What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?
"What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?" | |
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What If...? episode | |
Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 2 |
Directed by | Bryan Andrews |
Written by | Matthew Chauncey |
Produced by | A. C. Bradley |
Editing by | Graham Fisher |
Original release date | August 18, 2021 |
Running time | 32 minutes |
Cast | |
| |
"What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?" is the second episode of the
"What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?" was released on
Plot
In 1988, the
20 years later, T'Challa has become a famous intergalactic pirate and hero known as Star-Lord, reformed the Ravagers using the Earth hero Robin Hood and his Merry Men as inspiration, and persuaded Thanos to abandon his plan of eliminating half of all life in the universe and join the Ravagers. He also believes that Udonta attempted to return him to Wakanda as a child, but it had been destroyed.
After obtaining an orb containing the
T'Challa decries Tivan's practice of imprisoning others in his collection, which inspires Tivan's slave,
T'Challa forgives Udonta for his deception before the Ravagers return to Earth so T'Challa can reunite with his family. Elsewhere on Earth, an older Quill is now working as a Dairy Queen janitor when Ego approaches him.
Production
Development
External videos | |
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What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord? | Marvel Studios' What If...? | Disney+, a promotional video introducing the episode's "what if" concept with narration by the Watcher, video from the What If...? Twitter account |
By September 2018,
Writing
The episode was written around January and February 2019.
Boseman felt the episode allowed T'Challa to have "more of a wink and a smile" without the pressure of being king, but still retained his "moral compass".
Casting and voice recording
What If...? was Boseman's final performance. Andrews said Boseman approached the voice recording sessions "from a theatrically-trained actor's point of view", reading the scene descriptions between his lines to make it feel like a play. According to Andrews, Boseman enjoyed this version of the character because he was "the King without the mantle, the royalty and everything else that goes along with it". This allowed Boseman to bring a lighter approach and "jokey" feel to the performance.
Animation
Animation for the episode was provided by Blue Spirit,[7]: 31:31 [6]: 4 with Stephan Franck serving as head of animation.[27] Andrews developed the series' cel-shaded animation style with Ryan Meinerding, the head of visual development at Marvel Studios.[28][29] Though the series has a consistent art style, elements such as the color palette differ between episodes; Meinerding stated that this episode has more of a science-fiction style compared to the previous episode.[6]: 4 Concept art for the episode is included during the end credits, and was released online by Marvel following the episode's premiere.[30]
To depict the "friendly" version of characters in the episode, such as Thanos, Meinerding wanted to differentiate them from their MCU counterparts using costume design, but also looked for ways to use different facial expressions.[31] They wanted T'Challa's costume in the episode to be a "more sexy version of Peter Quill [with] cooler clothes and purple goggles", with production designer Paul Lasaine noting that T'Challa's influence on his environment is reflected by adding purple accents to the episode's backgrounds.[32] Andrews wanted the Collector's Museum environment to be much larger than it is in Guardians of the Galaxy, where it is depicted as a single room filled with cases. In the episode there are multiple rooms, and there are some shots with so many cases in the background that it would be very difficult to create them all in a painted background with the correct perspectives. The production design team used different techniques to depict this, such as painting simple squares in a pattern or using computer-generated boxes instead. Lasaine felt these techniques worked well to create "an illustrated version [of the environment]. It's more of a symbolic version of a place rather than the place itself."[33]
Music
External audio | |
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A Prince Goes Home (From "What If...T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?"/Audio Only) presents composer Laura Karpman's music for the dedication to Chadwick Boseman at the end of the episode, MarvelMusicVevo 's channel |
Composer
A soundtrack for the episode was released digitally by
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Explorer" | 1:39 |
2. | "Use the Gun" | 1:32 |
3. | "The Plan" | 0:39 |
4. | "Alien Lounging" | 1:29 |
5. | "Necklace" | 0:53 |
6. | "Maniac" | 0:59 |
7. | "The Soul" | 0:43 |
8. | "Strategy" | 1:24 |
9. | "Lockdown" | 1:15 |
10. | "Just Like Me" | 1:57 |
11. | "I Abhor Drama" | 1:25 |
12. | "Prisoners Escape" | 1:35 |
13. | "Not Crazy...Mad" | 2:02 |
14. | "Eat This" | 0:57 |
15. | "To the Skies" | 0:43 |
16. | "Cocktails" | 0:41 |
17. | "The Universe" | 1:31 |
18. | "A Prince Goes Home" | 1:03 |
Total length: | 22:35 |
Marketing
On August 19, 2021, Marvel released a promotional poster for the episode, featuring elements of T'Challa's Star-Lord and Wakandan design, as well as a quotation from the episode.
Reception
Audience viewership
According to Nielsen Media Research, who measure the number of minutes watched by United States audiences on television sets, What If...? was the ninth-most watched original series across streaming services for the week of August 16 to August 22, 2021, with 225 million minutes watched.[42]
Critical response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average score of 9.7/10 based on 5 reviews.[43]
Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter felt the episode "combines the goofiness of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies with the earnest heroism of Black Panther to delightful effect, and in the process allows Chadwick Boseman to voice a lighter, funnier version of his beloved character", adding that it was "easily the best" of the three episodes critics were given to review ahead of the series' release. She felt the episode was "worth the price of admission just to hear Nebula flirtatiously refer to T'Challa as 'Cha Cha'".[44] Tom Jorgensen at IGN gave the episode an 8 out of 10 and described it as a "rollicking 30 minutes of [television]" that "goes for broke" with its changes to existing MCU characters. He found it to be a better fit for the series' format and style than the "surprisingly average" first episode of the series, and highlighted the "bold" choice to have one of this episode's changes be a reformed Thanos with "Big Dad Energy". Jorgensen praised Boseman's performance as an "absolute joy", but felt the other returning MCU actors had "mixed success" translating their performances to animation despite being better overall compared to the previous episode.[45]
Writing for The A.V. Club, Sam Barsanti gave the episode a "B", finding it even more fun than the premise suggested with a heist sequence that "hit all of the main caper highlights". Barsanti did criticize the voice acting, including the performances of Boseman, Rooker, and Gillan, for missing a "spark" from their live-action versions, but he attributed this in-part to the series' animation style. He also gave Hounsou and Brolin as exceptions to this, feeling that Hounsou in particular deserved to get more voice acting and comedic work based on this performance.[8] Giving the episode 3.5 out of 5 stars, Kirsten Howard of Den of Geek said the episode was consistently funny in showing how much better T'Challa is as Star-Lord than Peter Quill. She enjoyed this version of Thanos and seeing Howard the Duck, and felt it was "hard not to get choked up during the episode's final scene in Wakanda" knowing What If...? was Boseman's final performance.[46] io9's Charlies Pulliam-Moore felt the episode "turns T'Challa into an interesting centerpiece for the larger universe to move around" and the character "becoming a humanitarian space pirate completely works on a character level, and lends itself to the episode's fast-paced heist story".[17] Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone felt the episode took better advantage of the series' premise than the first episode, and also used Boseman's "underrated facility with light comedy" well, for its "well-executed" heist plot. Sepinwall said a lot of thought had been given to showing how the MCU's cosmic side would be altered by T'Challa, and particularly enjoyed the character's impact on Thanos.[47]
Accolades
Boseman won Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance at the 74th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.[48]
Notes
- ^ This choice is when the story diverges from the events of the film Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
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