As far as endings go, “Black Panther” has one of the best ever seen in a Marvel Studios film. From the poignant final conversation between Killmonger and T’Challa to the scene in Oakland and at the United Nations, which set the stage for the future, Ryan Coogler’s film just found the perfect way to put a bow on one of the best films of the last year. But according to one of the folks who worked on the film, the ending could have been very, very different.
Speaking to CinemaBlend, co-editor Michael Shawver explained how there was one line that Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger was originally going to say that could have changed the entire outcome of “Black Panther.” However, it was cut for a couple of reasons that ended up forcing Coogler to look for inspiration from other films.
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“With reshoots Ryan wanted to do a new ending, and it’s a whole bigger thing with the scene where Killmonger dies…,” said the co-editor. “What we shot originally, and in the script, was Killmonger saying ‘It’s beautiful, but what are you going to do for everybody in the world who can’t see this?’… And it was great. It was powerful, it was awesome, but it was problematic for a few reasons.”
He continued, “One, we realized that just as a character, for the journey of T’Challa, he can’t get the answer to the movie and what he needs to do from the villain – like straight-up exactly what he needs. And that’s kind of what was happening. Secondly, it was a great performance, and [Michael B. Jordan] brought it, and it was painful to watch because you kind of don’t want this guy to die, but it didn’t fit his character.”
So, once it was decided that the ending was problematic, Coogler went back to the drawing board, looking for the correct way to end his film. And he did so by doing what most film fans would probably do, searching for a Top 10 Film Endings list online. Yep, he seriously did that, and it paid off.
“One thing that we did was looking at all those Top 10 lists of best endings ever for movies,” Shawver said. “We found in a lot of these videos it was one of two things: it was either the twist ending or it was ‘The Godfather.’ Basically, the first time you meet Michael, he’s with Kay and he’s telling her he’s not like his family. ‘That’s not me, Kay. That’s them.’ The last scene we see him, he’s telling Kay he’s not like his family. But then he walks and the door shuts, and you know everything is different. But it’s the same conversation! And so it’s the circular nature why those kinds of endings feel like closure even though it’s open-ended.”
With inspiration from one of the best films of all-time, Coogler decided that the best way to end the film was for T’Challa to learn the lesson that would have been spelled out by Killmonger on his own. The film ends with two scenes – one with T’Challa venturing to Oakland (where Killmonger was from) and planning to open a new outreach center, putting Wakanda in the open. And the second scene is when T’Challa goes in front of the United Nations and seemingly outs himself as the leader of a highly technological country that has been hiding behind the facade of being a third-world territory.
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As “Black Panther” prepares to become one of the celebrated superhero films of all time, thanks to its inevitable Oscar nominations, it’s interesting to look at what could have been and how Coogler and Co. ultimately came to create one of the best films of 2018.