Black Panther (2018)
Directed by Ryan Coogler
King T'Challa returns home to the reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to serve as his country's new leader. However, T'Challa soon finds that he is challenged for the throne by factions within his own country as well as without. Using powers reserved to Wakandan kings, T'Challa assumes the Black Panther mantle to join with ex-girlfriend Nakia, the queen-mother, his princess-kid sister, members of the Dora Milaje (the Wakandan 'special forces') and an American secret agent, to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war.
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81 films that influenced Black Panther
What critics say influenced Black Panther
Black Panther’s fight scenes are better than in other Marvel films, but they’re still a disappointment from the maker of Creed .
His passion, strong connection with material, humanity, humor, smarts, wised-up worldview and insistence on characters and relationships over plot mechanics jumped right out at us in his award-worthy Fruitvale Station and Rocky movie reinvention Creed.
As he showed in Creed’s stunning boxing sequences, Coogler has a fine command of kinetic energy.
Ryan Coogler has done something fantastic with the creation of Black Panther's settings, as he effortlessly balances darker and grittier urban environments (a skill he already established with Fruitvale Station and Creed) with the more outlandish sets of Wakanda.
Coogler, 31, has proved his skills behind the camera with Fruitvale Station and Creed, but in Black Panther he journeys into the heart of Africa to bring a new world to the screen.
With Creed and Fruitvale Station, Coogler has proven adept at tugging at moviegoers’ heartstrings, and he doesn’t let up just because he’s in a bigger playground.
During the rite of succession, T’Challa drinks a sacred potion that lights up his veins, whereupon he drifts off, astrally speaking, to meet his father, T’Chaka (assassinated in Captain America: Civil War ), on “the ancestral plane.”
Taking place shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War (the first Phase 3 film isn't required viewing, but it definitely helps), Black Panther opens on its titular badass (Chadwick Boseman) returning home to the hidden African nation of Wakanda after handing over Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) to the American government.
Chadwick Boseman already played this superhero in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, a supporting role in a Marvel Comic Universe best categorized as #AvengersSoWhite.
The film begins right where “Captain America: Civil War” left off, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home to Wakanda, a country hidden from the world where science and technology reign supreme, to take his place as King, after his father, King T’Chaka, was killed in a bombing at the Vienna International Centre.
Chadwick Boseman, first introduced in Captain America: Civil War, returns as Prince T’Challa, who following the death of his father (John Kani) assumes two roles: those of the king and superpowered protector—known as the Black Panther—of the African nation of Wakanda, which keeps its riches hidden from the outside world under the guise of being a Third World country.
Black Panther picks up shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War.
Other superhero movies have dabbled in big ideas—the Dark Knight trilogy most notably, and the X-Men franchise to a lesser degree.
Logan and The Wolverine both exist in the same world as the other X-Men films, but both have a distinct style that feels more like James Mangold films (the man adores the iconography of Westerns) than anything Bryan Singer did with his X-films.
In aesthetic look and spirit, it shares more in common with The Lion King than, say, X-Men .
Beyond Wesley Snipes in the "Blade" movies, Halle Berry in the "X-Men" ones and Samuel L. Jackson in various "Avengers" related flicks, you'd probably be hard-pressed to name another three.
The movie's production never touched down in Africa itself (it was largely shot in Atlanta and in South Korea), but the simulation presented here has an exotic fantasy glow, with the skyscrapers and elevated trains of the cleverly obscured Wakanda recalling the studio-born wonders of the 1936 futurist classic Things to Come .
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Ryan Coogler’s vision for Wakanda—shot by recent Oscar nominee Rachel Morrison as an Afrofuturist paradise—rightly draws its inspiration from an omnibus of natural sources, just as a casino scene in South Korea affords Morrison the chance to go full Deakins (James Bond references all over this thing), imagining the world of the MCU as Steven Soderbergh might have scoped out Traffic, developing a fully sensual visual language to define the many locations of this world-hopping adventure without resorting to sterile maps or facile borders.
The film is pretty straight-laced and serious compared to the last few Marvel movies to grace the big screen, including last year’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” the second Guardians of the Galaxy film, and especially Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Ragnarok” (though, to be fair, “Ragnarok” would make anything short of a Monty Python routine appear straight-laced and serious).
Like Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok and James Mangold’s Logan , Coogler’s Black Panther is a testament to the power of director-led superhero movies, if only because we come away from it enriched and recharged, heartbroken but also uplifted.
