MOVIE TALK: Black Panther

Every so often, there's an event so major that even fifty years forward, people will be able to recall exactly where they were and what they were doing when they found out about it. Some immediate examples would be 9/11 and John F. Kennedy's assassination. 2020 is such a terrible year that we've had multiple events like this: George Floyd's murder and the protests, everything getting shut down due to COVID, and Kobe and Gianna Bryant's deaths. On Friday, August 28, we experienced another one of those events when Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman's passing was announced, at the far too young age of 43. 

I was reading texts, minding my own business when around 9:30 that night, my best friend messaged me on Twitter, "oh my god." I didn't immediately see what the text was about, but I got a sinking feeling from her all lowercase "oh my god" that it was a shocking and serious matter. I opened Twitter to see a moment stating "Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman dies aged 43." 

I didn't cry. I didn't feel much of anything at first. It just shook me to my core. It was a lot like Kobe's death, where I just didn't know how to react. I mean, Boseman was most famous for playing Black Panther, a hero, the king of Wakanda. We often think of superheroes as invincible gods, and that extends to the actors who play them. We see them as kings, and if they die, it'll be because they bravely sacrificed themselves to save the world. They would never die from something as mundane as cancer.

Boseman was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016, and over four years, it progressed to stage IV. However, he managed to keep it under wraps until the end of his life. That's impressive in its own right; celebrities struggle to keep things private, and the fact that Boseman was able to keep such a major secret from the gossip train is unbelievable. 

But the most unbelievable thing is that the entire time Black Panther appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and doing those physically demanding action scenes, Boseman was fighting his own serious battles. I don't think anyone would have faulted him for going to the heads at Marvel and saying, "Hey, I have cancer, can you please hire a new actor to play T'Challa?" But he didn't. He knew that Black Panther, both the character and the film, would mean so much to people, particularly Black people. He was willing to put his own personal battle aside in order to play such an important, meaningful character. In fact, his family wrote in the statement announcing his death that "It was the honor of his career to bring King T’Challa to life in Black Panther.” That is one of the most nobly courageous things I have ever heard- it is a level of bravery I will never know. 

Boseman had a diverse career, playing Black icons like James Brown in 2014's Get On Up, Jackie Robinson in 2013's 42, and Thurgood Marshall in 2017's Marshall. However, the role he will undoubtedly be most remembered for is King T'Challa, or Black Panther, in the 2018 movie of the same name. As such, I thought it was appropriate to pay tribute to Boseman's accomplishments and legacy by looking at Black Panther and talking about how it transcended pop culture. 

The way I see it, there are three kinds of successful movies. First, there are the movies that are just merely successful. They turn a good profit, maybe hit number one at the box office, but in five years, they won't really be remembered like the movies in the other tiers. A few good examples would be 2015's Focus and San Andreas. Both of these movies hit number one at the box office, but I rarely hear people talk about them, five years later. Then, there are the phenomenons. These movies do get the people talking, and they're the ones we'll remember five, ten, twenty years from now. This is the tier for Star Wars, Frozen, and the MCU- most of them. Finally, we have the movies that genuinely made the world a better place. This actually has little to do with financial success; they can either be a box-office smash, a complete failure, or anything in between. However, they went above and beyond in changing the lives of so many people. These movies weren't just successful- they were important. A hundred years from now, they will go down in history as important cultural milestones.

I said that most MCU movies belong in the second tier, as they are incredibly successful. MCU movies frequently cross the billion-dollar mark at the box office, the stars are some of the most famous people in Hollywood, and the fandom is massive. But Black Panther is one of the few movies that belongs in that esteemed third tier. It was incredibly successful financially. It grossed a worldwide total of $1.347 billion dollars, making it the ninth highest-grossing film of all time, the third highest-grossing superhero film and the highest-grossing solo superhero film, and the highest-grossing film by a Black director (Ryan Coogler). However, its financial accomplishments do not compare to its cultural impact.

