A Military Analysis of the Battle of Winterfell

 

I’ve had plenty of gripes about the large-scale battles fought in the Game of Thrones series and how unrealistic many of them have been. In fact, plenty of people, including those in this article, are piling on the Battle of Winterfell, calling it unrealistic. Contrary to my previous complaints about such battles in the series, I’m here to explain how this was actually kind of a well planned battle overall considering the tight circumstances the heroes faced.

As should be done whenever planning any great victory, the first thing to do is assess what you know about the enemy and fully understand your own forces. I’m sure that the collection of bad asses at Winterfell did just that.

Let’s recall that over the course of the series, the various good people involved in this battle have gathered various bits of information and intelligence about the Night King and his army. They know that the Night King commands a handful of generals and a whole mass of undead soldiers. The two groups can be differentiated by the simple fact that the King and his generals generally look well-groomed and often wear cool armor whereas his army is made of up shambling mounds of rot in various stages of decay. All kidding aside, the good know that if you kill a general that many if not necessarily all of the zombie things with him crumble into pieces. Now an astute observer might have noticed that the “crumbling thing happening” may only occur with zombies that are in some way connected with the freshly killed general. While we as viewers and readers might know the reason, the heroes can only correctly guess that there is some connection between the action and the result. But what is more important is that killing the generals will yield great gains and killing the Night King may eliminate the entire threat completely.

They also know something of the forces arrayed against them. They know that the Night King has a huge shambling army at his command and they form a sort of amorphous blob. But they are not dispersed completely at random. They move in line generally with their leaders and don’t stray too far from them in any direction. The enemy has some form and predictable movement.

What do they know about the Night King? They’ve made an educated guess that his current priority while not necessarily his ultimate goal, is to kill the Three Eyed Raven, Bran Stark. Therefore they predicate all their plans on the fact that the Night King will move his army in a straight line at Bran. The Night King has never struck me (and hopefully the heroes) as particularly intelligent so much as he is single-minded and of constant unrelenting purpose. He’s like a force of nature.

The Night King slowly moves towards what he wants. He kills that which is in his way, incorporates the dead in his army, and continues forward. His killing of Vesirion wasn’t particularly spectacular. He simply saw a dragon, pulled out his spear and threw. When it died he made it part of his army. He realized it could breathe fire so he used it to bring down the wall. Then he kept moving towards Bran. Nothing here stems from genius decision-making. In addition, neither he nor his generals nor his army of zombies is made up of skilled fighters. Watch their individual fights and tell me if you see any spectacular moves. You can’t. The dead just plod along killing in straight forward ways. So Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion and so on probably know this.

They also know that the Night King has a dragon that breathes a powerful blue flame. That will be an over riding threat in their planning. This dragon and the Night King’s ability to throw deadly spears far enough to kill a flying dragon (which Jon figured out last season) are a two pronged threat to Daenerys’s dragons.

Finally, Jon’s unlikely band of scouts saw the direction the Night King and his army were moving in towards Winterfell. They pretty much can figure out the Night King’s objective, distance, direction of movement, speed, and size. In fact they correctly predicted how quickly the army of the dead would arrive.

What do the good heroes have? They have the Dothraki heavy cavalry horde, the Unsullied infantry army, a handful of warrior bands with a mix of infantry and bow, two dragons, some catapults, a castle to defend and a few hero types. Some one might dispute my characterization of the Dothraki as heavy cavalry since they and their horses lack armor. However, their tactics are heavy cavalry tactics. Charge in with the goal of stampeding and dispersing the enemy while you swing your heavy swords at them. While they are outfitted like light cavalry to an extent, they behave as heavy.

What are the options the heroes have? One, they could disperse everyone and just leave Bran in the castle and ambush the Night King on their own. But that leaves them with a single option for success and if it fails then there’s nothing more to be done. Plus an ambush while the Night King has his army around him might not be feasible. Two, you could put an army in his way and try to kill him the old fashioned way with brute force. If that doesn’t work, you can still try to ambush him at the tree. That gives them at least two chances at success. Three, they could all leave the continent and let Cersei take care of the Night King. But you know how tied the Starks are to their homeland so that’s not happening. (I thought of a fourth option later. Keep an ambush party near the tree, Spread out the rest of the army in hiding. When the Night King is close to the tree then use some signal, maybe a dragon flame, to have the army surround and charge the dead army. This may then draw the army from the Night King, maybe, and the heroes can deal with him mano a mano. That’s a risky plan though and probably not going to work.)

