,
was that it's under this cover and we did that quick animation.
It stuck with us through the entire time that we were working on this film.
We always came back to that thing.
They're hidden, but they're not hidden within.
They can see the sky, but you can't see them.
- That was... And then the palace. - COOGLER: The palace, man.
- BEACHLER: We went around. - We had a lot of iterations.
But I'm so happy with how we ended up.
BEACHLER: I think it turned out fantastic.
And the city, you know...
My favorite thing about the city, I think... Well, lots of things.
But the one thing, I think, that really was a turning point
was when we were in South Africa, and you were talking about,
"We should put the rondavel tops
- "on the skyscrapers." - COOGLER: Right.
BEACHLER: And I think that's the moment where
the city really started to have breath and life.
That made a big difference to me in how I started viewing it.
Because then it became part of the country.
RAMONDA: Thank you, Nakia.
COOGLER: So here you have Ramonda and Nakia
having a dialogue with each other.
You meet Ayo for the first time, who we've seen in Civil War.
But she's kind of second-in-command of the Dora.
You're meeting the character Shuri, who's very important in this film.
This film kind of looks at the sibling relationship as well,
even more so than I've ever had a chance to work on in a film before.
It's my first movie really involved in the sibling relationship.
So you see Shuri and T'Challa in contrast
with the other two siblings that we just saw
have a conversation, and it did not go well
with T'Chaka and N'Jobu.
So that was a big thing for us to contrast this relationship.
And we were really excited to find Letitia, man.
She's perfect for this role. We were so excited about her.
She kind of brought an energy and a love to the set
that I think affected everybody.
You see the great Angela Bassett here and T'Challa.
You know what? This scene's about her hiding her grief
and trying to stay positive and move forward.
It's a big day for T'Challa.
She wants to give him the energy from her
for him to be able to focus on that day and enjoy it.
He is with us...
and it is your time to be king.
COOGLER: Here we get into, uh... BEACHLER: London.
COOGLER: (CHUCKLES) Yeah, we get into London.
- This is actually Atlanta here. - BEACHLER: This is... Yeah.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
- BEACHLER: We built this space. - Hannah built this beautiful museum.
BEACHLER: We built this space, and we really worked hard
on getting every single piece in their appropriate time period
and what this African exhibit would be, because it would be
sort of a sub-Saharan, West African masks and whatnot.
I love this, meeting Michael for the first time.
COOGLER: Meeting Mike for the first time,
and you see your color story once again.
You see what color he's wearing.
And colonization is what the blue color represents, first and foremost.
What about this one?
COOGLER: Almost everybody in London is wearing blue.
There's even a blue tint to the cinematography that Rachel did.
And our idea, it's the color of...
A lot of European flags have that color blue in 'em.
The color of water, which is what separated the diaspora.
You know what I mean? It's kind of the separation
that the African-Americans had with the continent.
The water did not bode well for us. (CHUCKLES)
It was taken by British soldiers in Benin, but it's from Wakanda.
COOGLER: But we wanted to associate him with
that color that you saw his father in again.
And here, it's kind of based on an experience my wife and I had
when we went to the British Museum.
You know, you're just kind of looking at the... (LAUGHS)
Having really odd interactions in that space, you know what I'm saying?
It's a beautiful museum, though. Really amazing people that work there.
But it's complicated, right?
As all museums are and probably should be.
...ever since I walked in.
- (CLEARS THROAT) - But you ain't checking for
- what you put in your body. - (GASPS)
All right, mate. Let's have it. Come on, mate. Time.
BEACHLER: I think this is one part in the film
where I think he really says something.
He calls her out on these antiquities.
- And, um, I shouldn't talk politics. - (BOTH LAUGHING)
COOGLER: You're not. You shouldn't, but that's...
I'm gonna take a break.
BEACHLER: You'll see lots of blues just in the set too.
- COOGLER: Yeah. - The paintings.
Dots of blue any time that Killmonger was around
was the thing that we really tried to do.
COOGLER: Yeah, we kind of skipped past Nabiyah, who's an amazing actress
who was a barista who executed Killmonger's plot.
And here we meet Klaue, who we saw before in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
But we're really getting into who he is here.
And for us, Klaue was always kind of a...
We wanted him to feel like a wild card. You know what I mean?
We wanted him to feel like a live wire
who's dangerous, but you also never really knew what to expect from him.
(HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYING)
And this is obviously a heist scene.
Again, you can see the blue that's all over the scene.
Even outside, for an overcast-type feel.
And also introducing that Klaue has this special weapon that's very powerful.
You get a little taste of it here.
He literally says, "It's just a taste." Look at that.
"Just a taste." Yeah. (CHUCKLES)
Get a taste of that there, and we really wanted to show
Killmonger observing the fact that he has this weapon,
which comes into play with the idea of him
setting him up to maybe be potentially captured by T'Challa.
But Killmonger's pretty confident that with that weapon,
Klaue will be able to hold his own.
- You better sell that quick. - (CHUCKLES) It's already sold!
COOGLER: And here, Killmonger takes this mask,
he says he wants a little extra piece, a little souvenir for himself.
It took us a while to design that mask, but it's kind of a combination
of many different animals that you'll find on the continent.
You got the antelope antlers. You got a simian face,
and also the lion. The lion mane.
This idea that he's an amalgamation of all these different things.
(SIREN WAILING)
Ambulance pulling off there, leaving in plain sight.
- BEACHLER: Oh, Warrior Falls. - Yeah, Warrior... (EXHALES)
Warrior Falls, man. Taking us back.
So here, you're getting the introduction of the different tribes.
You see Nakia in her element
with the River Tribe Leader, played by Isaach De Bankolé.
Onward!
Yeah, just going in. Boom.
This shot going underneath is a full CG shot,
worked on by our amazing visual effects editor, Geoff Baumann.
Looking at the RTF, or the Royal Talon Fighter.
We call it the RTF.
Hannah kind of designed it to look like a mask from the top down.
One thing that I really like is, on the bottom, we got these sonic things.
And they kind of remind me of subwoofers.
- You know, you see it... (LAUGHS) - BEACHLER: Exactly. Exactly.
We had a great art director on that.
(PEOPLE SINGING IN XHOSA)
Oh, the rocks. The Oribi Gorge rocks.
COOGLER: This is when we get into the on-the-ground view of all the Wakandans
at the amphitheater setting. You wanna talk about building that, Hannah?
BEACHLER: Oh, man. This was a giant build.
It was on the backlot in Atlanta.
It was about 120 feet wide, and about, from the ground up, 40 feet tall
with about 150,000 gallons of water running through it.
'Course it was extended by VFX. But that's what the build was.
And it was really when we were in Oribi Gorge,
when I saw that rock, I was like... The way that it was layered and shaled.
And it was so beautiful, with the dark blacks.
We saw that everywhere though. There was a black.
Remember you saw that? When we were up in Winterton,
you were like, "Is that vibranium?"
Where it was just shiny, crazy, beautiful. So we wanted...
The water was really important to Ryan.
And it just created such a beautiful graphic nature of everything.
Yeah, the colors are from the red of South Africa that we saw.
But this is... Yeah.
Here's Zuri in his purple.
COOGLER: Yeah, so we see Zuri again in his purple.
The face paint on Zuri was inspired by
some shaman and warriors in Papua New Guinea.
I always kind of liked that.
Forest kind of picked that out. We thought it was brilliant
'cause it felt like they were trying to evoke a leopard.
The spotting, we got the same kind of body paint on T'Challa's chest.
His is obviously black,
being a Black Panther, with a little blue detail.
A little Lion King shout-out with the stripe across his forehead.
(ALL SPEAKING XHOSA) Praise the ancestors.
(ALL SPEAKING XHOSA)
Praise the ancestors.
BEACHLER: How many days did you shoot on this set?
COOGLER: I can't remember. I wanna say
between this fight and the fight with Killmonger...
(EXHALES)
Probably between 12 and 15.
BEACHLER: Almost two weeks. That's what I thought.
- COOGLER: Between 12 and 15 days. - Yeah.
- This is our Tuareg Tribe. - COOGLER: Yeah, our Tuareg Tribe.
Yeah, we're seeing different tribes. That's Miss Dorothy.
Miss Dorothy is in her 90s.
BEACHLER: She was a little firebomb, man.
She was such a cool woman. (CHUCKLES)
COOGLER: We just blew past Daniel Kaluuya and Danny Sapani.
Two British actors named Daniel. Both really good.
- BEACHLER: Himba. - And Kanian.
BEACHLER: Maasai-inspired.
Is there any member of a royal blood who wishes to challenge...
COOGLER: And here you're gonna see Shuri...
- Shuri with the fake-out here. - Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: This fake-out was actually a suggestion
by Donald and Stephen Glover
of Atlanta and Childish Gambino fame.
(MEN CHANTING AND GRUNTING)
Talk about the corset. My wife is telling us to talk about the corset.
That's a Dinka corset.
Inspired by the corsets the Dinka tribe wear.
Here you got the Jabari Tribe's entrance.
This is crazy...
BEACHLER: What does he say? Because I've heard a lot of people
say it a lot of different ways.
COOGLER: Yeah.
BEACHLER: When he's coming out. Can you run that back, Vince?
To the Jabari coming out? You don't want to, okay.
But it's really lovely.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
COOGLER: They have a evil accent. More of a Nigerian accent.
It's crazy seeing people embrace this scene
because it was always one of our favorite scenes in the office,
when we were editing it and shooting it.
But now people are doing the M'Baku challenge.
This is Winston Duke coming out.
Anyway, a big inspiration for me with this scene,
actually, crazy enough, was the film, Lincoln.
I thought that Lincoln, which came out in 2013, same year we did Fruitvale.
I remember seeing it and thinking,
"These political scenes are really interesting."
Like, when they're in the House, and they're arguing
these political things in real animated ways.
So I thought it'd be...
If you know African culture, we're such an animated people.
You know what I'm saying?
I thought it would be great if this dude
comes out with these political arguments,
but it's also a challenge to T'Challa's masculinity.
You know what I'm saying?
He's doing those things at the same time.
We will not have it.
I said, we will not have it, oh!
COOGLER: M'Baku, in the comics, he's in his ape suit.
It's extremely problematic.
We wanted to make his character one of dignity.
We wanted him to be sexy.
(BEACHLER LAUGHS)
I can't take no credit for that. That's all Winston.
BEACHLER: He is.
COOGLER: We also wanted to invoke that they worship a deity
that's different from the animal god that the Panther tribes worship.
You'll see the white paint on his back symbolizing that he's a silverback.
Symbolizing that he's the leader of the tribe.
And it's interesting because the Jabari Tribe
don't have an elder to speak for them.
M'Baku is a young leader.
Onward!
He's got that acumen. He's the same age as T'Challa.
He comes and speaks for himself.
Let the challenge begin!
(YELLING AND GRUNTING)
COOGLER: Getting into this fight was bananas, man.
The guys are in six inches of water that's pumping over an edge.
Having to do this choreography.
Each time, with each hit, both the Dora
and the Jabari warriors have to step in.
We kind of blew past the musical cue,
which is the "choo" that you hear with the Dora.
The first time you really hear it is when he calls the Dora out
and Danai slams her spear and they come down.
So we really wanted it to be intense here,
and the music here is really intricate.
Ludwig Göransson, our incredible composer, did some amazing work.
When he first found out we were doing this,
he and his fiancée flew to Africa and stayed in Senegal for about a month,
researching and making music and living with the musicians.
And it informed a lot of the stuff that you hear on this beautiful score.
Here you got that moment.
What you think is the darkest hour in this fight with T'Challa.
And here you get a little bit of the motif of, "Show him who you are."
But names are a big motif in the film. Names, it's a big thing.
He's actually gonna scream his name out.
And the idea is that T'Challa gets his worth from his identity.
You know what I mean? For him,
he sees his father T'Chaka as the greatest king that ever lived.
So he has his self-worth because he's T'Chaka's son.
