When we first see Killmonger, he is a kid playing basketball. His path not chosen, still up on the air. T’Challa, on the other hand, is the young son of King that everyone thinks is perfect, but we find out isn’t that perfect at all, but that is why their paths are so different.
When T’Chaka murders his brother and let’s not get it twisted it was murder. Killmonger was abandoned like so many black kids in our world who have been abandoned because of how society is set up to break down people of color and in this case how people of color themselves caused the issue.
How is a kid supposed to understand loyalty when his father is killed at the hand of his brother? In real life terms when you see all the death and destruction within our communities, brothers killing brothers, how do you hold on to anything? You have to become an adult at ten years old, your emotions are hardened, and life gets real far quicker than it should.
But this wasn’t just about a black on black crime; the secondary story is Killmonger wanted to channel that anger in a way that he could take it out on as many people as possible, so what did that mean?
JOIN THE US MILITARY
I understand the military is needed, but it also makes killing machines and then sends them back home and expect them to be normal, that is unrealistic.
What Black Panther is trying to show you is what if you take a kid who by all accounts was a good and smart kid, but then throw the crappiest circumstances at him, what path would that lead him down.
You are killing for your country, while looking at leaders of your country and others treating people of color like crap, so now you a mix of pretty much everything bad that could happen to a person happening to him in real time. That is why he wants to recreate the world, because the world as it is, hasn’t given a shit about him, so why should he give a shit about it?
Killmonger doesn’t want what happened to him done to anyone else specifically black people, but the way he has been trained to accomplish that is by pure force. No one was around to teach him nuance or a better way, so why would you expect that from him?
That is the main difference between him and T’Challa. T’Challa always had people around him showing him that nuance; he always had that love and support, so even when things went bad, he could fall back on that.
This isn’t a traditional hero and villain situation; this is one guy who had to fight all his life, since childhood and has all this pent up anger and emotion and another guy who was given the tools to succeed simply because he was in a better circumstance.
That is why I compare Killmonger to 2Pac, someone who obviously was a brilliant individual who cared deeply about things and saw the screwed up things in our society very clearly but couldn’t outrun those demons and dark side from his youth.
What made 2Pac so great was also the things that constantly put him in danger.
Killmonger isn’t a villain he is a warning of what happens when you don’t take care of your own and look the other way.