So here we have it, the heroes have to figure out how to put their army in between the Night King’s army and Bran long enough to get the Night King close enough for them to see and then blast him with dragon fire. How then to array their forces? They decide to put the Dothraki, the bands of swordsmen, and the Unsullied side by side with the bowmen in the castle, the catapults behind the infantry and cavalry, and the heroes in front leading the various elements. Let’s consider then how best to use each force if their goal is to slow down the Night King and give someone, perhaps the dragons or a hero, the chance to get at the Night King when he draws near which he will have to at some point to get to Bran.

The catapults are where they need to be. (Note: I didn’t realize initially they were in the front of the infantry.  They should have been behind them. Unless there wasn’t enough space to put them between the front line and the wood barrier assuming the heroes wanted to keep the front line backed up close to the wood barrier to get behind it quicker.  In the end though it didn’t matter.) They can’t be moved quickly and their only job is to lob fireshot at the enemy. The Unsullied are positioned as a blocking force in front of the main gate. That seems pretty solid. The Dothraki are in the open where they would be best suited. They need space to operate. Now I’ve read two arguments that this was a bad move.

One argument is that the forces should have been put into the castle and they should resist a Night King siege. I see numerous problems with this. First, the combat power of the forces at hand are not best suited to siege warfare (that is defending castle walls) plus crowding them all in together will reduce how many of them can have a fighting effect at once. The enemy army is made up of generally slow shambling dead people who use their hands or random weapons to fight. They charge thoughtlessly at an opponent en masse. The fighters in the hero’s army need space to use their weapons, curved swords and layers of spears. To maximize effective use of their abilities, they need space, they need to be out in the open. Admittedly, having some kind of obstacles on the flanks could have helped but they can’t really choose their terrain here. (Perhaps they could have made a stand in the woods nearby to make it harder for the undead to be effective in massing but the heroes would have had trouble maintaining cohesion and situational awareness too.)

The good guy’s plan if flanked appears to be to retreat into the castle, once their forces are probably smaller at this point. Also keep in mind that Jon has lived through an attempt to hide in a fortified area against the undead army and it assuredly does not work. Yes, that stronghold was protected by a wall of logs and Winterfell has stone walls but the undead can form mounds to get over the walls. They would then pour on the heroes like cockroaches. And if in fact the Night King decided to siege the castle (unlikely considering his previously described characteristics), how long would the good guys survive crowded together with limited food? (Sansa already told us they don’t have enough food to last long.) They would eventually have to bust out and how effective would they be streaming out of a few gates to attack the Night King? Not very effective at all.

It has also been argued that the wall of spiked timber should have been farther out and that the hero forces should have been behind the wall of fire to start with. My problem with this is that the wall requires a great deal of timber and a great deal of labor to build. Trying cutting down that much timber in the cold. Not only is the work much more difficult physically, how easy is it to fell so many trees when they are near frozen too.   I was already a bit leery to accept that they were able to build the wall they did but to build one of even large perimeter might have strained believability. They probably built as much as they could in the 24 or so hours they had available. In addition, the fighting power of the Dothraki would have been reduced considerably if they were simply to stand behind the wall of fire and kill undead as they crossed over. Moreover, cramming them all together even by the walls or in the castle opens up a new problem. If the undead dragon comes barreling in spraying blue fire, they would be a nice compact target to destroy in one fell swoop. Hopefully your own dragons could keep him at bay but if not, everyone is fried meat. As it is, open space is actually the heroes’ friend in this situation.

Another suggestion has been made that the heroes should have created a maze of obstacles to channelize the undead and make them easier to kill by reducing their ability to swarm from all directions. Yes that would be great but where do you get the material to create obstacles big enough to do that? You can’t just create major obstacles from thin air. Perhaps the dragons could have clawed out ditches after heating the frozen ground with their fire breath. It might have worked to slow down the undead army a bit but it would have tired out the dragons. A possible option but one I’m not sure would have made any appreciable difference in the final tally. Maybe the dragons had been busy helping carve out that big spike ditch and pulling up the trees to get it done. Either way there are a lot of could haves and would haves that still require limited labor and limited accessible material resources.

