I know I harp on this a lot, but y'all really need to understand that fictional characters, like real-live people, sometimes lie about their intentions and motivations. Killmonger's intent was not to "liberate marginalized people." You can tell because, when he had power, he did not do that.

I do think there is a conversation to be had about how big, conservative media companies but the language of liberation into the mouths of their pop culture villains, though...

See also: MCU Thanos. His claims (that SO many in the audience took at face value) were that he wanted to help the universe. But his real drive was his ego. People told him he was wrong. So he went on with his plan just to spite the people who told him that. That's it. He's just an arrogant ass.

Are people just deliberately ignoring that his exact words were "The sun will never set on the Wakandan Empire!"?

Yeah. What makes this hard to push back on, though, is that people are TAUGHT to think like this by our society. "Faith", "Trust", and "giving people the benefit of the doubt" are treated as unalloyed goods while critical thinking is labeled "cynicism".

Killmonger's intent was to destabilize a foreign government during an election cycle as he was trained to do by the CIA. His intent was to do imperialism with himself as the Emperor. He secured his power base and began preparing an invasion force.

Michael Keaton as Vulture was the most sympathetic villain- his city got destroyed by Avengers carelessness, then his business got ruined by Stark-connected cronyism. He makes a speech about how the Avengers don't care who they crush and he's fighting back how he can- then oops just murdered guys!!

"a murderer would never stoop to lying!"

Personally I think Killmonger’s story is a heartbreaker. He clearly cares about people, but he grew up in a nation that hated him. He became hate that was aimed at him.

As in life, scripts have motifs, and sometimes, that art becomes life. When we write, we sometimes write what we do not say out loud. America is in a script that no one is reading the end. Trump is planning a Mad Max reality world. Unfortunately, it will be real, not on a movie screen.

"The villain can't be an unreliable narrator because he said he was reliable" is like the film analysis version of "if you're a cop you have to tell me."