Black Panther

Since 2013, when Zack Snyder’s insufferable Man of Steel caused me to swear off comic book superhero blockbusters, I have broken that pledge on four occasions—first for Guardians of the Galaxy  (which I didn’t realize was a comic book superhero movie until I was in the theater), then Logan  (I was a fan of the director and it was supposedly more of a Western), then Wonder Woman (again, I was a fan of the director and it seemed a cultural milestone), and most recently for Black Panther (same reasons as Wonder Woman). Of all these exceptions to my no-more-superhero-franchises rule, Wonder Woman is the only one I can say I enjoyed (at least I enjoyed the good ninety-minute movie that was bookended by an ungainly, exposition-heavy first act and the tedious, generic climactic fight). But Black Panther also won me over in several key ways.

Directed by Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed), Black Panther transcends as many of the comic book movie trappings as it succumbs to. It’s an origin story, but not one bogged down with interminable exposition that viewers who are fans of the source material already know and audiences who don’t read the comics couldn’t care less about. Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole (who wrote the true crime TV series The People v. O. J. Simpson) craft a lengthy but focused screenplay. Everything they set up pays off in this movie—rather than in some future instalment of the MCU (that’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe).

The principal setting of this story is Wakanda, a technologically advanced African nation hidden away from the rest of the world. While the history of this fantastic fictional country is explained upfront via voice-over narration, accompanied by the ubiquitous digital flyovers of spectacular CGI cityscapes we expect in contemporary blockbusters (though the CGI actually is spectacular in this instance), viewers learn about the customs, rituals, and texture of this place organically through the narrative. The key figures that populate Wakanda are more distinctive than the underdeveloped supporting players typically found in overcrowded superhero movies.

What distinguishes these characters from their super-peers in the MCU (as well as the DC cannon, and pretty much every other contemporary film franchise) isn’t just that they are almost entirely Black, but that so many of them are women. While Wakanda is a patriarchal society, where any member of the five native tribes can challenge the new king in a fight for the crown, women hold key positions of leadership. Aside from the apparent glass ceiling of King—Angela Bassett’s Queen Mother does not take the throne when her husband’s murder incites this story—Wakandan women are at the center of this society. Black Panther’s love interest, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) is a skilled spy more interested in undertaking dangerous humanitarian missions outside of Wakanda than in becoming its queen.  His sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright) may be the spunky young princess of Wakanda, but she is also the designer and developer of her nation’s advanced technology—making her a hybrid of Frozen’s Anna and James Bond’s Q, but with more brains than Iron Man’s Tony Stark. Wakanda is protected by an all-female army led by spear-wielding Grace Jones-looking women led by General Okoye (a formidable Danai Gurira). These female supporting cast members do not feel like feeble attempts at inclusion by Hollywood studios. Rather, they are the best-written of secondary characters.

As Black Panther himself, Chadwick Boseman frees himself from the burden of playing important black historical figures in mediocre biopics—Jackie Robinson in 42, James Brown in Get on Up, Thurgood Marshall in Marshall—and gets to embody a hero on his own terms. But what really elevates this picture beyond the disposable, interchangeable, superhero blockbusters is its villain Erik Killmonger. Played by the hero of Creed and Fruitvale Station, Michael B. Jordan, Killmonger is one of the few antagonists in a recent comic book movie adaptation worthy of paying attention to. In a genre where villains are planet-destroying all-powerful Gods or planet-destroying pseudo-Freudian representations of a hero’s dark side, Jordan’s Killmonger provides a refreshingly down-to-earth adversary. The ostensible hero and villain of this film are equally matched in strength and intelligence, share history and heritage but were raised in entirely different circumstances, and the opposing philosophies motivating their goals are both logical, reasonable, and, arguably, worth rooting for.

Of course, these two end up tussling in the inescapable one-on-one fight that occurs simultaneously with a larger ground battle involving all the other characters, but because we’re equally invested in the villain and the hero, this prolonged climax isn’t quite as dull and predictable as it might be. And, while Wakanda is part of Earth, its otherworldliness makes the physics-defying CGI-enhanced battles slightly less objectionable. The film’s third act is still its weakest link, but the first two-thirds do a good enough job of getting us invested in the outcome that the picture doesn’t fall apart during its last half hour.

Like most recent superhero movies, Black Panther wears its subtext on its sleeve (and its chest, its back, and its head). But unlike the heavy-handed X-Men pictures or the facile Iron Man trilogy, the underlying themes in Black Panther feel alive and exciting because there simply aren’t many other modern movies exploring issues of colocalization, the wielding of black power, the civic responsibility of advanced nations, and feminist Afrocentrist identity politics on such an expansive and visceral scale.  The film also doesn’t look identical to every other superhero movie. The compositions are more striking—though Rachel Morrison’s cinematography is too dark much of the time—and the cutting is less choppy (maybe not as lyrical as the rhythmic editing of Creed, but this is a Marvel movie). The bold choices of veteran costume designer Ruth E. Carter (Do the Right Thing, What's Love Got to Do with It, Lee Daniels' The Butler) do more to create the visual look of this world than any of its plentiful CG effects. Carter pulls off an incredible feat: a superhero movie in which none of the name actors looks silly in their costumes.

Black Panther isn’t going to get me to buy a ticket to the next Avengers movie any more than Wonder Woman made me want to see Justice League. But as a smart, multilayered, stand-alone adventure movie, this is one comic book superhero adaptation that's well worth checking out.