Review | Black Panther (2018 / US)
It’s hard to imagine further new grounds that upcoming flicks of the Marvel Cinematic Universe could break after, say, more than a dozen films.
If Captain America: Civil War and, more recently, Thor: Ragnarok are the touchstones that reinforce the prominence of the superhero franchise, Marvel could be forgiven for following up with a crop of standard-fare though still decent blockbusters which would not break the mould.
Until the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War, the case of Black Panther could have been the latter. Except — for what it outwardly is: a spinoff of a tent-pole with a predominantly black cast — it chose, under the direction of Ryan Coogler, to be one of the MCU’s boldest projects.
Vis-à-vis past films, Black Panther is no short of its sociopolitical allegories. Its story continues from the events of Civil War, where — after the death of his father — T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), prince of the fictional future-tech African kingdom Wakanda, ascends the throne and is immediately beset by the threat of arms dealer Ulysses Klaue and mysterious ex-black ops Erik Stevens aka Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan).
T’Challa is also the eponymous hero armoured up in his nanotechnology-driven power-suit, shaped in the anthropomorphic form of a panther. He is basically Tony Stark devoid of the playboy antics and whose gadgets are the works of his inventor-sister Shuri (Letitia Wright). Packed with more heroic calibre than Iron Man could muster in a Hulkbuster, Boseman injects his protagonist with unfeigned charisma and the stoic principles of unspoilt royalty.
A line-up of strong female characters backs T’Challa’s efforts: Lupita Nyong’o is Nakia, a Wakanda operative and the king’s love interest; Danai Gurira is the tough and no-nonsense Okoye, head of T’Challa’s bodyguard corps; and Angela Bassett as the elegant Queen Mother of the kingdom.
While few, the small number of white actors have crucial roles — Serkis aside, his Hobbit co-star Martin Freeman plays Everett K. Ross, a moral CIA officer who decides to help the Wakandans.
The likeable cast of Black Panther is undergirded by the sturdy performances of Boseman and Jordan. Indeed, it’s been some time now since the Steve-Rogers-vs-Tony-Stark clash in Civil War makes for a satisfying, visceral showdown and the intense bad blood between scion and outsider in both T’Challa and Killmonger, respectively, translates to a thrillingly kinetic brawl few MCU features could rival.
Importantly, the Shakespearean premise of Black Panther concerns itself unflinchingly with real-world complications, coupled with some smattering of humour.
The film, very notably, wears its black pride on its sleeve; yet it is so much more than its constant nods to disenfranchised African blood around the world.
Perhaps as a retort against Trump-era rhetoric, the subjects Black Panther deals with are more critical and encompassing than what the MCU is usually comfortable with: references to black nationalism, isolationism/globalisation and even jihadism are spliced into the film’s narrative. At one point, T’Challa questions his kingdom’s wisdom to hide its true nature from the rest of the world so that its way of life will not be affected. What this withdrawal has caused, Killmonger argues, is to deprive non-Wakanda Africans resources that could plant them at the top of global order.
Fortunately, none of these has, in a significant manner, turned Black Panther into a zero-sum-game between races or to prop one over the other. The film is honest with the hopes and pitfalls of its aspirations and opens itself to every people — its mid-credit scene only drives home the point of building bridges because only “fools build walls.”
Top all these with the MCU’s renown for top-tier visual effects (Wakanda, a sight to behold, is a bricolage of sci-fi city and African culture) and immersive storytelling, and a high-end blockbuster tagged with a well-meaning message results.
Superheroes have always been fiction’s means to remind and inspire the real world of its capacity to do good where it’s badly needed. Too often than not, this discourse is buried by inundation with superhero mythology and the film industry’s obsession with extravagant plots and intricate eye-candy.
Then comes Black Panther, a model feature which has pretty much set a higher bar for its genre. Very few films of its kind ever feel so relevant to its real-life epoch and yet, still do so in style.
