black panther summary essay

The Film “Black Panther” Analysis Research Paper

Introduction, impact on the society, women power, works cited.

Black Panther is a Marvel Studio film; the scene is laid in the fictional African state of Wakanda, a technological utopia hidden from the rest of the world. The movie shows Africa, which was not touched by the colonialists. Black Panther is wildly based on the emphasis of African culture and beautifully expressed throughout the whole film; it focuses on costumes, make-up, and language. Moreover, the film and distribution of a motion picture allow the audience to consider such important issues as diversity and range, the importance of social media, and its impact on society, and women’s power. Overall, the film Black Panther celebrates the African Culture and the Black community.

The film presents deep insights and critical social issues; Black Panther reveals many important social problems, including racial discrimination, and questions about what is more important: duty or to protect what you love. There is the opposition between the old and the new world (Mcintyre). Authentic culture collides with technology and modern realities, somewhere complementing each other and, at the same time, causing misunderstandings and problems.

In almost all colors and patterns in the film, the audience can see the reflection of the cultures of various African tribes (Chutel). It encourages the younger generation to know about cultures and how to respect and embrace them. This is a new way to show that Africa has a voice and a highly recognizable culture (Long). Thus, it gives opportunities, confidence, and courage to the other African people living under the shadows to be proud of their culture, countries, and themselves.

For the film, its creators created the gesture Wakanda salute, shown as arms crossed on the chest. It is used according to the plot as a greeting in the protagonist’s homeland (Gander). However, after the release of Black Panther , the fictional greeting gained such widespread popularity that it even became a new symbol of solidarity and the movement supporting black rights (Gander). Furthermore, the film Black Panther has affected fashion; elements of African culture have inspired designers to create clothes. This resulted in a show as part of New York Fashion Week, where designers of the brands Cushnie et Ochs, Ikiré Jones, Tome, Sophie Theallet, Fear of God, Chromat, and Laquan Smith presented a themed collection inspired by images from the film (Maloney). Therefore, the movie inspired fashion, music, and popular culture, which became an overnight sensation.

The movie shows strong feminist characters; T’Challa has his own army called Dora Milaje, composed entirely of women. From century to century, they guard all members of the family of the king of Wakanda. Moreover, Wakanda is also a country of victorious feminism, in which women play no less important roles than men. T’Challa’s sister Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) is engaged in the technological development of Wakanda (Lee). The power of the female character is also presented by Black Panther’s beloved Nakia, played by Lupita Nyong’o, and the leader of the royal female protection squad Okoye (Danai Gurira) (Lee). The female characters, albeit not the main ones, clearly demonstrate a powerful and positive image.

The women are shown as strong and loyal; they stick together and fight together. It is worth highlighting the inventive and cheerful sister of TʼChalla Shuri, who slightly dilutes the general seriousness and pretentiousness with her jokes. Shuri carries a critical semantic load; she supports Black Panther, placing on her fragile shoulders the burden men usually carry. Moreover, Okoye embodies concepts such as honor, duty, and loyalty. According to Lee, the film eliminates sexist prejudices; women’s personalities and skills attract attention first instead of their sex appeal. For instance, their qualities are shown through effective battle strategies and saving the life of T’Challa (Lee).

The film emphasizes that women play a crucial role in protecting the nation, not needing to be rescued by males. The movie focuses on the idea that women can be powerful without men or regardless of their skin color. Strength comes from within and not the outer appearance.

The relationship between Nakia and T’Challa also focuses on the character’s missions. Nakia fights for oppressed people, planning to resume her activity after the T’Challa ceremony; there is the mutual respect in their relationship. They are role models to many women throughout the world, teaching women to be strong and confident. It also inspires young black women to achieve their ambitions and goals. Thus, the movie demonstrates that women can follow their passion and determine their life themselves.

The movie Black Panther has become one of the most successful films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the film’s box office worldwide has exceeded billion dollars. The influence of the film extends both to the film industry and beyond. In the case of Black Panther, this story can encourage people to study the history of the African continent. For a long time, Africa has existed in Western culture as a myth, a tale of a wild and untamed continent. People do not imagine a technologically advanced Africa as the Western world for centuries considered this continent backward and primitive, a place where there is nothing but resources for mining.