A quick aside about hiding the women and children in the crypts. A good idea. Keep them out of the way. The other option would have been to disperse them into the forest to hide until the battle was over but I don’t think anyone would agree to send their loved ones out into the wilderness with the undead everywhere.

Now on to the progress of the battle. The battle starts with everyone nervously waiting for the commencement of hostilities. Seems realistic enough. Maybe 0.01% of them has fought an undead creature before. Melisandre comes by and lights the Dothraki blades on fire. Who in their right mind would think that a Dothraki horde suddenly blessed with flaming blades would sit still waiting for the approach of the enemy? While tactically foolish, it’s not unrealistic to imagine them seized with a berserk fury causing them to recklessly charge forward. No one commanded it but no one could really stop it either. Do you think Jorah Mormont could have calmed them down? No way. So he just went with it, probably knowing it was foolhardy.  This is part of the vagaries of battle especially when one ally is crazed for battle. I don’t know if Melisandre wanted the battle to start early so that she could die by dawn or if she simply didn’t realize what effect her magic would have.  (Thinking about this some more, the Dothraki were probably a huge blood sacrifice to the Lord of Light; their blood shed under the flames granted by and of R’hllor.  Then Arya was oddly compassionate to Beric right before Melisandre seemed to pass on some knowledge and perhaps power to Arya to defeat the darkness, cold and death of the Great Other represented by the Night King.  Then Melisandre’s death as the dawn comes after defeating the Great Other makes perfect sense.)  Either way, as tactically terrible as what happened was, I think it was a realistic look at the fact that people and not machines are fighting this battle. We see plenty of mistakes and such like this in real medieval battles too.

My one gripe with this scene was the catapults. Actual catapults can only fling stones a few hundred feet at best. How were these Winterfell catapults flinging stones out in a high arc half a mile or further? A minor but annoying point. Not that they would have been effective either way. Catapults are deigned to both smash the enemy and inspire fear. As we know with the undead army, they neither feel fear, nor suffer too much from having a few dozen smashed and burned.

So off the Dothraki go only to disappear little by little. So much for that army but nothing about that charge seems unrealistic. I know someone might ask why the dragons didn’t follow them out to help with the attack. Let’s remember the previous two points about the Night King being able to fling deadly spears long distances and that they have an undead dragon to worry about. The plan was not to charge way out front but to keep the dragon’s close in to protect the armies and then strike the Night King. The Dothraki probably messed up that plan but luckily Jon and Daenerys didn’t do anything as reckless. Flying out into the darkness behind enemy lines against an enemy that is probably ready to take down the dragons does not seem smart. Especially if you might be worried that the generals can sling their spears just as well as the Night King can sling his spears at the dragons.

The dragons have two useful capabilities, slowing down the enemy army and vaporizing the Night King. There is no point in sending them out where they will be at huge risk of death when they can be more effective close in with the rest of the army. In addition, having the dragons mow down the enemy close in can help preserve the morale of the good army. Maybe the best point of attack would be when they are about 100 yards or so apart. Definitely striking the rear of the enemy army when contact has been made between the two lines is the latest time you want to use them.

The undead army finally arrives and the battle became an old fashioned dependable infantry clash. Now one thing I wonder about is whether Jon or any others realized what a suicide mission this was for so many of their people. The real goal was to simply hold until the Night King got close. Many would die and Jon and the others knew this but they didn’t say anything. Perhaps they were simply hopeful. They had given their people dragon glass weapons. Plus the dragons were now brought in close to friendly lines, destroying as many of the undead their handy little mouth-fires could roast.  Surely all that would preserve some lives.

However, the Night King’s wall of snow was unexpected and a nice little twist that the heroes couldn’t have predicted and had trouble dealing with. This turned the battle back in the villain’s favor and the undead army had the upper hand while Jon and Daenerys were lost in the blinding snowstorm. The two tried to find each other and the enemy in the blinding snow and I don’t know what else they might have been able to do except to try and find a way out of that mess.  Perhaps some contingency planning and exercises in anticipation of a possible blinding snowstorm might have helped but they did only have 24 hours or so to get ready.