He actually yells that out.
"I'm T'Challa, son of King T'Chaka."
And that gives him the energy there, coupled with his sister's cheers
and his mom's cheers,
to come through and get him to this variation of a leg choke here.
And it's gonna transition to a type of inverted triangle choke.
Hope I'm not blowing that for my fight guys out there.
And he's dangling over the edge here.
This moment works really great in 3D actually.
It was one of the moments I looked at in the film and said,
"Wow, this really works here."
BEACHLER: So many people have said they love it in 3D.
- COOGLER: Yeah. - I need to see that in 3D.
When I saw this scene in 3D, I was like,
"Oh, yeah. This is a 3D movie too."
ALL: (CHANTING) T'Challa!
T'Challa!
You have fought with honor!
Now yield! Your people need you.
COOGLER: And here is a big moment too. You see T'Challa is a merciful guy.
He doesn't enjoy taking people's lives.
He kind of reminds M'Baku here,
"Look, you're a great leader. Your tribe needs you.
"You don't need to die right here for your honor.
"Let's not do that."
Spoiler alert, it ends up being something
that ends up helping him in the long run.
He gets his arm cut, so he got one arm up.
Just a little bit of symbolism there.
I now present to you King T'Challa...
COOGLER: And here once again you see the necklace.
The value of the necklace.
The idea that that was B'shanga's necklace.
And it goes on you in this ceremony.
And you see the bond between he and Zuri as well.
My King.
(WHOOPING)
Wakanda forever!
- COOGLER: Dance from the Dora. - Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: Going up. And Geoff Baumann and those guys extending that cliff for us.
There's a big pull out shot there.
You want to talk about the City of Dead?
BEACHLER: City of the Dead. This is one of my favorites.
Really, like, just...
I think that Samsara was a big inspiration
for how that big wide shot looked coming in.
And it's in the jungle. Ryan, you always talked about it being
in this overgrown jungle.
And that's how we felt about the herb growing inside of this
sort of sacred temple where the Heart-Shaped Herb
and the death herb are growing.
We have this dirt center, and, yeah.
COOGLER: Yeah, and the idea of the color purple.
The idea of the color purple being, like, it comes from this plant.
That's why the folks who are religious in the film
and the spiritual leaders of the film wear the color purple.
Because it comes from this purple plant is the idea.
And here you got young T'Challa looking at his father.
And then you see them age within that touch,
which was a great cut put together by editorial guys there.
Praise the ancestors.
And this idea of praising their ancestors,
and you have young people present as well as old.
This idea of the full circle.
And then seeing, in this scene, the events of Civil War.
This is actually footage from the film here.
We put a little bit of a Jesse James warping effect that we put on in post.
It's almost like tilt-shift lens effect. Shout-out to Roger Deakins.
And we bury him. We wanted him to experience death.
And you see how he gets buried, similar to a lot of poses
that you'll see in statues from the continent.
It's kind of a "Wakanda forever" salute. We got it from the pharaohs
and also West African sculptures that you'll see,
when the arms are folded over like that.
It also means a hug or love in ASL, American Sign Language.
That's kind of where we got the "Wakanda forever" salute from.
So he's coming out of the dirt, approaching.
He's approaching these trees.
And this idea is T'Challa has gotten the herb before.
He's experienced these hallucinations, these spiritual journeys,
these vision quests, so to speak, before.
But this is the first time he's done it since his father has been dead.
So it's new for him here, and he's expecting to see his father.
And he sees him here.
We went through a lot of iterations of what this place was gonna look like.
BEACHLER: Yeah, from fantastical and something way out there
that was more like an idea within your mind's eye
to, you know, once we were in South Africa
and up in Spioenkop.
And seeing these grasslands, with all these acacias dotted through it.
Which I think you see a lot in films about Africa.
And it's not Africa, but we wanted to have that texture in there.
In the grasslands, and how they really feel.
So that was really important that when we went there,
- that that sort of changed for us. - COOGLER: Right.
In here, you see those streaks, those are aurora borealis,
What is wrong my son?
Because we wanted that to still be present.
I am not ready.
Like as if he's feeling the effects of that plant that he drank.
Have you not prepared
(SPEAKING XHOSA)
to be king your whole life?
Have you not trained and studied,
COOGLER: And this is a big part of me. They're speaking in Xhosa,
been by my side?
Which is the South African dialect that we used for Wakandan.
And I thought it was great to see these two,
father and son, speaking that traditional African dialect here.
And here, T'Challa is admitting his weakness.
But he also states his flaw as well as his mission for the film.
He's asking his father to tell him how to best protect Wakanda.
Because he wants to be a great king like him.
And his idea, his definition of a great king is being like his father.
And that being a limiting thing.
It's showing that T'Challa is too stuck in the past.
And that's the flaw he needs to conquer in the film.
And his view of his father is limited.
It's not a total view.
His father even asks if he's ever let him down.
T'Challa says, "No."
It's impossible to live a whole life to never let somebody down.
But his view of his father is that, he's got him up on this pedestal,
as well as the past, and what past kings have done, up on a pedestal.
And it's his destiny, him being a good man.
In our view, working on the script,
T'Challa is the best king there's ever been.
T'Challa, breathe.
- (BREATHING DEEPLY) - Breathe.
COOGLER: The big thing for me was seeing people of different age ranges.
Seeing young people, seeing older people.
A place isn't real to me until I see
people across all different walks of life.
And I think the young folks give a place its life.
So I wanted to know where do the 20s and 30s hang out at.
- And that was a big thing. - BEACHLER: And food!
COOGLER: And a place isn't real until you see somebody eat. Yeah.
- BEACHLER: Ryan always says that! - (BOTH LAUGH)
Every movie. Food.
You'll notice the food.
And that was a big important part, so we got braai.
And we had somebody come in who understood how it's cooked,
understood how to cook it, to prep all of our braai cooking for the day.
And it is being cooked while we're filming that day.
Yeah, and braai is a South African term for barbecued meat.
BEACHLER: Yeah. And what was the coffee that we had?
COOGLER: We had yak butter tea.
BEACHLER: Yak butter tea, yeah. (LAUGHS)
COOGLER: The idea of...
You can feel tradition in food. And that's an African thing, man.
Africans eat. They eat in communal ways.
We eat with our hands.
You see that lady back there with a vibranium fork,
(CHUCKLES) but I think it's...
We wanted it to feel real, and we wanted it to feel lived in.
A big goal for us was if we can have people
feel like they could go to Wakanda after this movie's over.
It feels that real.
You would make a great queen.
I would make a great queen because I am so stubborn.
- Ah! See, you admit it! - If that's what I wanted.
COOGLER: When we were scouting South Africa
for researching with a crew,
we came across a rhino...
- Was that Spioenkop? - BEACHLER: That was in Spioenkop.
COOGLER: Spioenkop was a game reserve, and the rhino's name was M-20.
And he was the most impressive thing I ever seen in my life.
And that's what we named W'Kabi's rhino. We named him M-20 after that rhino.
He had this most amazing-looking horn, and when we landed, we found out that
to protect him from poachers, they ended up having to cut it.
But M-20's horn lives on in our film.
- BEACHLER: In our film. (CHUCKLES) - Yeah.
It's actually a horse who Daniel fed that apple to.
And Baumann and the guys in VFX,
they wrapped a digital rhino around the horse.
BEACHLER: Yep, it was a Clydesdale
because they have the same gait as a rhino.
So, their hips move in that lumpy way that a rhino moves.
So we had a big ol' Clydes. I think his name was Champion or something.
- He was big, and he wasn't nice. - (COOGLER CHUCKLES)
(LAUGHS) I said it!
But we wanted to do the traditional cattle fence
by using regular branches that were cut.
Nothing planed or anything.
Just always using what's there in nature,
instead of creating more and wasting more.
It's always this simpatico relationship.
A misidentified Wakandan artifact...
was stolen yesterday from a British museum.
COOGLER: The pyramid that you see them sitting on top of.
They're actually sitting on top of a pyramid,
and Hannah had this brilliant idea
that they have built around several different structures.
And this pyramid, with the Timbuktu-style scaffolding
that you see in the top-down shot
is the first kind of temple, the first kind of palace.
BEACHLER: Yes, first palace in Mali, so a lot of the mud palaces
and the pyramids in Mali date back before 4th century, I believe.
They're very old.
I believe it's before 4th century. Don't quote me on that one.
But, to me, in my mind, it felt like
for years they have been coming and communicating
and counseling and solving problems on this spot.
And that it has not changed.
And so as they progress, and the world progresses around them, they still...
Ryan, you said something really important to me,
when I was starting to work.
Remember that old part of town in North Triangle,
- and I put it on the glass? - COOGLER: Yeah.
BEACHLER: And you had said, "They would touch it, they wouldn't..."
COOGLER: Yeah.
BEACHLER: In the West, we put everything in glass.
Like you see in the British Museum.
But they would want to interact with it and touch it.
So, very much a part of their lives
and not just this old thing they must protect.
It stays young because they are still interacting with it.
So that's what I kept in mind going forward from that, about that.
We wanted it to be regal,
but we wanted it to feel intimate at the same time
because there's intimate things that happen in there with Nakia
and Okoye having a conversation, and then all the decisions being made.
- My favorite set of all. (LAUGHS) - COOGLER: Yeah.
It contrasts, too.
So, we fly here into Mount B'shanga, is what we called it.
But this is basically where the vibranium reserves are.
This is where the meteor hit and embedded itself in the land,
and they mine this.
And here's where we meet Shuri, and this is Hannah's favorite set.
BEACHLER: I think about the slab that this core piece was at one time
tens of thousands of years ago.
That was a giant drill. That's what they drilled with.
And we had a wonderful artist, Brandon Sadler, a local to Atlanta,
design and paint the piece on the core.
This is a great part too.
You have to talk about the shoes because everybody loves that so much.
COOGLER: (CHUCKLES) It was something that we came up with.
This idea of Shuri having exposure to the outside world,
but having exposure to it through the Internet and through movies.
We wanted to find a way to have her talk about
her relationship with her father, but do it in a way that wasn't sad.
Do it in a way that's kind of fun. That's in the spirit of who Shuri is.
And it's unexpected.
In an earlier draft, she would talk
about how sad she was that her dad was gone,
but then we kind of put it in this context.
It was always in this context of him being a fan of Back to the Future.
So we thought it was a cool way to talk about it.
And for her to kind of be into this Vine, this old Vine.
One of those Vines.
It would be a way to show that she has access to the Internet
and interest in the outside world.
Which will pay off a little bit later in the film.
- Interesting. - Guess what I call them.
Sneakers.
Because you...
Never mind.
If you're going to take on Klaue...
you'll need the best the design group has to offer.
COOGLER: And here again we get to the hint
of there being two Panthers out there.
You see the old suit that T'Challa kind of designed.
In the comic books, T'Challa's a scientist as well.
So we wanted to show that that's kind of his design.
She kind of trashes his design a little bit
and shows him these two things that she's been working on.
We see a traditional necklace.
Right now he's looking at the herringbone right there.
That's kind of more like the necklace we saw N'Jobu wearing.
He picks a traditional one, a more subtle one.
One that's more in his zone.
She uses a Kimoyo Bead.
Shout out to Ta-Nehisi and Brian Stelfreeze, the Kimoyo Beads there.
To get it activated, and we get a feel for that purple,
and we see how that suit works.
It comes on in a different way. Nano-technology style.
But still sticking with the sibling relationship here.
Still sticking with this idea of her playing jokes on him.
And this film, once again,
one of the themes in it is tradition versus innovation,
and what you'll see a lot of times with characters who are opposites
who are in scenes together, and that's what it's about.
This whole scene,
Shuri's basically making fun of her brother for being old-school.
That's all she's doing.
"I got new stuff for you. You got stupid shoes on. Get with the new.
- (BEACHLER CHUCKLES) - "Get a new suit."
It's a Q scene from James Bond, but also you're getting a vibe
that she's trying to get him out of his old ways.