The idea of ​​African heritage and its return and reinterpretation is vital to African Americans. The ideas embodied in the film appeal to the inhabitants of Africa and the Americans of African descent, who feel their connection with the continent, but were cut off from their traditions several hundred years ago. Thus, the film Black Panther glorifies the African Culture and the Black community. By changing the future of Africa, it is transforming the attitude toward its past.

Chutel, Lynsey. “ Marvel’s Black Panther will speak this real African language. ” Quartz Media . 2018. Web.

Gander, Kashmira. “ Is the Black Panther ‘Wakanda Salute’ Becoming a Symbol of Black Pride ? ” Newsweek . 2018. Web.

Lee, Shanon. “ The women of ‘Black Panther’ are empowered not just in politics and war, but also in love. ” The Washington Post . 2018. Web.

Long, Kelle. “ The Amazing & Unconventional Creations of the Black Panther Make-up Designer. ” The Credits . 2018. Web.

Maloney, Nora. “ Backstage at the Black Panther New York Fashion Week Presentation. ” Vanity Fair . 2018. Web.

Mcintyre, Gina. “ The bold costumes of ‘Black Panther’ join tradition and technology. ” Los Angeles Time . 2018. Web.

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Movie Reviews

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In 1992, a little Black kid on a makeshift basketball court in Oakland, California disrupts his game to glance up at the sky. Figuratively, he’s looking at the loss of hope, a departure represented by glowing lights drifting away into the night. As we learn later, those lights belong to a futuristic flying machine returning to the mysterious African country of Wakanda, the setting of “Black Panther." The young man was once told by his father that Wakanda had the most wonderful sunsets he would ever see, so he cradles that perceived vision of beauty through his darkest hours. When he finally sees the sun go down over Wakanda, it provokes a haunting emotional response.

That same response will be felt by viewers of “Black Panther,” one of the year's best films, and one that transcends the superhero genre to emerge as an epic of operatic proportions. The numerous battle sequences that are staples of the genre are present, but they float on the surface of a deep ocean of character development and attention to details both grandiose and minute. Wakanda is a fully fleshed-out, unapologetically Black universe, a world woven into a tapestry of the richest, sharpest colors and textures. Rachel Morrison ’s stunning cinematography and Ruth Carter’s costumes pop so vividly that they become almost tactile. You can practically feel the fabric of the hat worn by Angela Bassett as it beams in the sunlight on the day her son becomes king.

Bassett is just one of numerous familiar and up-and-coming actors of color who bring their A-games to “Black Panther.” Forest Whitaker , Sterling K. Brown and “ Get Out ” star  Daniel Kaluuya are just a few of the others. The entire cast creates characters with complexities rarely afforded minorities in cinema; these people are capable of contradictory human responses that have lasting consequences. Their feelings are deep, instantly relatable, and colored with the shades of grey not often explored in blockbuster entertainment. When the villain still manages to make your eyes tear up despite trying to murder the hero in the previous scene, you know you’re in the presence of great acting and storytelling.

The villain in question, nicknamed Killmonger, is played by Michael B. Jordan . Someday, the team of Jordan and writer/director Ryan Coogler will be mentioned with the same reverence reserved for Scorsese and De Niro. The duo have done three films together, and though this is the first where Jordan is in a supporting role, they still convey a cinematic shorthand that’s representative of their trusted partnership. A film like this is only as good as its villains, and Jordan deserves a place in the anti-hero Hall of Fame alongside such greats as Gene Hackman ’s Little Bill Daggett from “ Unforgiven .” Like Hackman, Jordan lures you in with his likeable comic swagger before revealing the shocking levels of his viciousness. He is hissable, but his character arc is not without sympathy nor understanding.

Coogler is the perfect fit for this material. It hits all the sweet spots he likes to explore in his films. So much gets written about which prominent directors should helm a superhero film next, but relatively few would be allowed to leave such a personal mark on a product so slavishly devoted to fan feelings. Coogler turns the MCU into the RCU—the Ryan Coogler Universe—by including everything we’ve come to expect from his features in the script he co-wrote with Joe Robert Cole . Like Oscar Grant in “ Fruitvale Station ,” T’Challa ( Chadwick Boseman ) is a typical Coogler protagonist, a young Black man seeking his place in the world while dealing with his own personal demons and an environment that demands things from him that he is unsure about giving. Like Donny in “ Creed ,” T’Challa exists in the shadow of a late father once known for a greatness he also wishes to achieve through similar means.