You don't need me to tell you that the Marvel Cinematic Universe -scratch that, most of Western cinema as a whole- is very white. There are usually token characters, characters of a specific minority who don't usually serve much of a purpose other than making the story seem more diverse. But it's very rare for people of color to see positive portrayals in film. A lot of Black films either focus on the hardships Black people face, such as slavery, or the character's race is completely irrelevant to the plot- the character is played by a Black actor, but they could easily be replaced by a white, Asian, or Hispanic actor and the story wouldn't change. 

Black Panther does neither of those things, and that is precisely why it's so important. Ever since the film came out in 2018, we've seen Black people talk about how much this movie meant to them. It's exactly like I said about Into the Spider-Verse: "Of course, I myself am not black, but I think representation is absolutely necessary. I think it's very powerful for people of all ethnic backgrounds to be able to see themselves in a positive light in the media. White people are not the only ones with stories to tell, dammit!" Black Panther is technically a superhero movie, but more than that, it is an unabashed celebration of Black culture. 

The film is set in the fictional country of Wakanda, which is the most developed, technologically advanced country in the world. A meteorite made of the fictional metal vibranium, hit Wakanda centuries ago. Vibranium is an incredibly rare and powerful metal with a seemingly-unlimited amount of uses, from building Captain America's shield to powering Black Panther's suit to even healing human life. The vibranium powers all of the technological advancements made by Wakanda. And yet, despite its futuristic technology, Wakanda is highly rooted in tradition. All of the Wakandans speak Xhosa, a South-East African language, throughout the film, and the Jabari tribe speaks a dialect similar to Igbo, a language from Nigeria. They have ceremonies to crown the King/Black Panther, and the characters wear traditional African clothing and hairstyles. Although Wakanda is fictional, so many elements of its culture are real, and you can tell that the entire team behind Black Panther took special care to present African cultures in such a respectful way.

Chadwick Boseman knew what the film would mean and took great care in making T'Challa a truly good role model for Black people. One story that's been going around in the days since his passing is how he fought the Marvel executives specifically for T'Challa to have an African accent. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2018, he said, 

"They felt that it was maybe too much for an audience to take. I felt the exact opposite — like, if I speak with a British accent, what's gonna happen when I go home? It felt to me like a deal-breaker. I was like, 'No, this is such an important factor that if we lose this right now, what else are we gonna throw away for the sake of making people feel comfortable?'" 

Watching Boseman play T'Challa, you can really feel what his family said in the statement, that it was the honor of his career to play the character. He told Hunger that he prayed for the role and wrote about wanting it in his journals. Although everything about the movie is fantastic, Boseman's role as T'Challa really is the heart of it. He is brave, noble, and determined to do anything to keep his people safe. Boseman really was the perfect person to play the superhero, not in the least because he was as close as we'll get to a superhero in real life. The best superheroes are the ones who balance heroic kick-butt deeds with heart and emotion, and Boseman succeeded on both accounts. The action scenes were incredibly well-choreographed and performed, made even more impressive by the fact that Boseman wasn't at peak health when filming them. Yet, it's T'Challa's little moments that stood out to me more than any battle. From his playful banter with his sister Shuri to his romantic moments with Nakia to the scene where he shows Killmonger the sunset, the best aspects of Boseman's performance were his one-on-one moments with the other characters. You can see how the bond between the actors went beyond their characters' relationships, that they all loved and respected each other on a true level. Many of Boseman's Black Panther costars, including Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, and Michael B. Jordan, as well as the film's director Ryan Coogler, released tributes to the media in the wake of Boseman's passing. Reading the tributes, it's clear that the bond really did transcend the film; he wasn't just a costar to these people, he was a friend. 