He's stuck in a rut. She makes fun of him for it.
Through their relationship, we get a lot of life into this film.
(SHURI LAUGHS MOCKINGLY)
Delete that footage.
(HANGOVER BY PSY AND SNOOP DOGG PLAYING)
COOGLER: We got Busan here. That's really Busan.
And then this brings us to Atlanta where... (LAUGHS)
BEACHLER: We found an old artist,
sort of like a back, with bunch of warehouses.
Sort of back. It was this empty alley. Really cool, I think.
When I initially saw it, I was like
it reminded me of the fish market, when we walked through the fish market.
So we just recreated that fish market.
Everything is pretty practical except for...
And that's the one thing I love about Panther is that
we did so much VFX in the background.
Hello Sophia.
'Cause there's so much built.
There's so much that we put texturally in-camera.
Who are these two?
My friends from Kenya. Very deep pockets. They're good.
COOGLER: Yeah. We also spent time in Busan.
Good for trouble...
We went as a crew to Busan. That's where we got the idea for this.
...like you?
It was me, you, and Nate talking actually.
BEACHLER: Remember? We were on Gangster Street.
When we walked down to the thing.
And Ryan comes up to me, and he says...
Thank you!
'Cause we had been going around about,
"What is this casino? What is this whole... How do we do this?"
And we're in the fish market, and he says,
"What if they walk through the fish market in their beautiful clothes
"and go into this really high-end..."
COOGLER: And it was a suggestion from Nate too.
BEACHLER: From Nate, yeah.
COOGLER: It's another one of our motifs, which is hiding in plain sight.
Wakanda hides in plain sight. This casino hides in plain sight.
Expect the unexpected.
You don't expect to go to this old lady who's selling fish
and know that she has this amazing casino in her back pocket.
BEACHLER: This two-storey casino back there.
And as soon as y'all said that, I just ran with it.
I was, like, "That's it. That's it."
Because we had been trying to crack the code for so long,
and it just made so much sense.
It was, just dive in and make it beautiful
'cause I knew it was gonna get destroyed.
COOGLER: And this casino was mostly practical here.
BEACHLER: Yeah, everything but the ceiling.
COOGLER: It was beautiful. Beautiful set.
What's also cool about the color story here,
and something I was conscious of,
was putting the Pan-African bent to how we made the film
in the story. When T'Challa is running around,
he's gonna be flanked by Okoye and Nakia for most of the second act.
And that idea that together they kind of make the Pan-African flag
with the red, black, and green there.
Over here.
One whiskey, please.
You see it in their colors.
Eyes up. Americans.
COOGLER: This is kind of our espionage scene.
They're talking with their communicators that Shuri got them.
OKOYE: Five. How could you miss Greased Lightning there behind you?
Six. Just spotted an old friend who works for the CIA.
It just got a little more complicated.
- Agent Ross. - Your Highness.
You are buying from Klaue.
What I'm doing or not doing...
on behalf of the U.S. government is none of your concern.
COOGLER: And then you meet the Martin Freeman character here,
who works as an espionage agent for the States.
Who you also met in Civil War,
when he was trying to track down Bucky Barnes.
T'Challa and he had an interaction there, and the idea was
they kind of took care of each other in that interaction.
And as a result, they know each other.
T'Challa knows that he works for an agency
that they will be at odds with sometimes.
But he knows that they have a personal relationship.
So he feels like it's somebody who he can trust on a personal level.
You know what?
I think I'll just take these, bring them over here...
COOGLER: He's got Stan Lee there, taking T'Challa's money.
The thing he likes most about T'Challa is that he's rich.
He reminded me of that, that day. So he thought it was cool
that T'Challa could just leave all that money behind,
and it's nothing to him. So Stan Lee comes in and cleans it up.
Here Ross is trying to work a deal out with T'Challa,
and T'Challa's like, "No, I'm not making a deal.
"It's dead or alive for this dude."
You and me can work something out.
I'm not here to make a deal.
COOGLER: Here we got Klaue pulling up.
We thought it would be cool if he was a fan of hip-hop music.
So, he pulls up playing White Dave real loud.
He knows the casino owner real well.
And they all come in hammered up.
So, the idea was they all walk in strapped.
The metal detector's just going off like crazy,
- and nobody's stopping them. - (BOTH CHUCKLE)
Klaue, plus eight!
COOGLER: And here's where we get into it.
We shot this scene pretty early, Hannah.
- BEACHLER: We did. - It was intense.
BEACHLER: It was super intense, and there was a lot of rehearsals in it
as we were building it, so so much was going on.
We're putting all the finishes on. They're doing rehearsals.
COOGLER: We're trashing it. We got cardboard craps tables.
Trying to rehearse. Moving them. Kicking them.
I'll send you the SoundCloud link, if you like.
Hey, Dave, can you get the link to the tape?
Please, don't make me listen to your music.
I just meant you got a lot of people with you.
(CHUCKLES) You think they're for you?
Don't worry.
I can do a deal with you all by myself, thank you very much.
OKOYE: Six more. It's a setup.
You got the diamonds?
Okay. That's enough.
- We need to move on Klaue. - T'CHALLA: Stand down.
We can't afford a shootout.
Vibranium?
COOGLER: And here we get to the idea that it's a setup for Ross.
We wanted this to feel like a drug deal.
As if in Ross's mind, he's doing this illicit deal
to get vibranium out of the hands of somebody as dangerous as Klaue.
It's a deal he's willing to take.
He's willing to get dirty to do this thing.
Stand down!
But Klaue has no intentions on selling this to him.
He's gonna rob him and take the diamonds, too.
Here we get into the action starting.
She does that to the foot.
BEACHLER: This is a oner when the action starts, right?
COOGLER: It doesn't get into the oner until later.
We were intending to do the whole thing as a oner,
but we ended up abandoning that idea for the sake of impact.
This is a pretty long take here, but it's gonna cut right there.
For the impact shot. Show Ross shooting.
That's a little extra piece that we did later.
Shouts out to Andy Gill and JoJo.
That's a oner right there.
That's gonna cut for that impact here.
And then here's the big oner that's gonna start there.
You see Danai going crazy with the vibranium spear here.
Peaks it. Boom.
Takes that across his face, catches him, hits 'em in the nuts.
Get him out of there, took that big fall there.
- And then we hide one there. - BEACHLER: Mmm. Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: Come up through here.
This is all one here.
BEACHLER: Those ladies, they were doing this...
COOGLER: Yeah, that's all our actors. That's all our actors.
BEACHLER: I would watch Lupita and Danai train, and it was amazing.
Murderer!
COOGLER: This stunt was bananas.
This is a oner right here.
He's gonna switch hands.
This is where we see the Klaue cannon, the modified sonic cannon.
T'Challa's gonna break the impact with that change cart.
Money's gonna go everywhere, but that was a real stunt
that Kofi, T'Challa's double, did.
From the second story down to the first story,
onto a breakaway craps table.
It was nuts.
It was intense.
That was awesome! That was awesome!
COOGLER: This is Atlanta here. Atlanta.
They got a Kimoyo Bead, get in there.
Bring Shuri in.
And here we should probably talk about the music too, man.
This is a big soundtrack piece.
We kind of blew past The Weeknd song, which is an amazing cut
when they walk into the casino.
Here's Shuri.
There's a funny game section here.
BEACHLER: This is her sand table.
COOGLER: Sand table develops the seat that she sits on
and the steering wheel she drives.
The first time we see this new suit in action.
Shouts out to Kevin Feige, who wanted it to be the most epic moment possible.
- Kept pushing us. - (BOTH CHUCKLE)
And here we get into some of the work that the amazing Darrin Prescott,
our second unit director, executed for us.
Mixed with what we were doing back in Atlanta.
BEACHLER: And shout-out to Jesse Rosenthal,
who was the art director over in South Korea, Busan,
for about three months, over there with the crew.
COOGLER: We pre-vized that stuff.
And Darrin's amazing. He did Drive. John Wick stuff. He did Baby Driver.
All the car stuff in Baby Driver.
He's incredible. Great guy to work with.
BEACHLER: I love this right here.
COOGLER: This is a big moment here, and you're seeing,
once again, a traditionalist pair up with an innovator.
T'Challa and Shuri.
And on the other side we got
a traditionalist in Okoye paired with an innovator with Nakia.
And just the fun and games that happens as a result of that.
Hey, what was that?
Don't worry about it. You're doing great.
COOGLER: This big, big car crash. It's practical there.
Getting into that good stuff.
BEACHLER: And this is all through the streets, right?
COOGLER: This is Busan here, mixed with Atlanta.
- So primitive! - It's a vibranium car, you idiots!
The bullets won't penetrate!
COOGLER: And here is a big call-and-response kind of vibe.
He's saying the car is bulletproof.
And the next thing you know, Danai is getting out of it.
(BOTH CHUCKLE)
A vibranium spear through the vibranium car.
Activating right there.
And then she throws the spear.
We played with a lot of different things for the spear to do.
Was it gonna flip the car?
It was, like, "Let's just impale it and have it come to a dead stop."
(BOTH LAUGH)
And we were fired up about that.
We love this bridge, man.
This is Gwangandaegyo?
BEACHLER: As soon as we saw this bridge...
And I got a picture of it from where we were staying that night.
And it's just beautiful. Busan is beautiful.
COOGLER: Man, it's an amazing place.
BEACHLER: It's an amazing place. Everything is so quaint.
We were staying over in Silver City,
and that's this crazy, beautiful place, so I really enjoyed it.
And I think that this came together,
having done it both in Busan and two small pieces in Atlanta.
(CHUCKLES) Well, maybe not that small.
COOGLER: Right. I love that piece there.
It was shown in every single trailer possible there, man, where he flips.
But that moment, I think it's a great Panther moment there.
We wanted it to feel like Bullitt, 'cause we found those streets
that reminded me of home, reminded me of the Bay Area,
it reminded me of Frisco.
So, it was, like, if we can get some stuff on these streets
with the cars lifting off the ground, I thought that'd be fantastic.
- BEACHLER: I love that. - (COOGLER LAUGHS)
COOGLER: That kind of came out of pre-viz.
We played with a lot of different things there.
Jesse Chisholm and Geoff Baumann played that a lot of different ways
from the end of their journey there.
But when we first saw that, everybody fell in love with it.
BLACK PANTHER: Faster, Shuri.
I'm going as fast as I can!
Take a right! Take a right!
COOGLER: And they're about to meet up with Klaue again here.
This bit is inspired by Bo Jackson.
Just the athleticism that you see of leverage.
You see him in the wild.
For me, Bo Jackson is the most athletic human being I've ever seen footage of.
That famous catch where he runs up the side of the wall.
We wanted this to feel like an elevated version of that.
Panther runs on the side of the building,
lands on the car, and takes it out.
You see the eye slots open up there.
BEACHLER: Bo Jackson like "Bo Knows"?
- COOGLER: Bo Knows. - Bo Knows, I remember that. (LAUGHS)
COOGLER: Yeah, Bo Knows.
BEACHLER: Nothing to do with the movie.
This was Atlanta on backlot, this square.
COOGLER: And here we set up the idea
that certain sonic frequencies can scramble the suit
and expose it, which will pay off later.
Andy Serkis just throwing his body around, man.
What an actor, man.
He would do physical things that were just insane.
'Cause his arm was really still there.
But he would just take dives and falls as if it wasn't.
King!
The world watches.
Just having that kind of body control and knowing the parameters of VFX.
There's nobody... I've never seen anything like it.
He was so impressive every day.
Yeah.
COOGLER: Got that Jonathan Hickman line in there, from the comics.
"Every breath you take is mercy from me."
I always thought that was an interesting line,
so I wanted to get that in there.
T'Challa's threat to Klaue.
KLAUE: Hello.
(GIGGLES)
I can see you! I can. I can see you.
(CACKLING)
(AIR KISSES)
(SPLUTTERING)
So this is a big mess, huh?
I figured we could go good cop, bad cop.