Coogler extends these same character traits to his muse Jordan’s Killmonger who, true to comic book lore form, has a “two sides of the same coin” relationship with the hero. Even their plans apply this theory. T’Challa wants to keep Wakanda away from the rest of the world, protecting his country by using its advanced technology solely for its denizens. Killmonger wants to steal that technology and give it to others, specifically to underprivileged Black folks so they can fight back and rule the world.

Additionally, the dual, reflective imagery of T’Challa and Killmonger is beautifully drawn to the surface in a scene where both men undergo the same spiritual journey to visit the fathers they long to see. But these similar journeys are polar opposites in tone, as if to prove the adage that one man’s Heaven is another man’s Hell. These scenes have a way of burrowing into your skin, forcing you to reckon with them later.

Coogler’s universe also isn’t male-dominated. In each of his films, there are women who advise and comfort the male leads while still having their own lives and agency. In “Fruitvale Station,” it’s Octavia Spencer ’s Mrs. Grant; in “Creed,” it’s Tessa Thompson ’s artistic girlfriend. “Black Panther” really ups the stakes, presenting us with numerous memorable, fierce and intelligent women who fight alongside Black Panther and earn their own cheers. Lupita Nyong’o is Nakia, the ex for whom T’Challa still carries a torch. Letitia Wright is Shuri, T’Challa’s sister and the equivalent of James Bond’s Q; she provides the vibranium-based weapons and suits Black Panther uses. And Danai Gurira is Okoye, a warrior whose prowess may even outshine T’Challa’s because she doesn’t need a suit to be a badass. All of these women have action sequences that drew loud applause from the audience, not to mention they’re all fully realized people. Okoye in particular has an arc that replays Black Panther’s central ideological conflict in microcosm.

For all its action sequences (they’re refreshingly uncluttered, focusing on smaller battles than usual) and talk of metals that exist only in the mind of Stan Lee , “Black Panther” is still Marvel’s most mature offering to date. It’s also its most political, a film completely unafraid to alienate certain factions of the Marvel base. It’s doing a great job upsetting folks infected with the Fear of a Black Planet on Twitter, to be sure. To wit, Wakanda has never been colonized by White settlers, it’s the most advanced place in the universe and, in a move that seems timely though it’s been canon since 1967, Wakanda masquerades as what certain presidents would refer to as a “shithole nation.” Coogler really twists the knife on that one: In the first of two post-credits sequences, he ends with a very sharp response about what immigrants from those nations can bring to the rest of the world.

Speaking of endings, Coogler is a man who knows how to end a movie. His last shot in “Creed” is a tearjerking thing of beauty, and the last scene (pre-credits that is) in “Black Panther” made me cry even harder. As in “Creed,” Coogler depicted young brown faces looking in awe at a hero, something we never see in mainstream cinema. “Black Panther”’s last scene is a repeat of the scene I described in my opening paragraph: In the present day, a little Black kid on a makeshift basketball court in Oakland, California disrupts his game to glance up at the sky. Figuratively, he’s about to gain some hope, an addition represented by a humanitarian hero with much to teach him and his fellow basketball players. The young man stares in awe, realizing that his life, and the lives of those around him will be changed.

It’s an ending rife with meta, symbolic meaning. Starting this weekend, a lot of brown kids are going to be staring at this movie with a similar sense of awe and perception-changing wonder. Because  the main superhero, and almost everyone else, looks just like them . It was a long time coming, and it was worth the wait. 

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Film credits.

Black Panther (2018)

