dir by Ryan Coolger
writ. by Ryan Coolger and Joe Robert Cole
It's widely acknowledged by now that the post-Iron Man superhero genre has been overwhelmingly dominated by stories about good super-powered white men defeating sinister villains and scary monsters. The current crop of Marvel movies so frequently rely on such traditional narratives that they've come under wide criticism for it, and while movies like Doctor Strange and Thor: Ragnarok added tweaks to the films' visual styles, they're nonetheless cut from the same template. It works, but it's been working for a full decade at this point, and understandably some people are starting to get tired of it. Black Panther could have been an unholy disaster, and it still would have stood out not only for swapping out the skin colour and cultural background of its cast, but also for making tweaks to these movies' expected plot structure.
However, what Marvel hasn't gotten quite enough credit for lately is how they've attempted to infuse many of their recent films with a greater degree of introspection. What they dub "Phase 3" started with the genuinely thoughtful Captain America: Civil War, a film in which the primary conflict didn't even have a proper villain, and which seemed surprisingly ambivalent about the fundamental tropes of its own genre. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 tied all of its characters back into a nuanced theme about finding one's family, and Spider-Man: Homecoming featured subtext about wealth and privilege in both the genre and in modern America. Black Panther, then, didn't come out of nowhere, but while it's more talky and heavy than much of Marvel's usually buoyant catalogue, it's also the studio's most dramatically compelling and thematically committed film to date, and generally its best since Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Following the death of his father, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) ascends to the throne of the fictional African country of Wakanda, which uses its significant technological advancements to disguise itself to the outside world as a poor agrarian country. On the throne, T'Challa struggles with his predecessor's mistakes, including a failure to bring notorious criminal Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) to justice, as - and I must be vague here - the physical and ideological challenge of an outsider (played by Michael B. Jordan) who was failed by his father's regime.
Black Panther is one of the more unpredictable and surprising entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with a semi-episodic narrative chronicling certain major events of T'Challa's early reign. A lengthy stretch early on is simply dedicated to the Wakandan rituals of succession, but while these scenes have relatively little narrative momentum, the sheer detail and creativity of the worldbuilding is fascinating. Wakanda is the film's greatest creation, towering in direct opposition to the historical injustices which had been committed against Africa and people of African heritage, and yet the film admirably avoids making it a utopia. The film never quite leans into the concerning fact that Wakanda appears to be an absolute monarchy, but it's very open in depicting this nation's political culture as overly conservative and its isolationist foreign policy as cowardly.
This astonishing sense of place is significant, because that aforementioned outsider - comics fans will know him as "Killmonger" - exists in large part as a symbol of Wakanda's failures, and while the film ultimately opposes him, it's consistently sympathetic to his viewpoint. Marvel had already given this a dry-run with Spider-Man: Homecoming's Vulture, and like that film, Black Panther concedes several points to its ostensible villain, to the extent that the main conflict is not just defeating this apparent threat to all things, but also finding an acceptable synthesis between Killmonger's radicalism and Wakanda's traditional nonaggression. I am not qualified to fully untangle Black Panther's politics, but the simple fact that Marvel has committed to this much thematic ambition is fascinating to behold, and plays a large part in preventing this relatively serious and slow-paced narrative from becoming dull.
Another part is that T'Challa and Killmonger are both just deeply fascinating characters. Marvel's always been pretty good at emphasizing the humanity of its heroes, but Black Panther manages this in ways which are different from its predecessors, and which are inextricably tied from the fascinating themes at play here. Killmonger isn't monstrous so much as deeply tragic, and T'Challa's struggle to cope with his father's mixed legacy is not only sympathetic but also a fresh perspective for this series. There's a more obvious right and wrong side than in Civil War, but it's still a story about two fairly well-defined individuals grappling with their own histories. Most supporting characters have their own arcs as well, but these are comparatively familiar. Thankfully, all of these characters are appealing in their own way, and a lot of this has to do with the film's generally solid efforts at comic relief, which generally feel natural even at their least successful.
For all that analysis, however, Black Panther is also solid as an action movie. It suffers from some of the same issues as other Marvel films - an overabundance of CGI, choppy editing in places - but the fights are generally well-choreographed, and the setpieces are uniformly terrific. The middle portion, which includes a detour to South Korea, includes one particularly excellent chase scene, and the climactic fight is saved from drowning in CGI by several moments of well-timed spectacle and the film's all-around phenomenal visual design. The scenes in South Korea and the United States are fairly appealing on their own, but Wakanda is genuinely astonishing to behold, its Afrofuturist influences serving as another satisfying example Marvel's recent trend of aesthetic experimentation. If it's not as awash in colour as Guardians 2 or Ragnarok, that's only because such a wonderfully garish palette wouldn't suit the world on display here.
Marvel knows it can get away with almost anything at this point. In 2014, that meant a comedic space opera with fairly obscure heroes, but what they're doing in 2018 makes that look tepid by comparison. As the studio's films become increasingly unique and thoughtful, they also become more artful, with this being their most distinctly personal instalment yet. Bringing on Ryan Coogler, whose terrific Fruitvale Station and Creed had already made him one of the most exciting directors of the moment, was promising enough, but what makes Black Panther particularly exciting is that it appears Coogler was given a long leash. and has made something genuinely refreshing within the Marvel pantheon, not just dramatically and aesthetically but thematically as well. It's not the epitome of Marvel's style - that might still be either The Avengers or the first Iron Man - but it's the studio's strongest effort at drama, one of their most fascinating films, and ultimately also one of their best.
9/10
+ Gripping story.
+ Complex and thought-provoking themes.
+ Wonderful art design.
+ Exciting action setpieces.
- Action is still too choppy at times.
- Could probably have gone even farther with its ideas.
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