The conflict of the film is that Wakanda is one of the most powerful countries in the world, but they pretend to be a poor country and stay in their own little world in order to protect their resources. That brings us to the villain of the film, Erik Stevens, better known as Killmonger. He grew up in inner-city Oakland, and has seen some terrible things happen to Black people on the streets. He is angry that Wakanda is such a powerful country full of Black people, and yet they do nothing to help people just like them in other parts of the world. Killmonger is the kind of villain I find most compelling; a villain whose motivations are actually completely reasonable, but who goes about those ideals in terrifying ways. He has hundreds of scars on his chest, each one representing a body he has taken. Michael B. Jordan does a fantastic job in the role, capturing both the hateful anger and the compelling motivations of the character perfectly. You completely buy him as this radical terrorist, despite Jordan actually being a pretty down-to-earth, funny guy. He even said in his MTV Movie Awards speech for Best Villain that, "I’m shocked that I won this award for Best Villain. I thought for sure Roseanne had that in the bag.” (That was after the whole thing where Roseanne Barr was incredibly racist and tweeted that President Obama's former adviser Valerie Jarrett an ape, so I thought his remark was pretty hilarious.)

Black Panther is a who's-who of talented Black actors, featuring some well-known names and bringing others to the A-list. The ensemble cast featured many fierce Black women, each with a different personality and role. Women as a whole are a minority in Hollywood, as they often exist to serve men in films and TV series. That's even more true for Black women, who are often forced to play the "sassy angry best friend" trope. Black Panther completely subverts this trope, featuring multiple strong Black female characters. Danai Gurira played Okoye, the proud, serious leader of the Dora Milaje, an all-female team of warriors who serve as T'Challa's bodyguards. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o was Nakia, who is T'Challa's love interest, but isn't one-dimensional at all, serving as an undercover spy who fights for women's freedom. Angela Bassett played the regal Queen Ramonda, T'Challa and Shuri's mother who is matronly yet strong and all-around very regal. However, my personal favorite character was Shuri, T'Challa's 16-year-old sister played by Leticia Wright. Wright brought a youthful energy (and some Vine references) to the film, and I really did love Shuri's playful banter with her brother. She was also in charge of all the technology in the world, which I thought was amazing. The smartest person in the world is a 16-year-old Black girl? That's so inspiring. I also have to mention how none of the female characters have traditionally Western hairstyles. Shuri and Ramonda wear dreadlocks, Nakia wears her hair in a traditional style called Bantu knots, and Okoye has a shaved head with distinctive tattoos. This is noteworthy because there are so many instances where Black women are told that they must straighten their hair and abide to a Western style because traditionally Black hairstyles, such as dreadlocks, cornrows, and Afros, are "unattractive." It's so important for Black girls of all ages to see these intelligent, courageous, and beautiful role models to let them know that they don't have to abide to Western standards to be seen as beautiful and be taken seriously.

With the exception of Martin Freeman as CIA agent Everett K. Ross and Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, every member of the main cast of this movie is Black. Daniel Kaluuya of Get Out fame was W'Kabi, T'Challa's best friend, Winston Duke, who would later go on to star in Us with Lupita Nyong'o, played the ruthless warrior M'Baku, and Forest Whitaker played Zuri, an elder statesman and spiritual guide of Wakanda. Every single actor in this movie does an admirable job acting, and like I was saying with Boseman, you can tell that they all knew how significant the movie would be and took great care to bring the world of Wakanda to life.

The actors of the film won the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Cast in a Motion Picture in 2019, which was highly deserved. 

Before I discuss the film's legacy and importance, I want to talk about a few other things that particularly stood out to me about Black Panther, namely the visuals. This is a gorgeous movie to look at. The world of Wakanda is particularly beautiful, especially the scenes where T'Challa speaks with his father. Those purple skies are simply breathtaking. 

(Plus, I learned that the company that did the visual effects for Black Panther, Industrial Light & Magic, also did the effects for The Last Airbender movie. The difference in quality between the two films' visuals is astounding.)

 I also loved the high-energy action scenes in Busan, South Korea. I'm a huge fan of the "big city lit up at night" aesthetic, and Busan was the perfect backdrop for an incredible car chase. I also loved the music of the film. The score, which won an Oscar, was by Ludwig Göransson, and featured a lot of African tribal motifs. The film's soundtrack was curated by rapper Kendrick Lamar, and it matches the film perfectly. It features popular R&B and hip hop artists, like Lamar, Travis Scott, and The Weeknd, as well as African artists like Babes Wodumo and Sjava. I love how a lot of the songs mesh a traditional African style with a more futuristic hip hop atmosphere to perfectly reflect Wakanda. A lot of the songs are also really good on their own merits, with "All the Stars" by Kendrick Lamar and SZA being one of my personal favorites. 

