The Wakandan Revolution

By Devyani Sawant

In the decade since Jon Favreau’s Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has become film’s most profitable franchise.[1] MCU movies employ elaborate sets, special effects and storylines to attract millions of viewers worldwide; they have single-handedly created a sustainable market for the superhero genre and paved the way for the DC Extended Universe to exist. Beyond economic domination, the MCU has expanded in terms of genre and tone as well: what started as a film franchise as stoic and intense as Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy has slowly but surely made a conscious effort to incorporate light-hearted comedy. The immense success of James Gunn’s 2014 blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy definitively marked Marvel’s replication of its action-comedy formula. Since, the steady hum of laughter in the MCU theatre became an audience expectation rather than the exception to serious films like Anthony and Joe Russo’s 2014 Winter Soldier, where witty comments provided sporadic rays of light into the religious darkness of the film’s subplots of subplots.

Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, released in November 2017, was more of an oddball comedy than what we have come to know as a superhero film. The third solo outing of the Asgardian God of Thunder proved to be a massive success and had been widely hailed as the best in the franchise.[2] Waititi’s comedic genius managed to turn the least fun Avenger into a God of Comedy. Yet it is almost impossible to imagine a director of any talent who would be capable of applying the same humorous approach to Black Panther without disastrous consequences. Although few have taken notice, with Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther Marvel has returned to the dark and gritty style that birthed it ten years ago.

Black Panther has grossed a massive $1.3 billion worldwide—its $655 million domestic box office makes it the fourth most-successful North American film of all-time, besting Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World.[3] It is undoubtedly the most profitable and critically acclaimed outing for the superhero studio, which is made even more impressive by the fact that Marvel didn’t even trust it enough to give it a coveted Christmas release, instead slotting it for a usually lacklustre February. It currently boasts a rating of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes—significantly higher than MCU films featuring more canonical comic book heroes.[4] However, backlash against Coogler’s film has been widespread; one can get the impression from reading too many message boards that the movie’s success has been buffeted by a cultural and political climate overeager to reward inclusivity.[5] This leads to a statement that feels revolutionary and definitely shouldn’t: Black Panther’s success is well-earned.

Black Panther has all the ingredients to make a perfect stand-alone origin story. It provides a developmental arc not only for its titular king, but also for the entirety of his fictional kingdom, Wakanda. At first glance, it is hard not to draw comparisons between Black Panther and Rob Minkoff and Robert Aller’s 1994 Disney animated feature The Lion King. Both films involve similar tropes and characters—the dutiful son who witnesses the death of his father and his king, a villain after the throne who happens to be family, and the eccentrically wise advisor. But instead of falling victim to these similarities, Black Panther builds from the bones of its sources. It transcends both its own narrative and the superhero genre itself to become a symbol of revolutionary change on- and off-screen. With Black Panther, Coogler demonstrates to Hollywood and filmgoers that you need neither a white nor a hyper-masculine superhero to smash box office records. The importance of T’Challa as a hero of color was obvious from the marketing materials Marvel produced for the film as well as the impassioned responses of audiences worldwide.[6] What has been less obvious but is also important is how Black Panther’s protagonist must be emotionally present, vulnerable, and thoughtful in order to resolve what is at heart a postcolonial political struggle.

T’Challa, the heart of the film, is a stoic African king brave enough to be open about the mental struggle of mourning his father’s death while assuming the responsibility of ruling a technologically advanced country with a long tradition of hiding its resources from the outside world. Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal never abandons the character’s sensitivity or regality: a beautifully nuanced performance worthy of praise. In fact, Boseman manages to shelter T’Challa through a character development arc that took Thor roughly three stand-alone and two ensemble films to achieve. Remembered justly for stealing the show in Captain America: Civil War, Boseman uses his performance in Black Panther to move T’Challa on from a vengeful son and into a king worthy of his throne.

While Boseman commands the screen with his performance, he is arguably not even the most important character in his own film. Neither are Martin Freeman’s Everett Ross, or even Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia (who Coogler, thankfully, took the time to develop into a character independent of her relationship to T’Challa). Rather, Michael B. Jordan—rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the MCU flop,  Josh Trank’s 2014 Fantastic Four—produces Marvel’s most complicated antagonist yet in Killmonger. Unmotivated by a lust for power like Thor’s Hela and Loki, devoid of longing for universal domination like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’s Ego, what makes Erik Killmonger unlike any villain Marvel has given us so far is the fact that he is fighting for the exact same ‘right’ thing as T’Challa: racial equality. As a result, Black Panther veers from the stale morality of superheroes who define the difference between good and bad (even if those definitions are complicated by all-too-predictable character flaws along the way), in order to suggest that it’s not what we do but how we do it that counts.

Killmonger grew up in Oakland surrounded by racism and the constant economic oppression that accompanies it. Having seen the injustice that people of African heritage endured all around the world he feels justified in his outrage and desire for retribution. This, if anything, only makes him more sympathetic—the film, then, must work overtime to establish that the reason he is the villain and not an ally comes down to the method he chooses to right these injustices. His answer to oppression is to arm the oppressed with vibranium weapons to topple the world and breed chaos. One could argue that this means he does want power and world domination, but Killmonger wants them only insofar as they represent a suitable answer to the crimes of empire. He would prefer to give the colonizers a taste of their own medicine rather than brokering a beneficial peace as T’Challa aims to do—this formal, methodological disagreement stands as the central conflict of the film. It’s a surprisingly nuanced struggle from a studio that once gave us Gweneth Paltrow watching two robot men flying through space trying to crush each other like empty beer cans.

From a certain perspective, Black Panther’s storyline is like every other superhero movie. The tropes are undoubtedly similar to those in Thor: Ragnarok, a film released only three and a half months before Black Panther. We have the same old story of the rightful king defeated by their power-hungry relative who now must find his inner strength to take back the throne and do what is right for his people. What therefore sets Black Panther apart from any Marvel film is not only its politically racial content, but additionally its revolutionary approach to the hero-villain conflict. This film has not become a cultural phenomenon because of its beautiful cinematography, breathtaking special effects, perfectly choreographed action sequences, or original and detailed costumes. Rather, it has become a sensation because of its ability to transcend the superhero genre and do what film does best—produce a world of fantasy that helps us better understand the world of reality.

Black Panther is a movie made by minorities with minorities that everyone can enjoy. The enormous success of a predominantly black cast with a host of multiple well-developed strong female characters argues for the kind of change people want to see in Hollywood. Finally, Black Panther’s unique protagonist-antagonist relationship teaches us that wanting that change is less important than how it is achieved.

[1] Rob Cain. “The Marvel Cinematic Universe Just Topped $12 Billion in Worldwide Box Office.” Forbes. Web.

[2] Kevin Nguyen. “Is This Marvel’s Best Movie Yet?” GQ. Web.

[3] Box Office Mojo: Black Panther. Web.

[4] Jeff Giles. “Marvel Movies Ranked Best to Worst by Tomatometer.” Rotten Tomatoes. Web.

[5] Daniel Cesário. “Why Black Panther is Overrated.” Medium. Web.

[6] Rahawa Haile. “How Black Panther Asks us to Examine Who We are to One Another.” Longreads. Web.