Rated PG-13

134 minutes

Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther

Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger

Lupita Nyong'o as Nakia

Forest Whitaker as Zuri

Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue / Klaw

Danai Gurira as Okoye

Angela Bassett as Ramonda

Sterling K. Brown as N'Jobu

Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross

Daniel Kaluuya as W'Kabi

Florence Kasumba as Ayo

Winston Duke as M'Baku / Man-Ape

Letitia Wright as Shuri

Phylicia Rashād

• Ryan Coogler
• Joe Robert Cole

Cinematography

• Rachel Morrison
• Ludwig Göransson
• Michael P. Shawver
• Claudia Castello

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Black Panther

• T'Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country's past.
• After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Prince T'Challa returns home to the reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to serve as his country's new king. However, T'Challa soon finds that he is challenged for the throne from factions within his own country. When two foes conspire to destroy Wakanda, the hero known as Black Panther must team up with C.I.A. agent Everett K. Ross and members of the Dora Milaje, Wakandan special forces, to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war. — Editor
• Follows T'Challa who, after the death of his father, the King who of Wakanda, returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced African nation to succeed to the throne and take his rightful place as king. But when a powerful old enemy reappears, T'Challa's mettle as king and Black Panther is tested when he is drawn into a formidable conflict that puts the fate of Wakanda and the entire world at risk. Faced with treachery and danger, the young king must rally his allies and release the full power of Black Panther to defeat his foes and secure the safety of his people and their way of life. — ahmetkozan
• When King T'Challa returns to his home nation of the secluded but technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda, he is put to the test as both king of his country and Black Panther when he is drawn into a conflict that puts the fate of Wakanda and the world at risk. To defeat his enemies and protect his countries, the king must rally his allies and unleash the power of Black Panther. — TOmDDaly
• After the death of his father, T'Challa now prepares to be crowned the new king of Wakanda. However, T'Challa finds that his position is now being challenged by the appearance of an old enemy named Killmonger, which puts both Wakanda and the world at risk. Teaming with the Dora Milaje, his little sister Shuri, and his CIA ally Everett K. Ross, T'Challa must harness the powers of the Black Panther to fight his enemy and save Wakanda from destruction. — Blazer346
• Centuries ago, five African tribes war over a meteorite containing Vibranium. One warrior ingests a "heart-shaped herb" affected by the metal and gains superhuman abilities, becoming the first "Black Panther". He unites all but the Jabari Tribe to form the nation of Wakanda. The Wakandans use the Vibranium to develop advanced technology and isolate themselves from the world by posing as a Third World country. The erected a camouflage energy shield around their country. The Jabari tribe lived in the mountains ever since. In 1992, King T'Chaka (Atandwa) visits his brother N'Jobu (Sterling K. Brown), who is working undercover in Oakland, California. T'Chaka accuses N'Jobu of assisting black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) (A South African black-market arms dealer, smuggler and gangster, who is allied with Killmonger. He uses a piece of advanced Wakandan mining equipment as a sonic Disruptor arm-cannon, replacing his left arm, which he lost in Avengers: Age of Ultron) with stealing Vibranium from Wakanda. Klaue stole 0.25 tons of Vibranium and knew exactly where it was stored and how to get it out of Wakanda. N'Jobu's partner reveals he is Zuri (Forest Whitaker) (An elder statesman in Wakanda, and the keeper of the heart-shaped herb), another undercover Wakandan, and confirms T'Chaka's suspicions. N'Jobu is ordered to return to Wakanda and face punishment for his crimes. In the present day, following T'Chaka's death, his son T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) (The king of the African nation of Wakanda, who gains enhanced strength by ingesting the Heart-Shaped Herb. After the events of Captain America: Civil War, and the death of his father T'Chaka, T'Challa is in mourning while ascending to the throne) returns to Wakanda to assume the throne. He and Okoye (Danai Gurira) (An "extremely proud" Wakandan and traditionalist from the Border Tribe, who is the head of the Dora Milaje, the all-female special forces of Wakanda, who serve as T'Challa's bodyguards), the leader of the Dora Milaje regiment, extract Nakia (Lupita