Black Panther is a great movie, a film that I'd probably give a 9/10 to on its own merits. However, due to its impact and importance, I have to give it a 10/10. After Boseman's passing, fans took to Twitter to honor his dedication to playing famous Black heroes, as well as his dedication to his craft in spite of his own health struggles. The Atlantic writer Clint Smith tweeted:

I keep thinking about my 3-year-old in his Black Panther costume. How he wore it almost every day when he got it, refused to take it off. The way he walked around saying “I’m the Black Panther.” How happy it made him. What Chadwick gave us was immeasurable. What an enormous loss.

MSNBC contributor Brittany Packnett tweeted what we were all thinking after he passed. 

Chadwick really suffered through all of that for *us.* Think of all the stories he helped tell. All the people he helped find hope. All the Black children for whom he could be a powerful reflection? Despite his own terminal pain. I am astonished by the weight of that sacrifice. 

Author Tracy Deonn took to Twitter to honor what Black Panther meant to older Black audiences:

Right now I'm thinking about my 72 year-old father who'd never seen an MCU movie, but let me take him to Black Panther. How he lived through Jim Crow. How he said, at the end of the movie: "I never thought they'd put us onscreen like that." That's the impact of this body of work.

But I think Vice writer Brian Josephs said it best:

Chadwick Boseman is a big reason why our kids don't have to wonder about what a Black superhero is.

However, the impact of this film was obvious long before Boseman's untimely passing. Around the time Black Panther came out, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon did a bit where they invited fans to speak about what Black Panther meant to them. One fan said 

"I cannot tell you how much it means to have you step into the role as our King and be holding it with such grace and poise and joy."

 Another fan said,

 "It means a lot to see a movie that's not, like, a 'Black' movie, but it's just a great American superhero movie with people who look like me." 

After the fans recorded their thank-yous, talking to a poster of T'Challa, Boseman surprised them and gave them hugs. I think this bit is really indicative of the kind of person Boseman was; humble, gracious, respectable, and with a good sense of humor. 

Another clip that has gone viral since Boseman's passing is the SiriusXM interview where he tells of two little boys with terminal cancer, named Ian and Taylor, who looked up to him and were eagerly awaiting the movie. He said the parents told him that the boys were "trying to hold on till this movie comes," and said that that gave him motivation to wake up every day and film the movie. 

"To a certain degree, you hear them say that and you're like, 'Wow. I gotta get up and go to the gym. I gotta get up and go to work. I gotta learn these lines. I gotta work on this accent...I think back now to a kid, and just you know, waiting for Christmas to come, waiting for my birthday to come, waiting for a toy that I was going to get a chance to experience, or a video game. I did live life waiting for those moments. And so, it put me back in the mind of being a kid just to experience those two little boys anticipation of this movie."

The clip has mostly gone viral due to the moment where Boseman visibly gets emotional when talking about the boys' passing. He couldn't even say the word "died" or "passed."  Nobody knew this at the time, but he was getting emotional not just because they were his fans, but because he saw himself in them. He knew that he could meet the same fate as them at any time. However, he continued to act and inspire people until the end of his days. I really can't undersell just how brave Chadwick Boseman was, and I hope that somewhere in the afterlife, he's reunited with Ian and Taylor and giving them piggyback rides. 

To wrap this up, I'm just going to say that Black Panther is a rare 10/10 movie. Just as a film, it's one of the best superhero movies in history, but the impact it had on the world is truly exceptional. Rest in Power and Peace to Chadwick Boseman, and Wakanda forever. 

This art was by Ryan Meinerding, Head of Visual Development at Marvel Studios. It's gorgeous.

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