Writer's Note: No "Monster Monday" this week, as I'm going to play catch-up with some of the newer movies I've seen but haven't reviewed this week for some all-new features. That also means no "Wayback Wednesday" and likely no "Flashback Friday," either- though that one may be subject to change if I can squeeze something in.
In addition, next week I'll be starting my first full franchise review, to be followed by another in quick succession later on in September, hopefully. The idea is to do a major studio franchise review first, then an independent one next time around. You'll just have to wait and see what they are.
In the meantime, I've long been wanting to write about the first two Marvel movies of the year, Black Panther and Avengers- Infinity War, so here goes, beginning with the former.
Beware: spoilers abound, so read with caution if you haven't seen them yet!
After the groundbreaking debut of the first major female-centric superhero movie last year, Wonder Woman, it was only right that other barriers in the sub-genre would start to fall as well. Marvel might have dropped the ball on the female superhero thing- Black Widow should have had her own movie a long time ago, IMHO, and hopefully, still will on down the line- but thankfully, they rebounded nicely with Black Panther, the first major superhero flick to feature a prominently African-American cast.
Mind you, it's not completely without precedent, as die-hard fans of the sub-genre will recall the Blade franchise (also from Marvel) and Spawn (which is about to be rebooted soon) way back in the late 90's-early 2000's. But there's no denying that Black Panther was a different kind of animal, given that Blade is a vampire and Spawn is a demon literally resurrected from Hell.
Notice a pattern there? Kind of sends an oddly mixed message, doesn't it? On the one hand- yay! Black superheroes! On the other, um, did they have to be kind of evil? That's Hollywood for you. Don't get me wrong, I love both of those characters and was an avid Spawn fan in particular. But yeah, hard to get behind that sort of thing entirely, given the nature of the content.
Black Panther handily rectifies all of that by making its central star unabashedly a good guy, and yet, like many a superhero before him, a reluctant one. After all, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) didn't ask to be the Black Panther, he became it after his father was killed in a prior entry in the ongoing Marvel-verse, Captain America: Civil War.
Since then, T'Challa has more than risen to the occasion, and with this film, he finally gets his own movie, complete with his own alluring universe, the glorious Wakanda, the likes of which arguably haven't been seen on the big screen since James Cameron's Avatar- though I suppose a case could be made for the universe created by Luc Besson in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. However, that movie was dead in the water, so... yeah, not quite the same thing, really.
As with Avatar's Pandora, Wakanda proved to be a place audiences were more than willing to revisit, with the film grossing a jaw-dropping $1.3 million worldwide, thus all-but-ensuring a return visit at some point, not to mention showing that Hollywood's outdated notion that black film-goers are a "niche" audience is patently ridiculous.
Indeed, the film was a success across-the-board with every kind of audience, also disproving the notion that only black audiences will go and see a film with a prominently African-American cast. I mean, hell, even my mom saw it, and she's not exactly the target audience for superhero films of any kind, period.
Where do I begin with this one? I'd be harder pressed to name something I didn't like about it than something I did. Let's start with the cast, which is across-the-board great. In addition to the effortlessly charismatic Boseman, who I was already a fan of from his superlative turn as James Brown in the biopic Get on Up; we also have the excellent Danai Gurira, easily one of the best things on TV's The Walking Dead, as Okoye; and Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave), as Nakia.
Another thing I love about this film is that the women are completely bad-ass in it. Okoye is the head of the all-female special forces, the Dora Milaje, that serve as T'Challa's bodyguards. Nakia is an undercover spy that, when we first meet her, is working to try and free a group of enslaved women, and is willing to forgo being T'Challa's significant other to do it.
Meanwhile, T'Challa's sister, Shuri, winningly played by Letitia Wright (TV's Humans), is a teenage wunderkind that serves as the movie's version of James Bond's "Q," which is to say, the one who provides T'Challa's and his associates with all the latest cool tech toys. All of this is to say that, T'Challa's back-up team is entirely compromised of tough, kick-ass women, making this film as much of a continuation of female awesomeness on display in Wonder Woman last year, as it is of African-Americans.
Indeed, they're not just his back-up-team: he treats them as the equals they are. A nice trick, that. Factor in the ending of Avengers: Infinity War (more on that later), and Marvel clearly has more than taken up the slack on its failure to feature strong women in a more prominent role moving forward. The women here are front and center, kicking ass right alongside T'Challa, not merely serving as auxiliaries to take up the slack he can't handle on his own. They're key elements to his success- he literally couldn't do it without them.
In addition, Marvel has also been stepping up its game in the villain department as of late. Unlike some of the villains of the past in films like this, the one in this film is complex, delicately layered and extremely well-thought-out. As played by director Ryan Coogler's go-to fave actor Michael B. Jordan (also in Coogler's Fruitvale Station and Creed), N'Jadaka, aka Erik "Killmonger" Stevens is the best kind of villain- one with a completely understandable motive.
This isn't a guy that just wants to watch the world burn just because- he has his reasons for doing what he does, and the thing is, remarkably enough, you can see his point. As N'Jadaka points out, Wakanda has access to all this incredible tech and the like that could help turn the tide for those of their spiritual brothers and sisters out there struggling to keep their heads above water against all the gang violence, police brutality and so forth. That's actually a pretty noble goal, when you think about it.
Of course, as a villain, his way of going about it is what's misguided. But once again, understandable. You see, as we see in a flashback, all of this could have been avoided, had T'Challa's father simply brought N'Jadaka back to Wakanda with him after killing his father. Sure, it would have been an uphill battle, but it also would have avoided a lot of drama that ensued, being as how it left N'Jadaka behind to suffer, scheme and plot revenge against Wakanda and T'Challa's father.
That T'Challa recognizes this and ultimately seeks to try and rectify it in the end by changing the rules of the game and stepping Wakanda out of the shadows for the first time in history anyway is a testament to how strong the writing is here. N'Jadaka may be a villain driven by rage and revenge, but he also has a point. Why idly sit by when your people are suffering when you can actually do something about it?
That's heady stuff for a superhero movie, and it's also what makes Black Panther such a strong entry in the Marvel-verse, and in the sub-genre in general. As with Wonder Woman, the first DC movie in many a moon to actually break some new ground, superhero-wise, Black Panther also raises the game not just by simply being the first superhero flick with a prominently African-American cast, but by being so well-written (by Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, who also co-wrote The People vs. O.J. Simpson), thought-out and executed in general, in a way that puts a lot of these sorts of movies to absolute shame.
In short, this isn't just a solid superhero flick- it's one of the best such films I've ever seen, period. I'd have to really think about it, in terms of how I'd rank it amongst the best of the best, but it's definitely up there on the list- if not Top Five, certainly Top 10. Maybe one day I'll actually take a stab at such a list, but for now, it'll have to do. Either way, even if this sort of thing isn't typically your cup of tea, you might be surprised at how much you like it.
Can you dig it? I knew that you could. 😎
Stay tuned for my take on Avengers: Infinity War later this week!
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