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An edit from March ’23 which was my third MCU project overall
Like ‘The Eternals’ before it, I reimplemented deleted scenes I felt added things to the story – but unlike it, I also took things out which either felt needless or like they were actually working against the story for one reason or another. Total runtime is ~2hrs 19mins.
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The film starts off with an African proverb (hence the project name) that many people may have seen and gotten familiar with by now. To this day, I’m not sure if it’s a real quote from a cited place or people, but it fits the villain of the story incredibly well, and its supposed origin makes it very apt for the story also.
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The film plays out as normal until we’re in the middle of T’Challa’s ritual combat with M’Baku at the 26.5 minute mark. I cannot get behind Ramonda’s shout for T’Challa to show who he is – it’s always felt far too heavy-handed, to the point where it almost breaks immersion because it feels so obvious it’s coming straight from the writer’s room as a deliberate insert, not because it’s organic to the characters in the story. (Like when Bucky says to T’Challa in Civil War “I didn’t kill your father” and suddenly I’m catapulted out of the film into a thousand other stories which used that same line in that same context because the plot uses the same story device.) Now it’s like T’Challa’s losing, M’Baku’s gloating and the former seeing his family watching is enough to give him strength and snap out of it to win.
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Following this, the first deleted scene comes along at around 33 minutes in, after T’Challa takes the Heart-Shaped Herb and sees his father again, which he tells Zuri. In the scene, he and Zuri speak about King T’Chaka properly, from what T’Challa remembers as a child and Zuri as his old friend. It feels important to add in, because it gives development to the old king in a more positive way – rather than the rest of the film focussing on the mistakes he made more than anything else (especially with N’Jobu and Erik), and to see Zuri giving some kingly wisdom.
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The film plays out as normal following that from Wakanda to Seoul and back again, with a small tweak when they return with the wounded Everett Ross. The scene with Shuri’s remark about him is gone, since a comment about a person based on the colour of their skin in that context would almost definitely go down the wrong way, were it reversed, for obvious reasons. Now, they discuss Everett’s condition in the ‘Royal Talon Fighter’ and it cuts right to Shuri in her lab with him, ‘fixing’ him.
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It carries on as normal until the aftermath of Killmonger winning the challenge at the Warrior Falls at around 83 minutes in. There, it goes into the second deleted scene, where W’Kabi and Okoye are in the throne room heatedly discussing the future of Wakanda and the former’s crumbling faith in his former friend after the business with Klaue goes south. Here, W’Kabi’s development is shown through the effect Klaue’s actions had on him as a child, and how he can justify turning his back on his oldest friend to put his faith in Killmonger instead to get the “justice” he feels he is owed.
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From there, it transitions back into the theatrical film (conveniently still in the throne room and Okoye still there) for another 20 minutes until it gets to the eve of the clash on Mount Bashenga and T’Challa emerges, revealing he’s still alive to everyone. I took out Killmonger telling W’Kabi to kill him, because it just doesn’t work. At the ritual challenge, Erik openly talks about spending his whole life thinking, training and killing purely for the chance to kill T’Challa one day. If you just learned you failed, why would you demand someone else do it to correct your failure for you instead of jumping in and trying to do it yourself again? In principle if nothing else? Now, yes, you can argue semantics – if Killmonger said “All this death….Just so I could take the throne” or telling W’Kabi flat-out to kill his OLD friend in front of him to prove his loyalty to his NEW king once and for all, that would work well and wouldn’t need to change. But he didn’t, so it does.
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Small tweak less than a minute later: after the Dora start attacking Killmonger, the short shot of Okoye standing there and twirling her spear is gone – because I don’t really know why it was there in the first place, since it doesn’t do or add anything.
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Lastly, the film plays out as normal until the very end, when I put the third deleted scene in. Now, after the credits and custom title card, there’s an extended version of T’Challa meeting Everett Ross at the UN, and they have a strong conversation about the consequences of unveiling the reality of Wakanda to the rest of the world. Afterwards, it goes into the theatrical sequence of T’Challa taking the stand and giving his speech before the main credits.
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.