2. What was one moment that made you think about your own life?
3. What question did the film leave you with?
Turn & Talk · 3 minutes
Share With a Partner
Share one of your written responses with the person next to you.
Then: What came up in your partner's response that you didn't think of?
After the timer: What should we explore together as a class?
Two Visions of Justice
T'Challa
Gradual, incremental change
Protect Wakanda first
Work within existing systems
Build bridges across difference
VS
Killmonger
Revolutionary, immediate change
Global justice — right now
Tear down oppressive systems
Use power to overturn power
Why does Killmonger's anger make sense — even if you disagree with his methods?
Quick Poll · Stand and Commit
Should Wakanda Open Its Borders?
For Opening Up
Moral duty to help those suffering
Isolation enables injustice elsewhere
Shared resources create shared strength
For Staying Hidden
Protect your own people first
Vibranium would be weaponised
You can't fix everyone else's problems
Open
0
Stay Hidden
0
It Depends
0
Personal Reflection
The Power of Representation
Before this film — when you imagined an advanced civilisation in movies, what did it usually look like?
What changed in Wakanda?
Technology rooted in African design and values
Black women as lead scientists and warriors
African culture as the foundation for the world's most sophisticated society
The Real Question
How does seeing people who share your background or values as heroes, leaders, and innovators affect what you think is possible — for yourself?
Technology & Values
Wakandan Technology
Serves the community first
Balances tradition with innovation
Focused on healing & protection
The Outside World
Profit-driven development
Often harms the communities it claims to serve
Creates and deepens inequality
The Hard Question
What values guide your own community's use of technology?
When you have advantages — what do you owe others?
Character + Personal Connection
Identity & Belonging
T'Challa
Balancing tradition and change, duty and personal desire — never fully free to choose one or the other.
Killmonger
Abandoned by his heritage, trying to prove belonging through anger — and finding that it still isn't enough.
Nakia
Maintains her identity while working across cultures — she doesn't have to choose one to have the other.
Shuri
Innovates without apology — tradition and future, held in the same hand.
When have you felt caught between different communities, expectations, or versions of yourself?
Why Oakland?
The film begins and ends in Oakland — not Wakanda.
Shows the African diaspora experience
Connects ancestral heritage to present-day reality
Reveals the concrete human cost of Wakanda's isolation
The children on the basketball court ask: "What is a Wakanda?"
By the end of the film — they will know. What does that moment mean?
Your Reflection
How might your own community be different if it had access to resources, technology, or opportunities that have historically been kept from it?
Afrofuturism in Action
What we saw in the film:
African aesthetics driving futuristic design
Traditional wisdom integrated with advanced science
Black women as technological and military leaders
Vibranium as a metaphor for African resources — and African potential
Beyond Representation
This isn't just about seeing Black actors in a superhero movie.
It's about reimagining whose knowledge, values, and vision shape the future itself.
What would science fiction look like if it centred your community's values?
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Who gets to imagine the future — and why does that matter?
1
1895
The Time Machine Wells' Victorian anxieties: class, evolution, entropy
2
1927
Metropolis Industrial society's crisis: workers vs. elite, heart vs. machine
3
2018
Black Panther African & diaspora voices enter the mainstream: technology + community + justice
?
Today
Multiple cultural approaches to imagining tomorrow — including yours
The pattern: Every era uses science fiction to talk about its own fears and hopes.
What fears and hopes does your generation need science fiction to address?
The UN Speech
"More connects us than separates us. In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers."
— T'Challa, addressing the United Nations
The Ambassador's Response
"What can a nation of farmers offer to the rest of the world?"
Then the screen reveals: everything.
Discussion
How do people's assumptions about your community, background, or abilities affect how they treat you?
How does this film challenge those assumptions?
Design Activity · 5 minutes
Design Your Wakanda
If your community had its own Wakanda — what would it look like?
Small Group · 4 minutes
From Wakanda to Now
Technology & Community
How do social media platforms affect your community? Who controls them — and whose values do they reflect?
Resource Sharing
What resources does your school or community have that could help others? What stops that from happening?
Representation
Where do you see your community's voices missing from important conversations — in media, politics, science?
Historical Trauma
How do past injustices shape present problems — and what does Killmonger's story tell us about unaddressed pain?
Each group takes one box. Share: what's one specific example you can name?
Choose One · Extended Response
Synthesis Questions
1. Power & Responsibility — How has this film changed your thinking about what you owe others when you have advantages they don't?
2. Science Fiction's Role — Why do stories about the future matter for decisions we make today?
3. Representation — How might the world be different if all communities had equal voice in imagining and creating the future?
4. Personal Application — What is your "vibranium" — and what will you do with it?
Exit Ticket · Before You Leave
Three Sentences
Complete each sentence stem honestly — there are no wrong answers.
Next class: we use your questions to guide our unit synthesis.
The Bigger Picture
As we move into unit synthesis, keep these questions in mind:
How do all three texts show science fiction as social commentary?
What patterns do we see in how different eras and cultures imagine the future?
Whose voices have been centred — and whose have been left out?
How can science fiction help us create the future we actually want?
You are not just consumers of these stories.
You are part of the generation that will create tomorrow's reality.
If You Want to Go Further
Read
Nnedi Okorafor — Binti
N.K. Jemisin — The Fifth Season
Octavia Butler — Kindred
Watch / Listen
Janelle Monáe — Dirty Computer
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Get Out (2017)
Sun Ra & the Arkestra
Create
Your own Afrofuturist design, story, or art
Research African & diaspora contributions to science that aren't widely taught