Nyong'O), T'Challa's ex-lover, from an undercover assignment (against an organized group of Nigerian women-traffickers) so she can attend his coronation ceremony with his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) and younger sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) (T'Challa's 16-year-old sister and the princess of Wakanda who designs new technology for the country). At the ceremony, the Jabari Tribe's leader M'Baku (Winston Duke) (A powerful, ruthless warrior who is the leader of Wakanda's mountain tribe, the Jabari, who are in protest to T'Challa being the new king) challenges T'Challa for the crown in ritual combat. T'Challa defeats M'Baku and persuades him to yield rather than die. That night T'Challa is given a mix made up of the heart shaped herbs to give him powers of the Black Panther. The herb connects the soul to the Astral plane, where T'Challa is able to meet the soul of his father T'Chaka. Nakia wants Wakanda to help the needy around the world, but T'Challa wants to protect Wakanda's secrets and technology. After Klaue and Erik Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) (The son of N'Jobu, and a U.S. black-ops soldier who seeks to overthrow his cousin T'Challa) steal a Wakandan artifact from a London Museum. Okoye gets intelligence reports that Klaue plans to sell the Vibranium from the artifact to an American buyer in South Korea, in one day's time. W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), T'Challa's friend and Okoye's lover, urges him to bring Klaue back dead or alive. Shuri designs a new Black Panther suit for T'Challa. The suit absorbs kinetic energy and then holds it in place for redistribution. T'Challa, Okoye, and Nakia travel to an underground casino in Busan, South Korea, where Klaue plans to sell the artifact to CIA agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman). A firefight erupts and Klaue attempts to flee but is caught by T'Challa after a lengthy chase through Busan. T'Challa reluctantly releases him to Ross' custody. Klaue tells Ross that Wakanda's international image of a poor third world country is a front for a technologically advanced civilization. Klaue says that he is the only outside who has ever seen the Wakanda Vibranium mine, and there is a whole mountain of it. Erik attacks and extracts Klaue (He tracks Klaue from the energy signature from Klaue's arm cannon which is powered by Vibranium) as Ross is gravely injured protecting Nakia. Rather than pursue Klaue, T'Challa takes Ross to Wakanda, where their technology can save him. Erik gets back to normal in a day, and witnesses the true extent of Wakandan technology. While Shuri heals Ross, T'Challa confronts Zuri about N'Jobu. Zuri explains that N'Jobu planned to share Wakanda's technology with people of African descent around the world to help them conquer their oppressors. N'Jobu then wanted Wakanda to rule all countries in the world since Wakanda would control the supply of Vibranium. As T'Chaka arrested N'Jobu, N'Jobu attacked Zuri, forcing T'Chaka to kill him. T'Chaka ordered Zuri to lie that N'Jobu had disappeared and left behind N'Jobu's American son, Erik, in order to maintain the lie that N'Jobu was nowhere to be found. Erik became a U.S. black ops soldier, adopting the name "Killmonger". In reality Erik has a claim to the throne as well, since he is of royal blood. Meanwhile, Killmonger kills Klaue and takes his body to Wakanda. He is brought before the tribal elders, revealing his identity and claim to the throne. Killmonger challenges T'Challa to ritual combat; after killing Zuri, he defeats T'Challa and hurls him over a waterfall. After ingesting the heart-shaped herb, Killmonger orders the rest incinerated, but Nakia extracts one first. Killmonger, supported by W'Kabi and his army, prepares to distribute shipments of Wakandan weapons to operatives around the world. Nakia, Shuri, Ramonda and Ross flee to the Jabari Tribe for aid. They find a comatose T'Challa, rescued by the Jabari in repayment for sparing M'Baku's life. Healed by Nakia's herb, T'Challa returns to fight Killmonger, who dons his own Black Panther suit and commands W'Kabi and his army to attack T'Challa. Shuri, Nakia, and the Dora Milaje join T'Challa, while Ross remotely pilots a jet and shoots down the planes carrying the Vibranium weapons. M'Baku and the Jabari arrive to reinforce T'Challa. Confronted by Okoye, W'Kabi and his army stand down. Fighting in Wakanda's Vibranium mine, T'Challa disrupts Killmonger's suit and stabs him. Killmonger refuses to be healed, choosing to die a free man rather than be incarcerated. T'Challa establishes an outreach center at the building where N'Jobu died to be run by Nakia and Shuri. In a mid-credits scene, T'Challa appears before the United Nations to reveal Wakanda's true nature to the world. In a post-credits scene, Shuri helps Bucky Barnes with his recuperation