I'll talk to him first, then you guys go in.
(SPEAKING XHOSA) We can't let him talk to Klaue alone.
(COOGLER LAUGHING)
BEACHLER: Yes, we carried this set all over the movie.
Better to let him talk to Klaue alone for 5 minutes than to make a scene here.
COOGLER: Yeah, we got the sink in there.
BEACHLER: Yeah, we wanted it to feel like you see all this tech
and it's like this rundown building. And again, hiding in plain sight.
(CHUCKLES)
That there is the CIA.
And then the front is a travel agency in South Korea.
COOGLER: This scene is about privilege, about colonization, ownership.
I'm going to impale him to this desk.
Who's dressed down, but is still a king.
(CHUCKLES) You don't do that, you know what I'm saying?
So, Okoye is flipping out.
They're speaking in Xhosa.
So, Ross is in a position where he can't understand what's happening.
T'Challa reinitiates that contact when he slips the bugging device onto him,
so that they can hear what's going on inside of the soundproof glass.
And again, you see Ross in blue. You see Klaue in blue.
(KLAUE SINGS WHAT IS LOVE BY DEE DEE HALLIGAN AND JUNIOR TORELLO)
COOGLER: He's trying to make fun of him.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
The idea of saying he's not scared.
You know, you really shouldn't trust the Wakandans.
I'm much more your speed.
I don't trust anybody, not in this job.
But what I am interested in is that arm cannon out there.
Where'd you get that?
It's an old mining tool that I made some adjustments to.
But I can get you one, if you like.
Why don't you give me the name of your supplier, and I'll ask them.
He's right outside.
Why don't you ask him yourself?
What? T'Challa?
You're telling me that weapon on your arm is from Wakanda?
Bingo.
What do you actually know about Wakanda?
ROSS: Um...
Shepherds, textiles, cool outfits.
KLAUE: (ON EARPIECE) It's all a front.
Explorers searched for it for centuries.
El Dorado, the Golden City.
They thought they could find it in South America...
but it was in Africa the whole time.
A technological marvel.
All because it was built on a mound of the most valuable metal known to man.
COOGLER: T'Challa's listening in and hearing what Klaue is saying.
And he wants to see how Ross is going to react to that stuff.
He wants to see if Ross is gonna come out
and ask him about it straight up.
Like a straight-up guy would.
Or if Ross is going to come out and act like nothing happened,
and then report to his superiors.
Or if he doesn't believe it at all.
So T'Challa's kind of testing Ross as this is going.
Their relationship is an interesting one in the comic books.
But it's a relationship of mutual respect,
and it becomes a friendship.
So, we wanted to play with that a little bit here.
And this idea of seeing a little bit of window
into how Klaue became so crazy.
And that seeing this place that nobody believes him about,
you know what I'm saying? That's the one thing that could...
That could break his jokey facade, just for a split-second.
You know what I mean? You see how dangerous he is,
and he snaps at the idea of him taking all of the vibranium.
He's like, "There's tons of it left.
"I've been trying my whole life to get back to it."
That's when he jumps out.
He jumps out at Ross there.
And this idea of this arm being rigged to track
and being rigged to scan environments.
That's how Klaue's gang finds him.
BEACHLER: And Nakia's clocking that van.
COOGLER: Yeah, Nakia's clocking the van. She's outside, watching.
Again, hiding in plain sight.
They're coming in a Korean paint truck,
and they got special cargo in the back seat
that happens to be none other than this guy.
BEACHLER: And blue is everywhere when he pulls in.
All down the sides of the wall, on the back of the doors.
And then you'll see when he puts up the explosive,
that whole wall is also blue graffiti.
I was having fun with that at one point.
Where is that?
I really was like, "What's blue? Killmonger's here!"
Back there.
COOGLER: "Killmonger's here! We need more blue." (LAUGHS)
BEACHLER: We need more blue, yeah.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
It was fun to just see where we could put it. Can we hide it?
Can we let people find it?
Easter eggy stuff.
COOGLER: The idea of masks, as well.
Now you see the necklace come back up. He's got the necklace on, he's shooting.
He kills these two dudes right here.
Knocks those dudes down.
That's JoJo actually, our stunt coordinator.
BEACHLER: Right, I just recognized that when you said that.
COOGLER: He got killed by Killmonger, and he throws a grenade.
Everything here was tactical.
He throws that grenade just so he can have enough time to get out
and get ready for Panther, who he's sure is coming behind him.
T'Challa here sees the ring.
And it catches him off-guard emotionally there.
My King!
T'Challa's weakness is his family and his ties to his father.
It's also a source of his strength.
But in this film it's where we choose to attack him.
BEACHLER: This is an interesting part to me.
The choice to bring Ross back.
Because it always feels like Okoye, sort of what you've talked about...
Okoye being the traditionalist and Nakia being the War Dog
and the innovator is like, "We can help him."
COOGLER: Yeah, the idea that he just took a bullet for Nakia.
He came and talked to T'Challa about whatever Klaue told him.
T'Challa has that relationship with him from Civil War.
So, he makes a game-time decision and chooses to try to save him.
And that's a choice that's very controversial,
in terms of Wakanda's stance in the past.
But that idea that past kings were not T'Challa.
T'Challa's a really good dude. He's got a good heart.
And the job is gonna be difficult to him.
His father kind of says that.
"You're a good man. It's hard for a good man to be king."
We're seeing the evidence of that here.
Ross works for the CIA.
That agency is at odds with what Wakanda is about.
It's dangerous of him to do that.
But he does it, because he knows the guy,
and the guy took a bullet for the woman he loves.
...let him die...
knowing we can save him.
Where exactly are we taking him?
BEACHLER: Just a little bit about the interior of the Royal Talon Fighter.
Ryan always says it's the Air Force One of Wakanda.
It has the element where it's as indestructible as possible.
It's luxurious on the inside,
also utilitarian for the things that they need.
So you see Ross on the sand table and using that in a medical emergency.
So, they can do so many things, and then here again...
When she brings him in, you see...
Shuri is all over this lab, is what I love.
Everywhere you look there's something of her.
COOGLER: Again, you see the contrast of an innovator versus a traditionalist.
And here you see that W'Kabi has been stewing over
where Wakanda has been for the past 30 years.
He kind of throws some dirt on T'Chaka.
Throws some dirt on T'Challa's father's name.
It's the first time he hears somebody do that in Wakanda,
and this idea that he wasn't happy with where the country was going.
And that hits T'Challa hard, because he just realizes
he's gotta get some answers to what this guy was doing with that ring.
Things are starting to fall apart for T'Challa here.
He's trying to pick up the pieces.
And here is an abandoned airfield, as we called it.
The characters are in Korea, but we were physically in Atlanta here.
And this is a set we found. Hannah, you found this set.
BEACHLER: I had been to that location several years prior
on a smaller project, and absolutely loved it, loved the people.
It had such a different feel and texture.
It's one of two in the country.
So, I just thought it's so unique.
And when you talked about the airfield, I was like, "What about this place?"
So, that's what I really loved about it.
And it's really in the middle of nowhere.
So, it doesn't have sort of a specific country.
So, we could make it our own.
(KLAUE GROANS)
COOGLER: You see all the characters are in the color blue.
Hannah found that Cessna plane and painted that blue stripe on it.
BEACHLER: We painted the whole thing. It was black.
COOGLER: That's right, the whole thing.
BEACHLER: With the white and blue.
(GROANS)
(KLAUE PANTING)
COOGLER: Here's a shootout.
It's fun 'cause Killmonger's character's going through a lot.
He goes through a lot of costume changes in the film.
He's a shape-shifter. Here you see the evidence.
He's saying that Wakandans are savages.
Put this brand on him. Here you first get a hint of Killmonger's scarification
and what it represents to him.
And this is not the first time you see scarification in the film.
Here you see the Wakandan tattoo. Here's a reveal of who he is.
Even Klaue thought Killmonger was somebody else.
'Cause he doesn't talk with a Wakandan accent.
He wears Western clothes and has this American military background.
This is one of my favorite scenes in the film.
It's the most important scene in the film.
We actually had a chance to show an early cut to Francis Ford Coppola,
whose work inspired a lot of the story.
It was an early, rough cut. As soon as the movie was off,
he was like, "Rewind it back to the scene where everything...
"The most important scene in the movie."
I knew exactly what he was talking about.
He said, "The scene when everything changed."
And it was this one, where you kind of...
You get to an example of the original sin of Wakanda.
And it's the original sinner, T'Chaka.
The stuff that sets this film in motion.
That's the real reason that we saw that first scene in Oakland.
We kind of get to that here.
That is not possible.
He helped Klaue escape from us...
COOGLER: This film is about two of the traditionalist characters
who are forced to reckon with something that went wrong,
forced to reckon with the idea...
Some truths...
are too much to bear, T'Challa.
That is not your choice to make.
COOGLER: We wanted this scene to feel moody,
and we made a lot of choices here with the photography with Rachel.
And here's T'Challa raising his voice.
This is really the only moment in the film where he does that.
Where he loses his temper, and you see his anger and his rage.
And it's still in a way that's respectful.
He saying, "I'm the king now. It's not my father anymore.
"You need to tell me what's going on."
And that idea there is the key to what T'Challa has to do.
He's starting to see the seeds of it and realizing that.
It's a coming-of-age story here.
Here's where we do our flashbacks.
ZURI: ...to observe...
unbeknownst to him.
Your uncle fell in love with an American woman.
COOGLER: And this scene is very much about the past becoming present,
this African concept of time being circular,
your ancestors being always around.
I observed for as long as I could.
COOGLER: We're going back and forth through time in this scene.
We see the great Sterling K. Brown kind of laying out.
...overly policed and incarcerated.
COOGLER: The struggle woke him up while he was in Oakland.
And the backstory idea of it
was that this was through the woman who he fell in love with,
the African-American woman.
And the idea was that, when you see those guys talking
over that paperwork in the beginning of the film,
they're trying to figure out a way to break her out.
She's been incarcerated.
They're trying to break her out of jail.
And the idea was that they never got her out,
and she passed away in prison.
So, Killmonger didn't come up with a mom either.
You will return home at once...
where you will face the Council...
and inform them of your crimes.
COOGLER: And here we kind of see what really happened.
At the beginning of the film, we thought this was about a guy
who had gotten taken back to Wakanda.
But here in this scene, we realize, "Yeah, he never left."
And T'Challa's realizing that.
You got some real strong work by our editors here.
Mike Shawver worked on this scene.
You see the eyes close to the eyes close.
And we going from Zuri to Zuri.
And Atandwa here, young T'Chaka, nearly crying,
to T'Challa nearly crying in the same eye.
There's this idea of the past becoming present again.
This wound being fresh.
And here's the ultimate sin that Wakanda did.
They abandoned this child.
And it's representative of all of the bad decisions
that they've made about the outside world.
It's all manifested in this.
And Zuri's upset 'cause he knows it was wrong.
...maintain...
the lie.
COOGLER: So, this idea of having to maintain the lie.
The lie can represent a lot of different things,
but the lie here is that they're different
from the other African folks all over.
And here's a homecoming scene,
which should be celebratory for Killmonger.
(CHUCKLES) We see that he's bringing back a dead body.
And he brings it to the Border Tribe.
And obviously he was left that book from his father,
so he knows how Wakanda works.
And he knows what Klaue means to the Border Tribe,
'cause that was where Klaue attacked.
And he happens to get...
W'Kabi kind of runs the Border Tribe.
So, when somebody approaches the border, that's who walks up.
And here, one of the biggest motifs in the film is the motif of identity.
Who are you?
So, you see this question asked often, "Who are you?"
And we left with a mysterious question-and-answer cut.
But that idea that Killmonger has many names,
and he's representative of African-Americans.
African-Americans have had many names over the course of our history.
It went from "slave" to "negro" to "African-American" to "black."
There's all these different names for us
that we've been called over time.
And as a result in this film, Killmonger has a bunch of different names.
