The Woman King
The Woman King is a historical story about the west African Woman warlord leader, the Agoji. Her thirst for freeing her people from rival neighbouring kingdoms fetched her a fortune of been crowned “A Woman King”. It tells a beautiful western African story about a character, Naniscal, acted by Viola Davids. The film also stars the likes of John Boyega, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, and Sheila Atim. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and written by Dana Stevens.
I fell in love with this story right from the very first time I read a book about it over two decades ago. I saw this special book “The Woman King” in my father’s library and kept it specifically because I would have love to make a motion picture about the story.
Fast forward to some months back. I saw the first trailer and stills from production, so, I was eager to see how it will come out like, but, I felt disappointed. There were a lot of errors with proper identifications which led to wrong costuming and characterisations. I feel that a proper research about the tribes and people mentioned in the movie would have helped a lot. Nothing is wrong in coming down to meet or live with people you are about to tell their story for few weeks before making your final draft.
Honestly speaking, I don’t know why a movie in preproduction with multimillions of dollars prepared towards production will not set aside at least a sum of $500,000 for proper research. Everything about this movie is fantastic. Aside from the fact that they assumed or mistaken the mighty Oyo empire to be some Hausa warriors and gave a royal name to a powerful tax collector. And please, when will Hollywood get the ascent right? John Boyega was 10% closer but definitely not there. They really need to get the ascent right, the hausa’s speak differently from the Igbo’s and the Yoruba’s. You can’t just assumed that all Africans speaks like the South Africans. The technicalities of the movie is good. So I will rate it 4stars.
If you will like to see some other reviews, you can check here. Thanks for reading through.
Olayinka Johnson
Olayinka Johnson is a Nigeria born Filmmaker, Film lover, Film critic, 3d artist and an Animator. Born and bred in the heart of Lagos during the mid 80’s. His love for story telling made him ventured into the act of Filmmaking thereby learning from the Industry expert. He has worked on various productions(Musical videos, TV Programs, and Films) as a hired crew member and have also produced and directed some Short Films for himself.
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