Movie Reviews
Year: 2018
Genre: Superhero Movie
Directed: Ryan Coogler
Stars: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Sterling K. Brown, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, John Kani
Production: Marvel Studios
When people ask me to describe Black Panther, the closest comparison that comes to mind when trying to set up a frame of reference – is Star Wars (1977). This probably says more about me and the cultural soup I swim in than the actual movie. I never grew up with Black Panther as a comic-book staple so the prospect of translating to the screen an idealized pan-African, futurist society, with pseudo-spiritual traditions, fleshed out with a story based solely on palace intrigue feels foreign enough to me.
But to say Black Panther the movie is a black Star Wars, featuring a black Iron Man (2008) or black Captain America (2011) is so (if you pardon the pun) beyond the pale that it almost feels like a put-down. As if to say the black version of anything is tacitly understood to be the lesser-than alternative to something that is the perceived norm. No, not this time around – Black Panther just is Black Panther. It’s a unique, gorgeously realized, inspiringly weighty film that uses every asset it has to tell one of the most compelling stories within the Marvel universe, and more generally, a solid story on its own terms.
Black Panther takes place shortly after Civil War (2016) whose cataclysmic events resulted in the death of Wakanda’s monarch King T’Chaka (Kani). T’Chaka’s son T’Challa (Boseman) ascends to the throne and after taking a role in an extended ceremony is bestowed the mantle of The Black Panther. But when the reappearance of an old foe (Serkis) threatens the relative peace in Wakanda, T’Challa sets out to capture him and in-so-doing may have guaranteed himself a short reign.
Central to the Black Panther story is the inclusion of Erik Killmonger (Jordan) a half-American, half-Wakandan force of vengeance whose backstory as a forsaken shadow of the past conjures memories of The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973). Now Marvel has a bad habit of plugging in one-and-done villains whose stature and motivations has proved a weak point in these movies. But here Killmonger ends up being; with little doubt one of the best villains we’ve seen in the golden age of comic book movies. Not only is he uncompromisingly charismatic and ruthless but his backstory and endgame prove incredibly compelling. Not only that, he’s the perfect foil for T’Challa, who’s predisposition for isolationism is fundamentally at odds with Killmonger’s mass revolution. American critics may cite lazy comparisons of the post-Killmonger T’Challa as a stand-in for Martin Luther King while Killmonger is a contemporary Malcolm X but it’d be way more appropriate to compare them to Seretse Khama and Mobutu Sese Seko. After all, Black Panther leans into its Sub-Saharan African roots to the point where all white characters are almost incidental. So maybe we should follow its lead.
Regardless of how the movie codes its heroes and villains, however, audiences, specifically black audiences will have a lot to mull over. Like the country of Wakanda itself, Black Panther has a lot of incredible layers hidden underneath pulse-pounding action scenes and compelling characters. White audiences may very well just see window dressing. Black audiences will undoubtedly see cultural flashpoints belying empowering messages and connecting dots of identity; political, social, personal, spiritual and even gender. I mean, T’Challa does surround himself almost exclusively with powerful women including the love interest and moral center Nakia (Nyong’o), his wicked smart sister Shuri (Wright) and the nay-unstoppable General Okoye (Gurira). Whether these layers of connectivity are ultimately undermined by Disney’s cooptation of pan-African ephemera and/or the fact that the movie emotes patriotism towards a fictional amalgam of 54 distinct countries with thousands of distinct sub-groups is not really for me to say (though in all honesty, it did make me feel a little icky).
With a movie like this that positions itself so comfortably in the cultural zeitgeist, complaining about its various faults feels a lot like nitpicking. Needless to say, most of the problems with Black Panther are connected to the realities of serialized, conveyor-belt cinema that Disney has turned into bonafide pop art. Special-effects added in post-production get a little dicey at times and the hand-to-hand combat scenes feel repetitive and unremarkable. Additionally, the mark of Black Panther’s (and Marvel in general) storytelling i.e. an intimate, standalone plot with only tertiary world-building means that if you remove all the thematics you’re still left with a basic good v evil storyline. And while in Thor: Ragnarok it still felt appropriate, in Black Panther it feels unusually charged.
Again, it’s not for me to say whether or not Marvel appropriately married blackness with all the naturally fascistic tendencies that lend themselves to the superhero genre. All I know is if Black Panther is already having a positive effect on communities of color while getting hate trolls to foam at the mouth then it must be doing something right.
Final Grade: B+