People are just trying to figure out who he is.
And even here, the identity plays here.
Ross is trying to figure out where the hell is he.
"What's this little girl doing in here?"
She calls him a colonizer.
He's like, "Wait, what? (CHUCKLES) That's not my name."
She's like, "I know your name.
"That's your name, but you're also that, too."
...former air force pilot and now CIA.
Right.
COOGLER: This concept of him trying to be confused and play catch-up here
at the same time.
It was a really fun scene, man.
A lot of great contributions from my co-writer here, Joe Robert Cole,
in keeping this fun and light, but, at the same time, it's heavy.
For this teenage African girl to call this government agent a colonizer.
And then telling him, "Don't touch anything in my shop.
"My brother'll be back. But not only that,
"my brother trusts me to be in here with you."
She's working with some pretty powerful weaponry there,
we'll see later on.
And there's the idea here of Ross being an avatar
or a surrogate for the Western world.
He comes to Wakanda, and he's gonna ask these plot-driven questions,
like, "What is this I'm looking at? How does this work?"
And it's also kind of loaded.
'Cause I think audiences are looking at it, like, "This is a CIA agent.
"Maybe you shouldn't tell him this stuff."
But it's interesting because
the Wakandans had a leg-up on him at all times.
For us, and for other African countries, rightfully so,
they should fear espionage agents.
But for the Wakandans, it's like, "What are you gonna do?
"You here. You're not going nowhere if we don't want you to.
"And if you did, there's nothing really y'all can do to us."
So, it's a really interesting fearlessness that they have about him.
Specifically Shuri and T'Challa.
And I think that for Shuri, she figures if he brings Ross back,
then he must trust him, and she trusts her brother
as a judge of character.
So, I think that all of that is there.
Here's a big thing right here 'cause Ross tells them he's not Wakandan.
"He's one of ours."
And by "one of ours," he's somebody who's American,
who's in the American military system.
Ross feels like he knows Killmonger. He knows him as an American guy.
He's not a Wakandan.
He's one of ours.
COOGLER: We picked this location from South Africa,
a location that we scouted called Three Rondavels.
It was a location Hannah really loved.
BEACHLER: It was wonderful. It was at World's End.
We all stood out there.
It was one of those times as we were traveling through South Africa.
And I think that everything that you see in South Africa,
you don't understand the size of everything.
It's so big, and your perception of what things are, are kind of off.
And you're asking yourself, "Who am I? Where am I?"
How emotionally you are...
COOGLER: T'Challa's superpower is that he knows who to trust.
And he goes to Nakia. She's the only person
who he tells about this horrible thing he just found out.
He's telling her not just to get it off his chest, but to get her advice.
'Cause he values it.
At the beginning of the film, he's getting her for the ritual.
He wants her around.
He wants her to be able to advise him in these types of points.
This scene is very personal for me.
It represents situations I've been in with my wife,
with my mom when I was young.
But the big thing here is she's telling him,
"Look, you gotta be the king that you wanna be.
"You get to decide that."
She's basically telling him to get out of the past, which is his flaw.
"Your father can't define you,"
which is his flaw that he has to learn to get out of
and make moves that are best for his country right now,
to live in the present and listen to his heart.
Which is something he's still struggling to do.
It's what the film is about.
Here's where having Ross in the script kind of pays off.
He's running down what Killmonger was
to the American government, what he was, how he got that nickname, Killmonger.
We see footage of Mike shooting live rounds on the gun range there.
But he serves as a surrogate
from the American perspective of who he is, who he was.
Tell us what is going on.
And here, they even ask, "Is he Wakandan or not?
"Is this dude one of us, or is he not?"
And T'Challa's not really talking. He's kind of froze right now.
'Cause he's in a place where, traditionally, in the Tribal Council,
you have to speak the truth.
He wants to see if Killmonger's gonna be the one to rip the Band-Aid off,
or if he's gonna have to do it.
If he was more politically savvy,
I think he wouldn't even let Killmonger come in here.
But he's stuck in between what he feels like he should do as a good man,
as a good king, and a traditionalist, but it's falling apart for him here.
And this is the first time these two great actors
come face-to-face in the film.
The music really highlights that.
You're hearing Killmonger's theme
juxtaposed with T'Challa's theme for the first time.
We play with space here.
It's very similar to when M'Baku and T'Challa meet for the first time.
Some things are said to the room.
Some things are said on a personal level.
I want the throne.
(LAUGHS AND SPEAKS XHOSA)
My goodness.
COOGLER: And here, it's this idea of identity.
And Killmonger comes in, in chains.
Again, a callback to African-Americans.
You're seeing that forgotten child come home.
He's all grown up now, but yet he's still in cuffs
as he's talking to these guys here.
Vibranium.
And he's challenging him. He's challenging him
really on a concept that Nakia's been talking to him about.
The concept of Pan-Africanism, and also the concept of humanism.
And all these different things are being discussed here.
T'Challa's approaching this from a nationalistic standpoint
and talking about how he just runs Wakanda.
That's all he can worry about. That's a great deal to worry about.
But that's the way of the past.
And Killmonger's challenging him, "Maybe y'all should think bigger."
...does not fall into the hands of a person like you.
KILLMONGER: Mmm... RAMONDA: Son.
We have entertained this charlatan for too long. Reject his request.
COOGLER: All at the same time, this great secret
is only between these two men right now.
And it was always interesting for us
that Nakia was never in the Tribal Council room.
We shot a scene with her.
Right now she's hiding Ross, that's what she's doing right now.
That's not my name, Princess.
Ask me, King.
COOGLER: The only two people here that know the truth, the full truth,
are T'Challa and Killmonger.
They're both trying to feel each other out
for how much the other one knows.
Who are you?
And then it all comes out here. I am N'Jadaka, son of Prince N'Jobu.
COOGLER: And this idea of, "No, I actually know my African name."
It makes him different from what they think about him
and being an African from the Americas.
'Cause usually we don't.
That stuff was lost.
But for Killmonger, he's the rare case where it wasn't.
He speaks the language.
He remembers his name. He remembers who's his father
and has evidence of it, right here in that vibranium necklace.
How we always saw it was that W'Kabi probably ran the DNA
in some hut somewhere before he came, before he walked in there.
W'Kabi's trying to figure out how T'Challa's gonna play it, too.
BORDER TRIBE ELDER: ...Prince N'Jobu, he is within his rights.
BEACHLER: What is T'Challa and W'Kabi's relationship?
- They've been friends. - COOGLER: They grew up together, yeah.
They're definitely friends.
But they both are political animals.
And that was the thing for us, was getting W'Kabi's turn that comes
to be a point that it's not personal, it's political.
What do you know of this?
COOGLER: It's not so much about T'Challa
as it is about how he feels like Wakanda should be run,
what kind of leader he feels Wakanda should have.
Not unlike with Nakia, he wants to see Wakanda change.
He doesn't wanna see it stuck in the past.
And here we get into one of my favorite scenes.
BEACHLER: I love this, the way it looks at this golden,
night-going-into-dusk time.
COOGLER: Yeah, a big motif in the film are the weapons.
And you see that Killmonger does something very disrespectful.
He breaks the weapon in half to make a shorter spear.
It's a little bit of a call-out to Shaka Zulu and the shorter spears
that he developed as well.
But this idea of him disrespecting tradition
and just breaking that traditional spear right there in front of everybody
to service it to his needs
shows the difference between him and the other characters.
And that broken spear ends up coming back later on in the film.
So, here, you see Nakia joining in.
Nakia's perspective is just like, "Man, what is..."
She's just like, "Man, what is going on? (LAUGHS)
"Why are you doing this?"
And again, these challenges, these are old rules.
It's one of those things, where it's like,
"Why are we still having people come out here
"with their clothes off, beating the hell out of each other
"to figure out who's gonna run the country?"
It's one of those things where you see Shuri, who's an innovator,
and Nakia, they kind of poke fun at it a little bit.
Here, it's serious. It's like,
"Oh, snap. They're really about to do this."
I lived my entire life waitin' for this moment.
I trained, I lied...
COOGLER: And here's a real brilliant moment for Mike.
And it was a moment we knew some folks at home would always like,
seeing all the scarification.
What this scene is really about, and his performance,
he's not bragging about having done these things.
If you look at him closely, he's hurt that he's had to do these things.
It's a level of pain there.
Killmonger was inspired for me by...
One time, my wife and I were in New York,
and we met a guy who was driving us, who was a veteran.
And he talked about some of the things he had to do while he was over there.
There was both a pain and a matter-of-factness to it
that stuck with me.
And when it came time for us to make this film,
a lot of that spoke to me through Killmonger.
- (FAST-TEMPO DRUMMING) - (GRUNTING)
I love the music in this scene, man.
It's just insane, the sabar drums, the djembes, and the talking drums.
I think Ludwig's score really shines here.
For a while, it's really basic and guttural.
Actually, it reminds me of some of the drumming back in Oakland
that the guys do at the Berkeley Flea Market
at Grand Lake on the weekends.
And right here, where we get to the orchestral stuff.
Where it gets big, and T'Challa's under-theme.
And Killmonger's theme comes in right here also, too.
And that little moment is the difference between T'Challa and Killmonger.
T'Challa's a good dude. He gives him a chance.
He could've killed Killmonger there.
But instead, he cuts his face, knocks him down, and tells him to yield.
- (BEACHLER CHUCKLES) - He shouldn't have gave him that shot.
'Cause Killmonger's not as good a dude and is brutal.
(GRUNTING AND GROANING)
(YELLS)
(GASPS)
COOGLER: One of the things that's tough about coming from the Bay Area,
'cause I come from the same place that Killmonger comes from in the film,
is we often don't see people like us grow up and get old.
We have kind of a shortsighted view of things.
For me, I'm 31 years old, and it's really weird,
'cause for a lot of my life,
I never really imagined myself getting past 30.
So, this idea of shortsightedness for the future
and a painful reverence for the past
is kind of personified here in how he kills Zuri,
who is the storyteller and who represents tradition.
He represents all this old knowledge.
For him, Zuri is Uncle James. He's this dude who betrayed his father.
So, he calls him that other name.
And then he murders him at the drop of a hat there.
And for T'Challa that's painful, because not only is that his friend,
but what he represents about the past, like, "Who's gonna tell our stories?
"Who's gonna cultivate the crops? Who's gonna train the young ones?"
But Killmonger's not thinking about that.
And rightfully so, he's got some valid arguments.
He's been through some tough things.
Come on, Brother!
Is there nothing that can be done?
- (T'CHALLA GRUNTING) - Him?
He's supposed to protect you?
COOGLER: This is a moment that should feel difficult
for the audience if they're with us.
But it's also a moment that's graphic, it's from the books.
This is a great 3D moment right here, if you see it in 3D.
No, yeah, but he throws him off.
And this idea here of T'Challa paying for sins that he didn't commit.
You should see this good man
suffering for things that he had nothing really to do with.
He's enjoyed the benefits of Wakanda being a fantastic place,
and it has helped mold him into the great guy that he is.
But that said, he knuckles up
and fights a fight that's not really as a result of his decisions.
And he dies for it.
If the audience is into it, that's what should...
Well, he doesn't die. Obviously, he comes back. (CHUCKLES)
But that's what it looks like for these folks here.
They have to do that salute, that represents love and adoration.
They have to do that salute to this dude who we know is
not all the way right, you know? (LAUGHS)
This is an incredibly powerful scene here.
A lot of improv here with these two great actresses.
But it's this idea of tradition and innovation clashing here.
I cannot.
And the idea of service to a country. I had never really worked on...
I had never really seen a scene like this before.
When we were all done with it,
we realized that we had something special and timely.
- In ritual combat. - Does that really matter?
COOGLER: I think for Nakia,
this idea is she's going to the best warrior in Wakanda.
She's gonna try to start this revolution,
and she feels like she needs Okoye.
And for her, it's not a question of
whether or not Okoye's gonna come or not.
She's like, "Come on, let's go."