Eventually the hero forces were decimated, and they made an admirable orderly retreat back behind the firewall. You can see once they tried to light it how cold it was outside. Thankfully Melisandre and a burst of adrenalin got it started. She’s better than tinder any day. An interesting point about the wall is that the undead eventually opened a couple channels across it and stormed in through these channels. That was actually favorable to the heroes. Now that their forces were so much smaller they could still operate effectively in the narrow channel between the fire wall and the castle walls. They could force the undead into unfavorable space conditions. The undead could not swarm from all directions now. They could only come from a limited number of directions. A smart move from the dead would have been to cover the whole fire but they are simple-minded and simply swarmed across when they had a few openings available. At first the heroes more easily dealt with this smaller trickle of undead however, the undead numbers were too great for that good luck to last.

Of course things got worse and they retreated back into the castle. A few interesting points here. One suggestion had been made that they should have had pitch ready to pour on the undead. Not a bad idea but pitch must be made and kept hot. Pitch requires burning timber and keeping the pitch hot requires even more burning timber. We’ve already seen that all the spare timber was probably used for the fire wall.  Plus we were shown how hard it was to keep flames going in that cold. The availability of pitch would have been a problem. Secondly, and on a positive note, the winding halls of the caste allowed the heroes to more effectively battle the undead because again the undead could not swarm in those tight conditions. However at this point the dead were mainly following the lead of the Night King and headed for the orchard and Bran. It was also suggested putting dragon glass on the top of the castle walls to make them unclimable (a word?) for the undead. But remember that the Night King has an undead dragon which could blow down the walls like nothing. Plus how much extra dragon glass did they have after making their weapons.

This is basically when the main battle ends and becomes a personal fight between the heroes and the Night King and we know how that went. And here is where I am left with one last gripe and one last observation about the battle. With all the regular army dead now, the Game of Thrones will basically be resolved by having a Dungeons and Dragons type party of high level adventurers fighting an army of 20,000 or so. Cool. But I still don’t know what that weird spiral symbol the Night King liked meant. And that’s not cool.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King. The subtle breakdown of the rule of law in Wakanda

The King is Dead. Long Live the King. The subtle breakdown of the rule of law in Wakanda

| Cris Alvarez

Black Panther constantly reminds us of the importance of tradition in Wakanda. The writers do this because it’s part of the character arc in the movie. Overturning tradition is one of the ways T’Challa and his people change at the end of the movie. It’s a major theme and one which many people can appreciate.

When T’Challa is challenged for the throne by M’Baku leader of the Jabari’s, we are being shown that tradition is followed even when wrapped in very violent garb. That’s fine. M’Baku makes the challenge according to traditional practice and when he is defeated T’Challa regains his Black Panther strength.   He can now properly take his place as king of Wakanda. The audience has also firmly been reminded that everything has gone according to tradition and everyone in Wakanda, at least anyone with any say or power, is satisfied that tradition has been followed.

T’Challa, Okoye and Nakia then go trotting off to South Korea to thwart an arms deal for a Wakandan weapon. Before he leaves on his adventure, T’Challa promises his friend W’Kabi that he’ll bring back one of the thieves, Klaue. M’Kabi is T’Challa’s second in command, leader of the Border tribes, and presumably has some say in Wakandan affairs. This will be important later. Things go awry in South Korea and T’Challa must go home empty-handed but with a hated imperialist in tow to be saved. This excess baggage, or perhaps errant baggage, is CIA agent Everett Ross. Ross is an old friend of T’Challa’s thought they don’t always see eye to eye.

W’Kabi is mad at T’Challa for letting him down and when he sees Killmonger bring Klaue to Wakanda, nice and dead, W’Kabi seems to develop a soft spot for the tough kid from Oakland, California. This wouldn’t be a big deal except that when W’Kabi brings a handcuffed Killmonger before T’Challa, Killmonger demands trial by combat to take the Wakandan throne.

So this declaration throws everyone for a loop. How can an outsider demand to fight for the throne when that fight has already happened? Ah but he’s T’Challa’s cousin and had he not been abandoned in Oakland 25 years ago when T’Challa’s father killed Killmonger’s father for good reason but under grievous circumstances, Killmonger’s challenge might have been pooh-poohed away. Tradition says the combat is over.

