I remember when watching “I Love the 70s” on VH1 a long time ago I heard about the car wash song and that it was based on a movie. I even wanted to try and work at one the car wash places around here where I live but I never really saw the movie until I watched it on demand to see what it was all about.
This movie starts off with 1970s Los Angeles and a bunch of guys who work at the car wash. It’s surprising how car wash places used to hand wash the car or put it through a cycle where you can watch it go by. Today now you just go in along with the wash cycle.
This movie is mostly just a bunch of people who hang out at the car wash and work there. There’s also a taxi driver and a preacher played by George Carlin and Richard Pryor, they’re not in this movie much just so you’ll know. Also, there is this hooker who gets dressed in the car wash bathroom at times as well they even mention a pop bottle Bomber but nothing really comes of it in the movie. The end though at night worried me a bit though it didn’t end too badly from what I saw.
Anyway, this movie seemed like a nice little movie from the 70s and the soundtrack is amazing. You can give it a watch if you want just a little laugh for escapism or what life was back then, “can you dig?”.
I didn’t get a chance to watch this in theaters and heard this won 3 Oscars as well for music, costume design, and production design. So I watched this recently on Disney+ to see how it was and it seemed okay a bit. Watching the an I wondered why they weren’t explaining what Vibranium was or what it does exactly. The opening explains how Wakanda was able to get the Vibranium and why they stood in hiding for so long until recently.
Then the movie starts in the past at Oakland, California, where these two black guys with some guns and stuff. Then some Wakandain lady soldiers come in and the previous Black Panther T’Challa’s father. Since his brother stole some Vibranium to help out the city somehow and the other guy was spying on him. T’Challa’s father ends up killing his brother and it flash’s forward to the present where T’Challa helps some people in motherland Africa from a slave trade. When liberating the slaves T’Challa encounters a past girlfriend and after that he goes back to Wakanda for the trials to be king.
When doing so this Gorilla or Yeti tribe chooses to fight T’Challa and he is given this weird potion to power himself down so there’s a fair fight. Kind of weird since why would they have something like that. T’Challa defeats the Gorilla tribe’s leader and T’Challa is king now, T’challa then does this spirit journey as a way to do some soul searching. After we go to this scene where Killmonger and Klaw steal some Vibranium in this museum. Klaw is this guy who stole Vibranium a long time ago and has this robotic hand that shoots sonic waves.
Back in Wakanda T’Challa and the committee decide to find Klaw and his last whereabouts were that he’s in South Korea. They end up capturing Klaw with help from a US Agent as well. Then Killmonger breaks Klaw out and in the crossfire the US agent gets hurt badly and T’challa takes the US agent to Wakanda to heal him. When the US agent gets healed T’challa mentions that opening scene in the movie and that it was about his father and uncle and how his uncle fell in love with an american women and had a kid with her. T’challa’s father ends up killing his brother but for some reason they don’t try to find his kid and just leave him there. That kid ends up being Killmonger somehow as well.
Later Killmonger ends up killing Klaw and goes to Wakanda showing Klaw’s body and that he killed him. After that Killmonger goes to the council meeting to show them and T’challa that he is descended from the throne. T’challa also helps out the US agent get medical treatment as well in Wakanda. Killmonger demands that he and T’challa do that ritual fight to be the king even though T’challa doesn’t have to do that. T’challa ends up doing the ritual fight with Killmonger, during this fight Killmonger wins and he really didn’t cheat for anything like that. T’challa is then thrown off this waterfall and presumed dead, Then Killmonger takes the throne and after his spirit journey or something like that and then destroys the plants that give the rulers of Wakanda their powers.
Killmonger plans to send the Vibranium to all these street kids as a way to change the balance of powers. Though this whole idea of giving the rest of the world Vibranium at times feels like it would cause more harm to the world and even to each other as a people. Plus this movie doesn’t explain what Vibranium does, or if they run out of it, and is more like a device for the plot to go forward. Or what will happen when Wakanda runs out of Vibranium and that was a story for this comic called “The Future Foundation” from awhile ago. Just feels like that’s all they have and if you rely on a resource too much it will run out eventually.
Then T’challa’s mother, sister, and that US agent, try to find T’challa’s body and is found at the Gorilla or Yeti tribe’s village. T’challa’s family gives him the last of that Vibranium plant while he’s in the show like cold therapy. They then go back to Wakanda to stop the Vibranium from being shipped around the world and US agent remotely pilots a fighter ship to shoot the other ships with the Vibranium.
Then there’s this ground fight between Black Panther’s army and Killmonger’s army and there’s also these war rhinos as well. Then at some point Black Panther and Killmonger fight each other in CGI with their armors but it feels like Black Panther is fighting Black Panther. At the end of the fight I thought there would be something like Black Panther beats up Killmonger but doesn’t kill him as a way to break the endless cycle of violence like their parents. I was wrong, Black Panther ends up killing Killmonger and after that T’challa ends up going to where Killmonger lived in Oakland and makes a community center there. He also opens up boarders to Wakanda to the rest of the world.
This movie felt, okay, it’s just that sometimes these Disney Marvel movies seem to formulaic and too clean. Just feels like you need to be a bit deeper at times instead of this woke writing since that is all it is, on the surface. People have layers and sometimes there is ulterior motives and not just “because I felt like it” at times. It just feels like at times the deeper, complex, writing for these shows seems to be gone but I like to have a little faith in those days.