Remember how articles started popping up after Thor: Ragnarok about Taika Waititi successfully sneaking colonization undertones into a cosmic quarrel?
Some of the beats and motifs here too directly echo last year’s lightweight Thor: Ragnarok, which also turned on a contested royal succession, a villain with a secret past and a grudge rooted in the hidden sins of a royal father, and (thanks to Kiwi director Taika Waititi) an anti-colonial backbeat.
He’s perfectly countered by Boseman’s knowingly regal yet warm and thoughtful portrayal of T’Challa, a man raised in privilege and opulence who knows that the traditions that brought him to such a high position must change for the good of all – something Thor: Ragnarok tackled as well.
Both Guardians of the Galaxy adventures are a heck of a lot of fun, as are Ant-Man , Doctor Strange , Thor: Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Homecoming .
Rife with some unique special effects, and some we've seen before --- most notably in Robert Downey Jr.'s "Iron Man" films --- "Black Panther" features Chadwick Boseman as the title hero.
And sure, the futuristic African country of Wakanda may be fictional, but it’s brimming with cultural resonance, making “Black Panther” feel more tied in to the real world than any Marvel feature since 2008’s military-industrial-complex comedy “Iron Man.”
The story feels fresh and fluid in a way "Captain America: The First Avenger" and Robert Downey, Jr.'s initial turn as "Iron Man" did.
There’s also not enough of that handbrake-turn humour and self-referential ironic dialogue that made the first Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy movies great.
Even with rampaging armored rhinos, spiritual dreamwalking and technology that wouldn’t be out of place in a Blade Runner film, Black Panther still manages to bring an undeniable realness to the Marvel movie universe.
The production design is rather fabulous, fusing African tribal townscapes and costuming with sci-fi futurist fantasia – referencing films from Metropolis to Blade Runner.
It's "Blade Runner" in Dar es Salaam instead of L.A.
As well as incorporating borrowings from everything from Bond to Blade Runner , its design draws on tribal motifs from all over the African continent – to dizzying effect.
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Although previous big-screen examples certainly exist — among them Wesley Snipes’ “Blade” and Will Smith’s “Hancock” — “Black Panther” celebrates its hero’s heritage while delivering one of Marvel’s most all-around appealing standalone installments to date.
Despite what some less informed commentators have stated elsewhere, “Black Panther” is not the first major motion picture to feature an African-American superhero at its center—films ranging from comedies like “The Meteor Man” and “Blankman” to the Shaquille O’Neal vehicle “Steel” to the “Blade” trilogy beat it to the punch decades earlier and I am sure that I am forgetting a few here and there.
Aunque ahí está la trilogía de Blade, Hancock de Will Smith, Spawn y hasta Meteor Man, si únicamente consideramos al MCU, era necesario un primer superhéroe negro.
Sure, there have been movies featuring black comic books characters and superheroes before (Blade; Hancock), but none have been based on a classic character, or been part of a major franchise.
It’s as if everyone enlisted to bring the project to life understood the magnitude of what Black Panther, the first comic-based studio movie with a black hero at the center since 1998’s Blade , would represent: The chance to fill every corner of their fictional Wakanda with the same level of craft and detail usually reserved for British-star-studded period pieces; an opportunity to tell a story about black lives, which matter and are not defined by their pain but, instead, by their glory; an answer to a culture’s question, “When will it be our time in the sun?”
Black Panther is not the first black superhero, as a couple of dozen media outlets have erroneously stated, as if there hadn’t been three different Blade movies.
Black Panther may not be the first superhero film to place a black lead front and centre – Wesley Snipes made two great Blade movies plus another one, and the '90s delivered a handful of now-forgotten fare with black men behind the mask ( Spawn , Steel , Blankman , The Meteor Man ) – but it is the first to surround its hero with an equally diverse cast, and announce itself as the new blockbuster status-quo, not a one-off alternative for a widely underrepresented audience.
Despite what some less informed commentators have stated elsewhere, “Black Panther” is not the first major motion picture to feature an African-American superhero at its center—films ranging from comedies like “The Meteor Man” and “Blankman” to the Shaquille O’Neal vehicle “Steel” to the “Blade” trilogy beat it to the punch decades earlier and I am sure that I am forgetting a few here and there.
Though there have in fact been black superhero movies before, they’ve been minor ones, like Robert Townsend’s “The Meteor Man” or Shaquille O’Neal’s “Steel.”