Skip to main content

Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ is a new high point for superhero cinema

Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ is a new high point for superhero cinema

Black Panther doesn’t look like any movie I’ve ever seen.

I don’t want to downplay America’s long history of black cinema (a history that already includes a handful of black superheroes). Nor am I ignoring the fact that Black Panther is the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — so yes, it conforms in some ways to the dictates of big-budget Hollywood storytelling.

But make no mistake: This is a movie that harnesses Marvel-scale resources to tell a story that unapologetically puts black actors, characters and concerns front-and-center. It’s a remarkable achievement and one that had me grinning widely almost all the way through.

The Black Panther character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and he first appeared more than 50 years ago in Fantastic Four #52. Over the years, a variety of writers and artists (the comic was relaunched in 2016 by Ta Nehisi-Coates and Brian Stelfreeze) have built up a rich mythology around Wakanda, the country that Black Panther defends and rules as king.

While the movie includes fun excursions to Oakland and Busan, it returns again and again to Wakanda — depicted here as an Afrofuturist landscape where science fiction gadgetry mingles seamlessly with a heavily ritualized (and vividly colorful) culture.

Black Panther/Dora Milaje

In the Marvel universe, Wakanda’s discovery of the super-strong metal vibranium, and the country’s subsequent decision to hide its technology, means that it’s largely untouched by the horrors of real-world colonialism. This is one of the keys to Black Panther‘s fantasy: Unlike black heroes in America, Panther‘s characters aren’t forced to constantly confront a legacy of slavery and oppression.

Instead, the film’s early plot and conflicts are centered almost entirely on Wakandan concerns. T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is ascending to the Wakandan throne after his father’s death in Captain America: Civil War, and while he grieves, he must also fend off challengers and decide what kind of king he wants to be.

The larger world does eventually intrude, first in the form of Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), an arms dealer previously seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron, then more notably with the appearance of Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), a soldier with a mysterious grudge.

Despite his goofy name, Killmonger is the best part of the movie, forcing T’Challa and the rest of Wakanda’s ruling class to confront their past, as well as the larger weight of history. Jordan has done impressive work for director Ryan Coogler before, most recently as the title character in Creed, and he’s terrific here, switching from charm to vulnerability to incandescent rage.



Source: Marvel Studios 2018

The rest of the cast is strong across the board. The standouts include Letitia Wright as T’Challa’s younger sister, the tech-savvy Shuri; Winston Duke as Mbaku, leader of a rival tribe; and Get Out‘s Daniel Kaluuya as W’Kabi — a character whose story may have been truncated in the script, but who seems fully formed in Kaluuya’s performance.

As for the title superhero, T’Challa remains a bit of a brooding blank, as he was in Civil War. But here, the character benefits from getting more opportunities to bounce off others, whether that’s bantering with Shuri, flirting with his ex, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) or getting punched in the face by Killmonger. His costume has gotten a subtle upgrade, and seeing the Panther leap around the streets of Busan is undeniably cool.

Non-Marvel fans may be a little worried by the fact that I keep mentioning other Marvel films — but even if you haven’t kept up (or if this is somehow your very first experience with the MCU), you should be fine.

Black Panther functions like the best superhero comics, drawing on the history and context of what’s come before, while filling in backstory as needed. It totally works as a standalone adventure.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Google is using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp random objects

Using your hand to grasp a pen that’s lying on your desk doesn’t exactly feel like a chore, but for robots, that’s still a really hard thing to do. So to teach robots how to better grasp random objects, Google’s research team  dedicated 14 robots to the task . The standard way to solve this problem would be for the robot to survey the environment, create a plan for how to grasp the object, then execute on it. In the real world, though, lots of things can change between formulating that plan and executing on it. Google is now using these robots to train a deep  convolutional neural network  (a technique that’s all the rage in machine learning right now) to help its robots predict the outcome of their grasps based on the camera input and motor commands. It’s basically hand-eye coordination for robots. The team says that it took about 3,000 hours of practice (and 800,000 grasp attempts) before it saw “the beginnings of intelligent reacti...

Sonatype Snares $30 Million Investment Led By Goldman Sachs

Sonatype , a company that helps customers create automated, policy-driven software component security, announced a $30 million round today led by Goldman Sachs. The investment was a mix of debt and equity financing and was handled by Goldman’s Principal Strategic Investments Group, rather than Goldman’s venture capital arm, Sonatype CEO Wayne Jackson explained. Although this may seem a subtle distinction, he says that Strategic Investments only makes investments in products that are central to the company’s mission (as the name implies), whereas the venture arm makes lots of different kinds of investments. Sonatype works to ensure that open source components used in much of Goldman’s (and just about every company’s) software are safe and up-to-date in an automated fashion. “Today, open source components underpin a vast majority of our most mission-critical applications at the firm. As we work to build, maintain and update these applications, w...

How to Run Older Applications in Windows 10

You cannot expect all the vendors to upgrade their programs to make them compatible with Windows and neither would you want to purchase all the applications every time a new version of Windows is out. Nonetheless, the fact still remains the same that not all applications are compatible with the latest operating systems and there are times when many applications do not initialize when you upgrade your PC to a newer version of Windows. To make things easy for you, Windows 10 allows you to run the programs in compatibility mode. Running a program in compatibility mode makes the application think that it is installed on an older, compatible version of Windows, thus the software runs without any flaws. There are two ways you can run a program in compatibility mode: Program Compatibility Troubleshooter – This is a step-by-step wizard that allows you to pick a program that you prefer to use and configures it to run in compatibility mode. Compatibility Tab – This tab can...

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...

Here Are The First Connected Home Devices For Apple’s HomeKit

Apple’s HomeKit is finally starting to roll out to actual consumers, via the first crop of HomeKit-enabled accessories from third-party manufacturers. This means you’ll soon be able to get your hands on a range of products for the connected home that work with Siri on your iOS device, and that you’ll be able to do so as soon as today, since some of the new HomeKit accessories start shipping now. The accessories in question range from sensors, to lights, to thermostats, to smart outlets, and come from a group of accessory-makers with a trusted reputation in the connected home industry. HomeKit may have taken a while to arrive, but it’s doing so in grand fashion, with a practical lineup to get your home connected to your iOS ecosystem in an essential way. Elgato Eve The  Elgato Eve  is a set of connected wireless sensors that monitor key factors like indoor air quality, temperature, humidity as well as conditions outside, like temperature, humidity and air pre...