And then she realizes, "Oh, no. Okoye's staying."
Which means that this man is gonna have the full might of the Wakandan military.
And that's heartbreaking for Nakia,
and then she challenges Nakia, in terms of her service to her country.
And Nakia reveals that she loved T'Challa,
that she still loves him, you know.
Which is something that we didn't really know until this moment
that T'Challa's not there to hear it.
She tells Danai exactly what she's actually gonna go do.
She's gonna go save the country.
I save my country.
BEACHLER: If you see that when she walks in the door and leaves the door open,
and you see the Timbuktu pyramid.
That is going down the pyramid.
So, the top of that right there,
- the top of that is what they sit on... - COOGLER: Mmm.
...in the throne room, so it goes down through that whole column.
It's a very quick scene. It was a beautiful set.
One of my favorite sets.
A lot of texture. His office was a rondavel.
We visited a rondavel when we were up in Winterton.
And now my brother.
COOGLER: We see Shuri cry here.
And she's been the bubbly part of the movie for the whole time,
even when she talked about her father before, it was a happy thing.
And seeing her brokenhearted and having to be consoled
was important for us.
Shouts out to Nate for having the idea
- to give Ramonda a blade. - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: But this is really interesting to me too here is they ask who Ross is.
And Nakia doesn't say he's a CIA agent. She says he's a friend of T'Challa's,
and he saved my life.
That idea there is that if he's a friend of T'Challa's,
that's all you need to know.
'Cause you know that T'Challa's a good dude
and a great judge of character.
And that's who he is for them right now,
like the other part of him they'll deal with later. (CHUCKLES)
SHAMAN: ...to give you the powers of the Black Panther...
and take you to the Ancestral Plane.
COOGLER: Here's another very important scene,
a scene where it should be the traditional
"bad guy gets the power, 'Oh, no, "' kind of scene,
but we wanted to juxtapose it.
'Cause for us, the film's called Black Panther,
and that's a title, that's a mantle that many people have occupied.
And right now,
the Black Panther is Killmonger, for all intents and purposes.
So, we see a little bit of the mirror image of his life to T'Challa's.
And we saw how T'Challa lost his father,
and now we see the same thing for Killmonger.
But you see Killmonger was a baby when it happened.
So for him, it's different.
And here, a big juxtaposition,
we see when T'Challa goes to the ancestral plane, it's limitless.
He's in a place with no walls.
He's on the continent of Africa,
but here, Killmonger's ancestral plane has walls.
He's inside of an enclosed space.
He's inside of this place where he remembers all this pain.
And he can't find his father.
T'Challa saw the panther as soon as he walked in.
So, Killmonger goes to the gun closet, which is a shout-out.
And if you look at the poster that's on the back wall,
it's something that a lot of folks'll recognize there.
But he goes to that wall and pulls out what you think would be a gun,
but it ends up being this book, which is N'Jobu's journal.
And like a lot of religious texts, it's written in two languages.
So, it's written in Wakandan and also in English.
That's Hannah's handwriting actually right there.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
COOGLER: Hannah drew all this stuff up, and that's where the ring is.
But as soon as he puts that ring on, all of a sudden his father
wakes up, so to speak, and his father presents himself to him.
N'JOBU: What did I tell you about going into my things?
COOGLER: On seeing his father,
he's transported back to being a young boy.
And I think this scene is where you see Killmonger's perspective.
In this movie, we didn't show
the trials and tribulations of what it means to be African-American.
We felt like folks who've seen this film, hopefully they've seen it.
Like in the news and in life. But it's referenced here,
and referenced in a way that we thought gave it maximum emotional reverence.
And just seeing the difference between the interactions.
Killmonger's become hardened.
And where I'm from, we talk about people being hard.
But he's become hardened. He doesn't rush over to his father to grab him
'cause he's afraid of letting himself feel these things.
He keeps him at a distance.
Even though you're seeing him as a child here.
Everybody dies.
COOGLER: And he's trying to process how he feels.
But we cut to Mike, who actually betrays that emotion.
You're seeing this dude
who you're scared of, who's killing all these people.
You see him cry at the thought of the fact that he hasn't been with his dad.
Instead, we are both abandoned here.
Well, maybe your home is the one that's lost.
COOGLER: And here, he kind of says his mission statement.
"Maybe Wakanda's lost.
"And that's why they can't find us."
But his idea is that he's about to... "I'm not lost, Wakanda's lost."
That contrast there.
But then he wakes up angry and hyperventilating.
He's freaked out, 'cause his ancestral dream was not a pleasant one.
His ancestral dream wasn't a case of trees and limitless skies,
his ancestral dream was a nightmare.
Seeing his father marooned, and his father's crying.
So for him, it's like, "Man, to hell with these herbs.
(LAUGHING)
(BEACHLER CHUCKLES)
COOGLER: "I don't wanna go through that again."
(LAUGHING)
And also for him, it's a view of,
"We're about to change how Wakanda's run.
"We're not gonna need any more Black Panthers after me.
"'Cause we're about to flip the whole world."
So he's like, "Man, get rid of it."
And this was a scene here that we always struggled with,
this idea of, "Is he really gonna grab an elder like this?"
- You know... - BEACHLER: Yeah, I remember that.
COOGLER: But the idea was, was that Killmonger's different from T'Challa.
And when you deal with revolutions, when you really talk about revolutions,
true revolutions, and the violence that's necessary for those,
you have that violent element there.
You see people who get lost in that.
It's almost a given.
It's a presence there, and it's an immediacy there.
And Killmonger's a very equal opportunist
with whoever is in his way,
is catching the wrath of his violence.
He doesn't care who it is.
That's how he's been trained. That's how he works.
And that shot that you see when it's burning,
you still see two panthers.
So, for us, that was a representation of T'Challa's still out there.
It's actually still two panthers.
He's not by himself just yet.
And he's flanked by two panthers in this scene when he's talking.
But also flanked by... This is one of my favorite shots in the film,
where you see that this powerful military force is behind him now.
And he's brought that military element even into the Tribal Council.
He's got all of the guards there.
He's a wartime leader.
He's gearing 'em up, ready to go.
KILLMONGER: I know how colonizers think.
So we're gonna use their own strategy against 'em.
COOGLER: This concept here of...
For him, he's calling them out, and what they've done wrong,
and now he's about to talk about how they're moving forward in the future.
We wanted him to talk about the ugly violence of revolution.
The fact that they...
And he's very intent on doing to other people
what he felt like was done to him and done to his people.
And W'Kabi's all about it. You see him nodding in that shot. (LAUGHS)
But it's really horrific stuff he's suggesting.
That said, in his mind, that's how war goes.
Again, it's how he's been trained. He's been trained one way.
...absolutely necessary.
Wakanda survived in the past this way, yes.
But the world is changing, General.
COOGLER: And here, Okoye's offering up the reasons
why this is not the way to go.
And Daniel, who we find out is her lover, W'Kabi's her lover,
we find out that he's all-in.
BEACHLER: Yeah, this part for me was...
I mean, I knew what it was
'cause I was there while we were filming it,
but watching it in the theater, I found myself being surprised.
I also found myself agreeing with Killmonger at first.
COOGLER: Right, until he starts saying...
BEACHLER: Until he starts talking crazy.
COOGLER: Yeah. (LAUGHS) BEACHLER: Right? (LAUGHS)
BEACHLER: And then, this, I love.
This, again, was practical. Of course, there's added VFX,
but we did this in a quarry in Atlanta.
We covered everything with snow for...
It was 500, 700 feet that we did on a road.
- COOGLER: Mmm-hmm. - And on their way to Jabari.
COOGLER: Jabari land, yeah.
And here, we came up with the idea to put the mask in the mountain
as a callback to what we saw
- in the prologue. - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: As a callback to M'Baku, who's a big, massive character,
but you only see him a few times in the film.
So we wanted to try to remind audiences who he was
and of their presence.
Again, you're seeing them in the basotho blankets.
And a big inspiration for Nakia's character was Harriet Tubman.
This is like the Harriet Tubman moment in the film,
where she's leading T'Challa's friends and family out of harm's way.
And we wrapped that scarf around her head
- with that in mind. - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: A lot of people don't know that Harriet Tubman was also a spy.
After she went North, she was in the military
and worked as a Union spy.
BEACHLER: Absolutely. She was charged
one of the biggest battles at the river...
I forget what the name of the river was.
Yeah, it was a river, and succeeded.
COOGLER: Yeah, I'm obsessed with Harriet, man, as a historical figure.
But it was cool to have a shout-out to Harriet Tubman in the film.
My son...
was murdered in ritual combat.
- Were the odds fair? - Yes, but...
So it was less a murder than a defeat.
- Do not rub our noses in it! - Silence!
I make the pronouncements here, girl.
COOGLER: This idea of political intrigue,
and them having to go
to somebody they view as their enemy to sort something out.
Here's a thing people like, man. (CHUCKLES)
BEACHLER: I love this scene.
COOGLER: This is actually something that was improv'ed by Winston on the day.
- We loved it. - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
M'BAKU: You cannot talk!
One more word, and I will feed you to my children.
BEACHLER: Didn't I grab you up?
COOGLER: Yeah, yeah, but it's also the idea
of playing into and reclaiming this idea of
what it means to be regal, what it means to be...
He's one of the most honorable...
Kevin Feige said this is the most honorable thing
a character has ever done in Marvel Studios history.
He said that while we were in the editing room.
What M'Baku does here,
when he's offered this incredibly powerful thing.
But it's also this idea of, "Yo, you're not fixing to speak for us.
"You're not fixing to talk.
"Just 'cause you're here doesn't mean we need you talking right now."
(LAUGHING)
And Ross is a guy who's very powerful where he's from,
so there's this idea to get in there, kind of talking, start mixing it up.
So that's M'Baku's way of saying, "Nah, I'm not talking to you right now."
(BOTH LAUGH)
COOGLER: We're trying to work something out,
and Wakanda's solving their own problems.
This is a scene where T'Challa's inactive,
but the person that he is pays off.
All of the good things that you see him do in this film,
spare M'Baku's life, obviously, at Warrior Falls,
but also empower the women in his life.
You see the three women in his life.
Okoye's not here 'cause she's serving Killmonger out of duty,
but you see the three women in his life save him.
And they're around him in this moment.
Nakia, who's a rule-breaker and an innovator,
stole something that she wasn't supposed to take,
but thank God she did.
Ramonda, who represents tradition a little bit more,
knows the ways to work this.
She knows what to do here, where Shuri doesn't.
Shuri's away from her lab, so she can't really help T'Challa here.
But Ramonda knows the ways of old and is able to take control here
and get this ritual going.
And Shuri's watching. She's right there with her mom, learning something new.
The know-it-all has now become the student.
And now, they're all participating in bringing him back.
Had T'Challa not been the man that he was when he was alive,
he dies in that river.
And these are all things that Killmonger is not.
These are things that T'Chaka was not.
These are why he's the greatest king that Wakanda has ever had.
He's the king that's gonna lead them into the future here.
(IN XHOSA)
Praise the ancestors.
COOGLER: And this scene, it's a very, very intense scene.
I think it's arguably some of Chad's best work.
But he goes back to the ancestral plane here.
The ancestors are not in the trees anymore,
and a lot of them are appearing human.
My son.
They were panthers before, so he's seeing people as men right now.
As men and women.
And this idea here is him confronting his elders.
He confronts his father about this horrible thing that his father did.
And he asks his father, and he sees that his father knows he was wrong.
And that answer is insufficient.
And T'Challa says that.
And then he does something that's very disrespectful in African cultures,
no matter where you go on the continent,
but he actually raises his voice at his ancestors...
BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: ...and calls tradition out here.
Physically, you can see in his performance
that he knows
- he probably shouldn't be doing that... - (BEACHLER CHUCKLES)
COOGLER: ...but he does anyway, and it's a moment of growth
for the character that's extremely important.