But knowledge and guilt over what T’Chaka did spurs T’Challa to throw aside tradition and allow a second trial by combat to be held. So, does this fit in Wakandan tradition? We really don’t know but everyone agrees that if T’Challa said it was okay then it must be okay. So here is the first crack in tradition’s solid hold over Wakandan society. Does traditional rule govern Wakanda or can the King just set his own rules even if these new rules obviously put him in a bad position which even he recognizes? However, everyone around T’Challa sort of agrees that it fits within tradition so even if T’Challa isn’t following tradition, everyone goes to pains to convince themselves that tradition is still being followed. The crack has just lengthened and deepened.

So the trial by combat goes on and since it’s just past the middle of the movie and things haven’t really been going too badly for T’Challa, you know know this is when things finally do go south for him. Killmonger ends up having a good day. He kills Zuri, who betrayed his father and was instrumental in getting him killed. He hurls T’Challa over the waterfall, presumably achieving another long sought piece of revenge, and then he’s made king of Wakanda. To be sure T’Challa’s allies are upset, but the powers that be accept tradition. Okoye and W’Kabi, both officials in the Wakandan government accept the result. Okoye reluctantly, W’Kabi somewhat contentedly. T’Challa’s sister, mother and wanna-be lover, Nakia beat feet and for good reason because Killmonger is obviously in a frenzied killing mood.

Nakia, a government official, now breaks tradition and the law. She rebels against the new government by stealing a heart-shaped herb after Killmonger has just ordered all remaining herbs destroyed. Killmonger is rightly the leader of Wakanda since he won the throne by ritual combat. However, his position is still suspect since I explained before, we can’t be sure if T’Challa had the authority to even allow a second trial by combat. Regardless, everyone believes that Killmonger is the king, though not a preferred one. So now we see the lines drawn between rebels and government supporters. W’Kabi and Okoye support the rule of tradition and law by supporting Killmonger. T’Challa’s mother, sister and spy-lover have rebelled against the rightful government. How will this be resolved?

The women who support T’Challa flee to the Jabari kingdom to get M’Baku’s help. Now where does poor M’Baku stand in all this? Killmonger is the king of Wakanda and that’s who he should be listening to. He rescued T’Challa’s near dead body and takes in the women. None of this is illegal. Killmonger never said that no one could claim T’Challa’s body or harbor his supporters. Killmonger is instead focused on rightfully exercising his lawfully (traditionally?) earned powers. He’s going to support guerilla movements across the globe with Wakandan firepower. Nothing wrong there. As king he has that power and no one questions it. The only quandary is that it reverses long standing Wakandan tradition of not involving Wakandans in affairs outside of their borders. But this tradition is not law. It’s simply what Wakandan rulers have done since Wakanda was a kingdom.

Tradition is starting to feel a bit abused here. First T’Challa accepts a second trial by combat and now Killmonger is reversing decades, perhaps centuries, of established Wakandan international political strategy. But it’s not clear that anyone has yet broken any Wakandan rules. Except for Nakia. She stole the heart-shaped herb. She might not be convicted but she’s definitely getting handcuffed.

So T’Challa is given the last heart shaped herb and is revived. Is this contrary to tradition and Wakandan rules? No one addresses it but my guess is yes. There can’t be two Black Panthers. If that was allowed, Wakandan tradition would cease to exist. Wakandan tradition, from what I know, allows only one Black Panther. T’Challa, Ramonda, Shuri and Nakia have now violated Wakandan tradition and rules. They have now become rebels against the true king of Wakanda. But there still lingers that nagging question of whether T’Challa was even allowed to agree to a second combat.

At this point T’Challa and his family are just making up their own rules. There is no more Wakandan tradition or rule. There’s simply a family deciding what’s best for Wakanda and choosing to use force to make the decision for the nation. M’Baku is no longer innocent. He might have refused to lend T’Challa his army but he is now aiding an obvious rebel to the throne. M’Baku is not outside the Wakandan power structure though the movie makers try to convince us he is. He tried to win the throne in combat and expected to have it if he did. He believes in Wakandan tradition and rules and follows them. But by supporting T’Challa as a second Black Panther, he’s become a rebel too.

So now the lines have been drawn. It’s the Wakandan government versus the Wakandan rebels. Marvel comics thrives on organizations having rebellions within their own ranks and this is no different. I don’t have a problem with it but let’s admit that this is something of a Captain America versus Ironman fight for the soul of America kind of thing. There kind of isn’t a bad guy here but T’Challa is a criminal at this point. Killmonger did stab Zuri to death on the waterfall but that’s what happens if you don’t step out of the way of someone’s spear during a fight to the death for a throne. But Killmonger is king of Wakanda and I have a feeling Wakandan kings have done far worse over the years. Or maybe they’re all saints. I digress!

