Black Panther **** ½ / *****
Directed by: Ryan Coogler.
Written by: Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole based on the Marvel comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Starring: Chadwick Boseman (T'Challa / Black Panther), Michael B. Jordan (Erik Killmonger), Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Martin Freeman (Everett K. Ross), Daniel Kaluuya (W'Kabi), Andy Serkis (Ulysses Klaue / Klaw), Angela Bassett (Ramonda), Forest Whitaker (Zuri), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Winston Duke (M'Baku), Sterling K. Brown (N'Jobu), John Kani (King T'Chaka), Florence Kasumba (Ayo), David S. Lee (Limbani), Atandwa Kani (Young T'Chaka).
With Black Panther, director Ryan Coogler doesn’t really re-invent the Marvel movie – but he finds room inside of its structure to create something unique. The film hits the story beats you expect any superhero origin movie to, and yet it does so in new and different ways – basically because Coogler fully embraces what it is about Black Panther than makes the character, and his origins, different from the superheroes that came before. He does a better job than any director before him in this series in building a new, unique world and from making a movie that doesn’t look like all the other films. I have mentioned before that basically directors of Marvel movies act like television directors – they are brought in to make movies off a template. Coogler, more than anyone before him, ignores that template and does his own thing, even while respecting the overall universe his film is in. He doesn’t blow up the Marvel universe, as much as he expands it – and in the process, he’s made arguably the best film in the MCU so far.
We were introduced to Black Panther – aka T’Challa, crown Prince of the African nation of Wakanda, in Captain America: Civil War – but we really didn’t learn much about him, other than he was on a mission of vengeance to catch the man who detonated a bomb that killed his father – King T’Chaka. This film takes place in the aftermath of that death, as T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns to Wakanda to officially be crowned King. In order to do that, he has to go through rituals, which include allowing any of the members of the other tribes in Wakanda with Royal Blood, to challenge him in ritual combat – something that will arise again later in the film, with the return of Wakanda’s prodigal son – a kid from Oakland known as Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Killmonger instantly becomes the best villain in the MCU so far, because he’s really the first villain in the 18 films who you can look at and actually think he’s making valid points. He isn’t a power hungry madman hell-bent on world domination – at least not for his own purposes. He, reasonably, thinks that Wakanda could have helped “people who look like you” across the globe who have been oppressed forever, but instead Wakanda has sat back, and stayed out of everything. You can disagree with Killmonger’s methods – which is basically to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with him – and still think he makes a valid point. Smartly, the movie knows this, and doesn’t try to hide that fact.
Before the movie gets there though, it does a wonderful job at world building in terms of Wakanda – who we get our first real glimpse of here. Wakanda is a rich country (because of their wealth of Vibranium, the strongest metal on earth, that they have used to become a technological wonder), posing as a poor one, and the film’s art direction is a brilliant mixture of the futuristic and the ancient. Coogler and his collaborators have taken aspects of many African cultures and countries, and combined them to create something both recognizable and unique. This is clearly the best looking film the MCU has had to date – with amazing production design and costumes, to go along with the expected flair of visual effects, and expert cinematography by Rachel Morrison.
The movie could have spent its entire runtime simply on the inner workings of Wakanda itself – it certainly has more interesting characters than any other Marvel movie to date. The film has many strong, female characters (strong in multiple ways), like Nakia (Luptia Nyong’o), as T’Challa’s ex (who he is still in love with), who has sentiments similar to Killmonger’s, but a different outlook on how to achieve them. T’Challa’s little sister Shuri (Letita Wright) – my favorite character in the film other than Killmonger – who is essentially a cooler version of James Bond’s Q - and Okoye (Danai Gurira), the General of the all-female elite army, tasked with protecting Wakanda, and its king. That doesn’t even mention some of the rival tribe leaders - M'Baku (Winston Duke), who heads up the mountain tribe, who has kept their distance from Wakanda and its technology, and Daniel Kaluuya as W’Kabi, more open to Killmonger’s ideas than anyone. When Killmonger comes to Wakanda, he gets as far as he does not because he convinces every one of his ideas, but because the seeds of discourse are already there – he’s simply exploiting them.
By design, Boseman’s T’Challa/Black Panther is pretty much the dullest character in the film. He is conflicted, of course, because he wants to be a good man and a good king – and it’s difficult to be both. Like in Thor: Ragnorok, the film’s main conflict arises because of the beloved patriarch’s hidden sins and lies, that expose the myths of their country being noble as just that – myths. This is a thread that has run through at least some of the MCU films, and its rather daring – it’s even hinted at in the Captain America movies, that the ultimate symbol of American patriotism, no longer stands for the same things the country does – but it hasn’t gone wholly there (yet).
If this sounds like a lot for any one movie to handle, it is – and if I had a complaint about Black Panther, it’s that it rushes a little too much through some of it in order to get to the things that any Marvel movie needs – action scenes, car chases and a CGI generated big battle at the end. Coogler handles this better than most directors – a highlighted is a terrific fight sequence in a casino, followed by an excellent car chase – but even I have to admit that by the time the final battle introduced battle rhinos, it had gone perhaps a touch too far over-the-top.
Yet the movie remains satisfying until the end – giving Michael B. Jordan one of the best last lines a movie villain has ever had, which tops off one of the great performances the superhero genre has ever seen. In the span of three films – Fruitvale Station, Creed and now Black Panther, Coogler has become one of the best directors working, and shows everyone who to make huge budget movies, in the biggest franchise around, and still be personal movies. Yes, I hope he escapes franchise mode at some point – but he’s still shown everyone else exactly how this type of film should be done.