He's conquered his flaw
in terms of how he looks at the past, and realizes that
he's a good man with a good heart,
and that's why he should make his own moves.
As opposed to that being a hindrance, that's actually a plus.
He's gonna go and save Wakanda, and, as a result, probably the world.
But it's T'Challa coming into his own, right?
It's a coming-of-age movie. It's him coming into his own.
And a result, Wakanda's coming into their own here.
And now, he's got the gas to lead us into our third-act battle.
I cannot rest while he sits on the throne.
He is a monster of our own making.
I must take the mantle back. I must!
I must right these wrongs.
- (T'CHALLA GASPS) - (RAMONDA EXCLAIMING)
(SHIVERING)
Do you have a blanket?
BEACHLER: Would you describe M'Baku as an antihero?
COOGLER: I try not to look at it like that.
I guess you could, but, for me, he's a political leader.
That's who he is, and he's got his morals.
This is a very important scene here 'cause what's being said here
is extremely important.
Ross kind of lays out what the CIA is and what the CIA does.
He talks about how they used Killmonger, who was a JSOC operative...
Killmonger's not a CIA agent. He was a JSOC operative.
He talks about how the CIA
used these types of fighters to destabilize foreign countries.
And that was another benefit that we had having Ross here in the third act.
He earmarked those things and talked about what Killmonger is doing.
Basically what he had been trained to do as a government agent.
And that's why it's very important, this idea of using weapons
to destabilize places isn't one he invented in a vacuum.
It's actually a tactic that's been used by the Western world several times over.
Specifically on the continent of Africa.
But in a lot of places where they've dealt with colonization and uprisings.
Foreign governments, Western governments would deliver weapons
to parties that they wanted to win,
and would deliver weapons to make sure that political things would destabilize,
so they could get resources out, get whatever they needed out.
And that's what Ross is talking about happening all over the world.
ROSS: I'm in, too.
What? You're gonna need all the help you can get.
(M'BAKU YAWNS LOUDLY)
Are you done?
(STAMMERS) Are you done?
COOGLER: (LAUGHING) Here, M'Baku's done with the rallying of the troops.
(BOTH LAUGHING)
COOGLER: He's ready for them to get going.
Thank you.
COOGLER: And here, you see T'Challa, the political animal.
And it's a political conversation.
This idea of isolationism versus intervention.
A favor for a favor, and M'Baku is always,
"Look, man, our favors are paid up, man. Get on."
And T'Challa's asking for another one.
And it's implied that their relationship maybe can continue,
but M'Baku's not really into it.
And T'Challa's got limited time to able to put something on his mind
that'll maybe change it.
...you speak of "us"?
I cannot speak for...
COOGLER: This is a crazy part.
We had like two takes for Winston in this, man.
- BEACHLER: In this one? - Yeah, we were running out of time.
He kind of nailed this in a couple of takes.
BEACHLER: I remember that. It was two days, right, we were in here?
- One day, it was one day. - COOGLER: Yeah, it was two days,
but it was weird 'cause it was a cover set.
BEACHLER: It was.
COOGLER: So we ended up having to shoot this,
when we wasn't really probably ready for it.
Wait, was it two days?
BEACHLER: We were in there for two days.
- COOGLER: Or was it one? - Or am I thinking of the...
- COOGLER: No, it was two days. - It was two days, yeah.
The vibranium mine.
- COOGLER: Mmm-hmm. - (LAUGHS)
COOGLER: Yeah, and here, we're seeing everything moving, man.
Here, again, it's the idea of impatience.
Killmonger's going.
He's on a moving train. He's not waiting around.
He's in there, and he's shipping stuff.
He doesn't trust to be able to take his time.
And this is the impatience that I grew up with.
People often will tell me, "Oh, you're so young to be making movies."
I'm like, "I'm 31, but I feel like I'm 60."
(BEACHLER LAUGHS)
COOGLER: So, I'm always going, man, 'cause I feel like
- tomorrow's not promised. - BEACHLER: Yes, you are.
- COOGLER: You know what I'm saying? - Right.
COOGLER: So, that's where Killmonger's moving.
(SNAPS FINGERS) Like, "Get this stuff out, get it going."
BEACHLER: I love this scene.
COOGLER: Yeah, this is one of my favorite musical moments here, man.
Ludwig really killed this. So as we're moving in,
you're hearing the choir, and they're singing...
(SPEAKING XHOSA)
(IN ENGLISH) Which is "our king," so it's...
(SINGING IN XHOSA)
(IN ENGLISH) And they're singing "our king" in Xhosa.
And then we get into T'Challa's theme here.
And then here, you've got that moment of... (CHUCKLES)
Wakanda's got some choices to make, right?
Wassup?
COOGLER: And that was a big contrast that Daniel liked,
this idea of him saying... T'Challa says, "N'Jadaka!"
He calls him by his African name in an African accent.
- And then Killmonger's like, "Wassup?" - (BEACHLER LAUGHS)
COOGLER: So, it's like that contrast of language among Africans
and where you're from, and them being totally honest.
That's T'Challa's very honest way of calling his cousin,
and that's Killmonger's very honest way of responding.
(BOTH LAUGH)
And it was something that Daniel laughed about
'cause Daniel grew up in London, and he has cousins that are in Uganda.
He laughs at how they communicate with each other.
BEACHLER: Yeah.
COOGLER: And this idea here of...
We had limited time to believe W'Kabi's decision here.
He doesn't wanna go back to the old ways.
- So, he says, "Let's fight." - BEACHLER: Onward.
COOGLER: Yeah. (LAUGHS)
(BOTH SPEAKING XHOSA)
COOGLER: (IN ENGLISH) They're saying, while they're fighting.
BEACHLER: (IN ENGLISH) This set... We built this, another ginormous...
- (LAUGHS) - COOGLER: Yes, we did.
BEACHLER: And it's all concrete, so we poured concrete.
We sliced off the top of a hill
and dug a giant hole in it.
And it's probably about 100 feet in diameter,
and then it's probably about eight feet
from the platform to the top of the steps.
And we built about 30 feet of the actual building.
And we built a little bit of the sides, I believe.
We did the whole sides, but as far as the big structure in the back,
I think we did a little bit of that as well.
And then we brought the rocks in, which was...
We placed about and stuff like this,
and this was close to one of the last ones that we did,
so this was a big... How long were you guys out there?
COOGLER: We were out here for, man, maybe a couple of weeks.
BEACHLER: With all the stunts...
COOGLER: Yeah, a couple of weeks, and we had
second unit running down the way.
We might have been out there three weeks.
I gotta look at the schedule.
- This moment was a big one, man. - BEACHLER: Oh, I love this.
I love this.
COOGLER: We kind of went past a lot of musical moments here.
Here is our friend M-20.
- BEACHLER: Here it comes. - Coming out, man.
And M-20 and the gang here.
M-20's the last one, coming through these right here.
(CHUCKLES)
And the music here was real cool. We used the muted horns.
(ALL GRUNTING)
Nakia and I will get control of the Royal Talon with this.
COOGLER: And this cue, both my wife Zinzi and I really love, man.
But it's the Shuri cue
that kind of comes in here, when she comes out with Nakia.
You're seeing her taking command.
Maybe she'll be a great warrior queen in the future.
- BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm. - She's distributing there,
letting everybody know what to do and running the show.
Once again, you're seeing this...
Usually, that's occupied by a white male, you know what I'm saying?
But it's this 16-year-old African telling everybody what to do.
And from here on out, Ross is under her command.
So here was a real emotional moment here.
But the idea of seeing one of the Dora fall,
and once again, these powerful people,
Killmonger doesn't care who's in his way.
He's ready to go.
(SCREAMING)
COOGLER: You see Danai affected by that.
In our minds, that was the first Dora to die in combat
in probably thousands of years.
And that idea of her trying to process that in that moment is...
A beautiful performance by Danai.
But then, it's followed up by Shuri, and these women who assemble
to have T'Challa's back.
They're very formidable.
It's all he has, but you get the feeling that maybe that's enough.
Ross, also, an unlikely ally.
Under the command of Shuri in his ear, telling him what to do.
"Go fly here. Fly here. Do that."
So, for us, Ross is an extension of Shuri here.
He's not operating as a CIA agent. He's under her command right now.
All right, I'm on it.
COOGLER: So here... Boom.
Got Panther doing a big takedown, and that's from the McGregor arc.
In Don McGregor comic book arcs of the '70s,
you see Panther tackling rhinos and stuff like that.
(SPEAKS XHOSA)
Lock!
Get him down!
COOGLER: And here, building on the tension
of them trying to get to the necklace.
Get the necklace!
They're pointing out that,
Get the necklace!
"To beat this dude, you gotta get him out of his suit."
(GRUNTING)
COOGLER: Here, we get in the... (LAUGHS) BEACHLER: Michael was so fantastic.
I just love...
You just instantly fall...
Remember that first time that I said to you... (LAUGHS)
You were like, "What did you think of the script?"
The first draft that came out.
And I said, "I just really don't like Michael's character."
- COOGLER: Right. - And you're like, "Right,
- "'cause he's the bad guy." - (BOTH LAUGHING)
BEACHLER: I was like, "Oh, that's..."
- 'Cause I'm so used to... - COOGLER: Liking Mike.
BEACHLER: Liking Mike and wanting him to be that character,
and then, all of a sudden, you see him doing these...
While he's so charming, and you almost get sucked...
I could see myself being, like, "Yeah, right? He's right.
"Why wouldn't he be right?" Because of that charm.
But then you're like, "No, I don't like him."
Talk about that shot. That was awesome.
Is that a GoPro? What is that?
COOGLER: That was a mounted shot.
That was an old shot that we had from pre-viz.
And this idea of...
It's chess pieces, right?
We had to work out this battle.
Boy, did we study a lot of third-act battles
while we were in the middle of this, man.
We looked at a lot of them.
One Feige's a big fan of is the Battle of Endor from Return of the Jedi.
We looked at all of them, and, for me,
it was just about maintaining the emotional relationships
and making sure
- you got emotional reactions here. - BEACHLER: Right.
COOGLER: And I think, in the film,
the most important emotional relationship
is the relationship that T'Challa has with his sister.
BEACHLER: Yes.
COOGLER: And this idea that Killmonger's threatening that.
And she says something here that is hard on him.
She knows exactly what to say, being a little sister,
by telling him that he'll never be a true king.
One last little punch in case she goes out.
What's up, Princess?
You'll never be a true king.
(BLACK PANTHER GRUNTS)
Brother!
(BOTH GRUNTING)
COOGLER: Here, we did a continuous shot that went down
to show the expansiveness of the mine.
And we put 'em on this
symbolism of this underground railroad here for that fight.
And also, we wanted it to feel like heart valves.
This idea, like they're fighting for the heart of Wakanda.
So you see these mining things that Hannah designed,
they almost feel like aortic valves.
Beautiful work Hannah and the team did there.
Shuri.
Brother!
BEACHLER: And you're kind of like, "This is... "
Suddenly, you're in the fight with them, and you're in this void,
and then, boom, they land.
Yeah, we call them the "stabilizer lights."
COOGLER: Yeah.
BEACHLER: We had to figure out a way how to... How would they...
A lot of this, too, which I think is really awesome,
to speak about this film and the way that
all the departments worked together to figure out,
"How would things really work?"
Not just like, "Oh, throw some stuff at it!"
We really worked hard to understand,
"Okay, if you actually had this element, you had this volatile element,
"how would you get it from one place to another?"
I mean, you can't just have it,
and then, what, you have some sound, and then it gets crazy.
So, coming up with a way for them to transport it, a way to destabilize it,
and then playing on that with the suits, and then...
It's just all an orchestra together in that sense,
is, I think in the large part, for me, what makes that particular scene,
'cause it was such a cool set, that vibranium bottom
with the giant lights. Those lights were 14 feet tall.
- They were huge. (LAUGHS) - COOGLER: Right.
BEACHLER: Those weren't some little... Those were ginormous, real lights
- that we built. - COOGLER: Right.
