At the centre of the 2018 blockbuster film Black Panther is Wakanda, a hyper-modern civilisation on the African continent kept from the modern world by impenetrable geography and technologically enabled cloaking. Wakanda’s strength and security is provided by a natural resource with fantastic properties, the hardest and lightest metal in the world, vibranium.
Wakandans have invested heavily in basic research, developing their own weapon systems, aircraft and medical technology. The real tension in the film is whether Wakandans should keep their technological wonders to themselves. After a titanic struggle the film ends with the opening of a Wakandan-sponsored outreach centre in a poor part of Oakland, California. Wakanda chooses benevolence.