Black Panther

After a meteorite struck the African nation of Wakanda centuries ago, its inhabitants began using the super-strong metal contained inside, vibranium, to transform the country into a technological powerhouse, something it keeps hidden from the rest of the world. The country’s king has also served as its protector, the superhuman (via consuming a sacred herb) Black Panther. Following the murder of his father, T’Chaka (John Kani), T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is ready to step into this role. He has the support of tribal leaders, his sister Shuri (Leticia Wright), a technological genius, and the Dora Milaje, an elite group of female warriors. While T’Challa ponders what kind of king he will be, his rule is threatened from several directions. M’Baku (Winston Duke), leader of the isolated mountain Jabari tribe, wants to rid Wakandan leadership of its technophilia and return to traditional ways. Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), a weapons dealer wanted for committing a terrorist attack, is threatening to sell stolen vibranium on the black market. And Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), a highly trained U.S. combat veteran, sees Wakanda as his destiny. For T’Challa, confronting these threats means confronting both his country’s and his family’s past.

Though theorized for the past two decades, a Black Panther film became a reality in 2018, and with it came waves of hype and backlash. Contrary to the former, it’s not bullet-proof, but contrary to the latter, it’s a damn good movie.

Credit starts with director and writer Ryan Coogler. Though best known for 2015’s successful Rocky spinoff Creed, his debut – 2013’s Fruitvale Station – is both criminally overlooked and a portent of great things to come. That movie offered a frank look at the tragic end to a tragic life while Creed explored the complicated legacies of fathers and the sons they leave behind. Both themes come bubbling to the surface in Black Panther, but neither feels stale or repetitive. Like James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther shows that it is possible for a director to develop a personal vision while still fitting within a creatively refereed shared universe.

Coogler also deserves praise for streamlining decades of Marvel Comics source material. He avoided both the cringe factor of earlier stories (wherein M’Baku took the guise of Man-Ape. Seriously) and the pretentious ponderousness of Ta-Nahesi Coates’s more recent run. The resulting story is one that is accessible to those who have never picked up a Black Panther comic yet still remains true to the titular character’s essence.

It is as a stylist, however, where Coogler arguably does his best work, at least in this outing. With one notable exception (more on that later), Black Panther is an aesthetically dazzling film. The natural beauty of the Wakandan landscape is paired with the high-tech grandeur of its hidden cities. A chase sequence early in the film is fluid and exhilarating, and one-on-one fights (T’Challa’s rite-of-passage to the throne) are appropriately brutal without looking the least bit gratuitous. Ludwig Gonarsson’s score evokes traditional African rhythms, and the costuming contains cues from several of the continents many distinct cultures.

For the most part, the cast does not let this vision down. Boseman is known for such spirited performances (think James Brown) that it is easy to mistake T’Challa’s calm for woodenness, but that is not the case. He comes across as conflicted yet guarded, pensive rather than (as many superheroes) wallowing in angst. Wright nearly steals the movie from him as Shuri, playing the tech-savvy princess as a sort of irreverent Q to her brother’s James Bond. As Dora Milaje general Okoye, Danai Gurira (The Walking Dead) is a formidable presence who convincingly juggles opposing loyalties. Martin Freeman’s CIA agent Everett Ross acts as an audience surrogate/comic relief, but thankfully, he is merely out of his depth rather than blitheringly incompetent as otherwise the time spent on him would drag the film down. In terms of time spent, arguably not enough is given to some big-name talent here. Forrest Whitaker’s Zuri (an elder shaman), Angela Bassett’s Ramonda (the queen mother), and especially Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia (T’Challa’s former girlfriend and a spy who works abroad) all feel a touch underdeveloped.

Among the antagonists is a trio of highly engaging albeit very different performances. Duke’s M’Baku gets a surprising number of funny lines, and his character is far deeper than the reactionary sore loser that he first appears to be. Sporting an Afrikaner accent and a sonic cannon for a hand, Serkis seems to be having the time of his life. He plays Klaue as a giggling, garrulous, detestable loon, and his shameless overacting gives the character a love-to-hate quality. Jordan, the DeNiro to Coogler’s Scorcese, turns in an impressively multi-layered performance. Killmonger is at various times a supremely clever troll, an emotionally wounded orphan, a fearsome and merciless warrior, and a visionary despot. Frustratingly, however, his quasi-sympathetic point-of-view is undermined by being wedded to a megalomaniacal plan that likes of which we’ve seen in films of this genre too many times before.

Speaking of clichés, for a supposedly groundbreaking film, Black Panther has quite a few to go around. One plotline sees T’Challa and company embark on an oft-imitated Bond/Mission Impossible-style mission in Korea. It serves a narrative purpose, but it also seems like a minor misstep. A more noticeable act of repetition is the final battle that sees protagonist and antagonist face off using similar equipment, something that had begun to grow stale around the time of 2015’s Ant-Man and hasn’t gotten any fresher since. What is surprising – though not in a good way – is how poor some of the animal CGI appears. Given the film’s budget and otherwise polished appearance, dream panthers and war rhinos should not look this bad.

Despite its current Rotten Tomatoes score, Black Panther is not the equal of The Dark Knight or The Avengers in terms of craftsmanship. But ala Guardians of the Galaxy and Wonder Woman, it is a movie that challenges audience expectations of what a superhero movie can be. Visually captivating, complex, and competently acted and directed, it, like Wakanda itself, should not be underestimated.

8.25/10