BEACHLER: That was only 60 feet that we built of that.
COOGLER: Yeah.
And then, this moment here was about...
'Cause Ross is basically drone-operating an aircraft right now,
carrying out the mission Shuri laid out for him.
But here, we wanted him to have some skin in the game.
So we wanted his life to actually be at risk
the same way that the rest of the Wakandans are.
And him to be faced with the choice of
getting out of there with his life still intact
or putting it on the line to complete what Shuri asked him to do.
And I think that he makes that choice to stay in there
even though Shuri's telling him to get out of there
basically to show that T'Challa was right to trust this dude.
And their own personal relationship.
Surrender now!
You have three seconds to lay down your weapon!
COOGLER: So here, you got W'Kabi telling them to surrender,
and then we get the sound design of old M'Baku...
BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
- COOGLER: ...and his team showing up. - This is one of my favorite parts.
- COOGLER: Yeah. - I love this. 'Cause right here.
COOGLER: Yeah, and a big deal here. He's shouting out...
He's making a distraction while the rest of the Jabari come in.
And the first Jabari to come through
- and get a kill is a woman. - BEACHLER: I love it.
COOGLER: (LAUGHS) Yeah, it's a Jabari woman.
BEACHLER: I love it.
COOGLER: Showing there's women Jabari warriors, too.
The tide turned. He's knocking this dude sideways.
Abia, which is another word,
like a phambili, but it's in the Igbo dialect.
Telling his guys, "Let's go."
Once again, these two are still at it.
BEACHLER: Watching this on set, I was like...
It was really for real.
I looked at Michael's face, and I was like...
It was... Wow.
COOGLER: For real. When they were going at it?
BEACHLER: Yeah. You felt all of it.
It was pretty amazing, and I was just like...
And that's actually Oribi Gorge, I believe, they're flying through.
COOGLER: Yeah. Yeah, Oribi Gorge. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then the RTF. We wanted to give these Talon fighters
like these cool mining features,
'cause we figured that they were in the mines, too.
So they would have these
- almost like harpoon-type vibe things. - BEACHLER: Yeah.
- I love it. - COOGLER: That would vibrate.
Make an X with your arms!
COOGLER: Shuri's getting down, still telling Ross what to do.
BEACHLER: And fighting and giving...
COOGLER: And fighting at the same time. (LAUGHS)
BEACHLER: Fighting at the same time and still leading.
COOGLER: Yeah. Yeah, Shuri's incredible.
BEACHLER: We've got our Mission: Impossible moment
where... "Is he falling?"
No. Remember when he suspends like five inches above the... (LAUGHS)
COOGLER: Yeah, Mission: Impossible. Yeah.
It turns on right before he hits the ground.
(BEACHLER LAUGHS)
COOGLER: It's all about, "Will he get to it or won't he get to it?"
And he calls out to let Shuri know he did it.
Yes! We did it!
SHURI: Great! Now get out of there!
COOGLER: And then she tells him to get out of there,
and we don't know if he made it out or not.
(ALL GRUNTING)
COOGLER: We got W'Kabi looking at M'Baku just kicking...
Jesus Christ, that dude took that stunt.
Charge!
Just dove right into the ground there.
- BEACHLER: I love this. - He's on M-20.
BEACHLER: Because those rhinos, they look like giant pot-bellied pigs.
- I love this moment right here. - COOGLER: Yeah. (LAUGHS)
Yeah, so the idea here is that...
We plant a lot of seeds, but Okoye's from the Border Tribe.
It's kind of why she wants to ride on top of that car
- in Busan, they're riders. - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: She's from that tribe, and she knows that rhino
'cause that's her husband.
She helped raise it.
No rhino in the world is gonna run through Okoye.
It'll run through everybody else, but her. (CHUCKLES)
BEACHLER: And this moment.
COOGLER: Yeah, and this was a big moment, man.
It was a moment that Danai and Daniel worked on to get right.
We had old drafts where they actually fought.
They had a big fight.
We got it to just this line and this observation.
And the fact that W'Kabi still cares about Wakanda.
He sees the civil war that's going on.
He sees that Okoye, who he doesn't want to fight,
is down to ride for the country.
So, he surrenders.
And that idea of surrendering, it's something that comes up and up again.
Like, yielding.
BEACHLER: But you never see that in a movie
where a man lays his weapon down...
- COOGLER: To a woman? - To a woman.
And that is a huge moment
because everyone sees W'Kabi lay his weapon down,
and then the rest of the Border Tribe follow suit.
So, that's a huge moment, I feel like.
COOGLER: Mmm-hmm.
Yeah, and once again, here you got the broken spear we talked about,
which ends up being what strikes the fatal blow on Killmonger.
That's the same spear that he broke when they were fighting at Warrior Falls
that he held on to.
And it's this idea of...
Now, T'Challa is an innovator as well.
You know what I'm saying? And it's this idea of
him being a king now, and that he strike that blow.
It's funny 'cause I got siblings, man.
I'm the eldest sibling. We get into fights.
And whenever you fight...
My little brothers are bigger than me now.
But even when you fight 'em, you get to that part and you realize,
"Oh, yeah," they snap back to being a kid again.
- You know what I'm saying? - (BOTH LAUGH)
If you hit 'em too hard or something,
- they fall, it's like, "Oh, man." - (BEACHLER LAUGHS)
COOGLER: We wanted to capture the darkest version of that here.
But Killmonger realizes he's about to die,
and he starts talking about when he was a kid.
He starts talking about this unfulfilled promise
that his father had given him.
And that T'Challa sees, like, "Oh, man."
He says Wakanda is beautiful, and he says...
And T'Challa's like, "I can't let him die in here."
'Cause Wakanda's not about the vibranium.
This mine isn't Wakanda.
So, he wants to give him a view that's worthy of a king,
worthy of royalty.
And I think here, in that...
This isn't like, "Yay, the bad guy's dead."
Happy-go-lucky.
No, this is family.
And T'Challa's trying to figure out a way to salvage something here.
- He takes a knee here. Symbolism there. - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
(SIGHS)
It's beautiful.
COOGLER: And this conversation... Actually, this line of
him actually verbalizing that he's afraid of being locked up
was a suggestion that was from my wife actually.
Looking at that, and this last line
was one that was always in every draft that we worked on.
This idea of Killmonger being someone who...
He identifies with those ancestors.
The ones that were lost in that pain, lost in that journey.
There's another section of the ancestors that made it to the continent,
who withstood that for hopes of the future.
He doesn't identify with that.
And that's heartbreaking for T'Challa there as well
'cause T'Challa sees him as Wakandan,
which is why he gives him the Wakandan salute.
Even after he dies, he folds his arms here.
But Killmonger's...
For him, that's how he chose to live.
He goes out like a "G," so we say where I'm from. (LAUGHS)
(WAKANDA BY BAABA MAAL PLAYING)
And again, you're seeing the youth.
It's another day in Wakanda.
You're seeing the border. You're seeing the city.
This is one of my favorite shots in the film as well.
You see M'Baku there, and you see Nakia there, in the Tribal Council now.
So, things have changed.
Out here with these kids.
People are back.
It's the feeling of, like, a civil war actually flared up
but now they're trying to get back.
And here is a very important thing about T'Challa, man.
A lot of the times you see these big superhero movies,
but he actually thanks his girl.
Acknowledges the fact that,
"I was dead at the bottom of a river," or whatever,
"and what you did by taking the herb
"and getting my family to safety actually saved everything,"
and he thanks her.
Another thing of showing what kind of guy T'Challa is.
He's not the dude that's gonna take the glory for himself.
He's going to acknowledge the true folks that helped him achieve it.
And here, he's showing Nakia that he's an innovator now as well.
You can't blame me, I almost died.
Stay.
COOGLER: We had to shoot all this stuff in one day.
Everything in Steptown was done in one day.
BEACHLER: Yeah. Ugh...
- COOGLER: Phew! Rachel was a rock star. - (BEACHLER EXHALES)
COOGLER: And it was freezing cold. Yeah. (LAUGHS)
BEACHLER: Yeah. Oh, it was so cold.
- COOGLER: Yeah, but you know. - In one day. Yeah, I forgot about that.
COOGLER: VFX took care of us, man.
We got what we had to do. And then once again, going to
this same place in Oakland.
And now, it's daytime, so the whole thing is contrast.
Time's moved on. It's daytime. You see similar kids.
You got your Hispanic kid there, and these other young kids,
but there's also a young lady that's out there playing with them there
who makes that shot.
BEACHLER: I have a question.
- COOGLER: What's that? - I was gonna say,
what's the significance of the young man that talks to T'Challa?
COOGLER: Oh, yeah, we can get into that.
BEACHLER: When we get to that, I guess.
I'm jumping the gun.
COOGLER: So here, T'Challa's out in Oakland,
and he goes to the spot where this thing happened.
And he's talking to Shuri.
Once again, the film starts with two siblings talking,
and it ends with two siblings talking.
But here, he's being honest with her.
He's telling her everything, telling her the truth.
You see the difference between T'Challa and his father.
And he's setting up Wakandan involvement in these places of the diaspora.
He goes to the black folks first.
Like, he goes to the UN later, but here's where he goes first.
And Nakia's overseeing the social outreach
in terms of making sure people had everything that they need.
And in terms of the science and information,
Shuri's gonna handle that.
Make sure folks are developing in that way.
(KIMOYO BEADS TRILL)
COOGLER: Here, the kids are seeing the ship.
Once again, the film opens with kids seeing ships.
But it was flying away in the beginning, now it's landing.
It's not being hidden.
It's juxtaposed with the kids at the beginning.
And also, the women in the Sambisa Forest.
And now, Shuri's gonna go over and tell them all about it
as opposed to, "Speak nothing of this day,"
she's gonna tell them all about it.
And some of the kids wanna pull up in school in it.
Other kids wanna take it apart.
(BEACHLER LAUGHS)
COOGLER: The significance of this moment here is that
- T'Challa sees his cousin in this kid. - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: We did Alex's hair up like Killmonger's.
He's wearing blue.
Who are you?
COOGLER: He asks him who he is, and the real question of that is,
- "Who am I?" - BEACHLER: Mmm-hmm.
COOGLER: And T'Challa sees this kid
and sees a way to right the wrongs that happened in the past.
So, that's how we get into that ending there.
- Cool. We good? - BEACHLER: Ryan and Hannah.
COOGLER: Saying, "Signing off here. Thanks for listening, you guys."
BEACHLER: Wakanda forever. COOGLER: Wakanda forever.
(ALL THE STARS BY KENDRICK LAMAR AND SZA PLAYING)
(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)
My name is King T'Challa...
son of King T'Chaka.
I am the sovereign ruler of the nation of Wakanda.
And for the first time in our history...
we will be sharing our knowledge and resources...
with the outside world.
Wakanda will no longer watch from the shadows.
We cannot.
We must not.
We will work to be an example of how we...
as brothers and sisters on this earth...
should treat each other.
Now, more than ever...
the illusions of division threaten our very existence.
We all know the truth.
More connects us than separates us.
But in times of crisis...
the wise build bridges...
while the foolish build barriers.
We must find a way...
to look after one another...
as if we were one, single tribe.
With all due respect, King T'Challa...
what can a nation of farmers have to offer the rest of the world?
(ALL MURMURING)
(RUSTLES)
(BOYS GIGGLING)
Are you playing around with that man again?
- No. - You're teasing him again.
- Don't wake him. He must rest. - THABO: No, I'm not.
No, I'm not.
SHURI: Thabo, you're doing that.
KID 2: He's doing it. He's lying.
SHURI: No, he's resting.
- Go, go! - (KIDS SPEAKING XHOSA)
White Wolf!
SHURI: (IN ENGLISH) Stop that!
White Wolf!
(IN ENGLISH) Good morning, Sergeant Barnes.
Bucky.
How are you feeling?
Good.
Thank you.
(CHUCKLES SOFTLY) Come.
Much more for you to learn.