So T’Challa shows up while the Black Panther (Yes! Killmonger is currently and rightly the Black Panther at this point! Right?), um; the Black Panther is directing his forces, legally and within the rules. The rebels show up to fight and it is completely expected and understandable that Okoye and W’Baki lead their forces against the rebels. That’s what government security forces do. At first it’s simply security up against some intruders. But when M’Baku shows up with his army, it’s now force on force. So now T’Challa has started a civil war between competing factions of Wakandans. T’Challa is guilty of breaking Wakandan tradition and rules whereas Killmonger hasn’t violated any Wakandan society laws.

This is really where Black Panther gets interesting. In actual civil wars, people discard loyalty to rules for loyalty to friends. War, especially civil war, is chaos and at the end of the day it’s not surprising that people choose their friends above all others, regardless of who is on who’s side.

So here we have the ruling elites leading small, armed bands against each other for control of Wakanda. The common people aren’t even involved and maybe couldn’t care less who’s on the throne. This is some old fashioned feudal Europe kind of warfare and I like it. None of this hundreds of thousand strong Lord of the Rings sized armies smashing against each other like oceans at war. This is real-world dozens-strong warrior clans deciding the fate of millions of people. The multitude has always let the minority power elite decide their fate. It’s the story of world politics.

As the battle progresses, Okoye switches sides, leaving Wakandan tradition and rules behind. Miss “all about the rules” does a complete about face and goes rebel. I’m fine with that. As I said before, war is about friends and emotional attachment can be a convincing argument. But let’s accept that she stopped being a loyalist to the government and instead chose loyalty to a family. W’Baki doesn’t switch sides. He simply surrenders to the woman who beat him in combat. But he does give in a bit too willingly. His loyalty to the throne became suspect there but he never seemed too loyal to anything but his own desires anyway.

Finally T’Challa and Killmonger face off. Rebel against king. The Black Panther versus the man who stole the Black Panther power against the king’s orders. We all know how it ends though Killmonger dying was a small surprise. Nice of the rebel to show the King a sunset before he died. Does Killmonger end up in the heavenly grove with T’Chaka and all other predecessor kings of Wakanda? At least give him that.

So in the end, T’Challa takes back his throne and his family and friends dutifully fall in line behind him. Well so much for Wakandan tradition and rules. That seems to be the segue into Wakanda deciding to open up and give the world’s poor their knowledge and technology. So now we have to decide if Wakanda is still a country of rules.

From my vantage point, a rebel took the throne and everyone is good with it. It seems to be a family dictatorship now. A benevolent and just one but a dictatorship nonetheless. M’Baku doesn’t seem to mind being ruled by a man who makes up his own rules now. So much for any future trials by combat for M’Baku or his children after this. Wakandan tradition no longer exists. Time for a new law code but as with any new government, because a new form of government is what we have in Wakanda now, you never know if the new laws will stick until a few generations have adhered to them.

Here’s the curious clincher for anyone who’s still paying attention. I want to address one character I glossed over for the purpose of throwing this one last zinger at you. When we first meet CIA agent Everett Ross, he is derisively described by T’Challa’s Wakandan retinue as belonging to an organization that supports coups and takes down governments as needed for US interests. So isn’t it ironic that during T’Challa’s rebellion against the true king, the CIA agent, joins in “supporting a coup and taking down a government” led by the rightful King of Wakanda.

The CIA agent supports the rebel T’Challa who most assuredly is preferred by the US government to Killmonger. All of Killmonger’s US special forces medals and honors don’t mean jack anymore when he’s about to arm every poor non-white with a super-weapon. The irony is exquisitely delicious but not one I’m claiming is unreal.   For all we know, Killmonger was an unwitting agent of the CIA sent to destabilize Wakanda. Someone knew Wakanda was a threat to eventually arm social revolutionaries so they wanted to head the danger off at the pass and create chaos. The US would step in and assist T’Challa in saving Wakanda and thus earn the unending gratitude of the new/old government in place. Wow is Black Panther just a little too real for comfort? You’ve been woke.