Women warriors from Black Panther deserve (at least) credit 300 actors received
By Ryan Mekkes
Black Panther was a mic-drop moment for Ryan Coogler. And one of the most spectacular aspects of the movie, which largely flew under the radar, was that Wakanda’s women warrior elite may have taken 300 actors’ place as the most dominant group with regard to combat preparation.
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Black Panther hits on all cylinders. It not only sends a powerful message about racial equality, but it focuses on gender equality as well. And the women who protected the king in that iconic movie could likely do so in real-life. The reason they were such impressive fight-finishers on-screen, was due to their lengthy and rigorous combat training prior to filming.
The training they underwent in preparation for the film was a 16-week, 8 hours a day process. So when the cameras started rolling, they weren’t filming actresses or stunt-doubles, they were filming warriors. Three of their number, Jénel Stevens, Marija Abney, and Niahlah Hope, shared a little about the experience with Inside Edition in the interview below.
A similar process preceded filming for what is now considered to be a landmark movie for physical fitness — 300. But even those Spartans, as impressive as they were, did not spend as much time training in preparation for that movie as the women of Wakanda did for theirs.
According to Web MD, most of the actors for 300 trained for 8-10 weeks, which is impressive, but falls well short of the 16 spent by the women of Black Panther. So the fact that those women were so well-versed in combat was not due to special effects, but the immense amount of work they put in beforehand.
True skill in combat and martial arts cannot be faked. And what the cast of Black Panther accomplished was no easy feat.
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In the future, there will almost certainly be followup movies to Black Panther, and hopefully, even some feature movies focusing on the Wakanda warriors themselves. But as for now, we can look forward to seeing them again in Avengers: Infinity War, which hits theaters on April 27, 2018.