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Movie Review — Black Panther: An Analysis of its Historical and Cultural Context

Black Panther: an Analysis of Its Historical and Cultural Context

• Categories: Movie Review

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Words: 642 |

Published: Jan 29, 2024

Words: 642 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, the historical and cultural context of "black panther", analysis of themes and symbolism, character analysis, social and political commentary.

• Coates, T. (2018). "The Black Panther Chronicles: A True History of Wakanda". Black Panther (2018).
• Larsen, P. (2018). "Black Panther". Marvel Comics.
• Palmer, C. (2019). "The Inclusive Filmmaking Revolution Keeps Growing in Hollywood". Vanity Fair.
• Paterra, S. (2019). "The Historical Significance of Wakanda". Time.
• Phinney, M. (2019). "History and Representations of the Black Panther Party". Journal of Pan African Studies.

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• Black Panther, explained

Everything you need to know about the Marvel superhero

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Black Panther is the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, featuring Chadwick Boseman in the title role of a man who is simultaneously a superhero, a king and a religious figurehead. The movie won’t just be an introduction to a new hero, but an introduction to a whole new world of the Marvel Universe, a fictional country with its own rich history and culture.

So before you head out to see Black Panther on Feb. 16, take a moment to brush up on T’Challa, king of Wakanda — the Black Panther himself.

Who is Black Panther?

There have been many Black Panthers, but the one who fights alongside the Avengers is T’Challa, the ruling king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda. Every king of Wakanda is also a Black Panther, and so T’Challa has inherited his role — protector of Wakanda and avatar of the Panther God — from a line that reaches back to prehistory.

That means he’s not just a superhero. He’s a political leader and a religious figurehead, the ruler of what is secretly the most technologically advanced country in the world. T’Challa wields the power of his country’s best science as well as the blessings of its goddess, and sometimes even the complete knowledge of his ancestors, the previous Black Panthers. To the wider world, he is a superhero, but in Wakanda, he is the king who decided to end the country’s long seclusion.

As king, T’Challa has access to the military and technological might of Wakanda, including an array of advanced combat techniques and the technology in his suit. As himself, he has his own superhuman intellect. And as the chosen of the Panther God, Bast, the central deity of Wakanda’s state religion, he is permitted to eat her Heart-Shaped Herb without being poisoned by it. This gives him his enhanced strength, reflexes, senses and regenerative abilities — much like another Marvel superhero who is an avatar and protector for his country, Captain America.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther made his first appearance in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War . As a Marvel superhero, he first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in 1966, from the pens of that legendary Marvel Comics creative team, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Was he named after the Black Panthers?

Fantastic Four #52 predates the October 1966 founding of the Black Panther Party, the socialist and anti-fascist group that organized to unite African-Americans against police brutality and racial supremacy in American society and politics. Stan Lee has also denied that the name was inspired by either the 761st Tank Battalion, a predominantly African-American unit of the U.S. Army during World War II that was known as the “Black Panthers,” or the panther logo of the Black Panther Party’s antecedent group, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.

In 1972, Marvel attempted to switch to “the Black Leopard,” but it didn’t stick. “Black Panther” just sounds cooler.

But while the character’s name may not have been directly inspired by any specific element of African or African-American culture, Black Panther has since become a milestone himself. He is the first black superhero to appear in either the Marvel or DC Universes.

What’s the origin story of King T’Challa, the Black Panther?

T’Challa’s origin in the films is slightly different from in the comics. In Captain America: Civil War , his father T’Chaka was killed as part of a plot to discredit and divide the Avengers, and it seems as though T’Challa became the Black Panther before he inherited the throne.

In the world of Marvel’s comics, however, we know quite a bit more.

T’Challa is the latest in a line of Wakandan kings stretching back centuries, born to King T’Chaka and Queen N’Yami, T’Chaka’s first wife and the chief scientist of Wakanda. Unfortunately, N’Yami succumbed to an illness and died only days after T’Challa’s birth.

When T’Challa was still a young boy, T’Chaka remarried to a woman named Ramonda, who, though she was born in South Africa, is one of the rare non-Wakandans to have peacefully discovered the country. Queen Ramonda (played by Angela Bassett in Black Panther ) has been a mother to T’Challa in everything but blood, and is the mother of his half-sister, Shuri (played by Letitia Wright), who is second in line to the throne.

T’Challa became king through tragedy, when the scientist Ulysses Klaue (pronounced “claw”) killed T’Chaka in battle. But T’Challa’s ongoing reign eclipsed the tragedy of its beginnings when, under his leadership, Wakanda revealed its existence to the world and took its place among the rest of Earth’s nations.

“T’Challa is a character that stands at the crossroads between tradition and modernity,” writer Evan Narcisse told me over the phone. Narcisse has recently taken up the task of retelling T’Challa’s early history in a six-issue miniseries entitled Rise of the Black Panther . “Wakanda’s history is about being unconquered — about black excellence uninterrupted by white colonialism — and he has to decide how to move that tradition forward, and in order to move that tradition forward he has to break with tradition.”

The core themes of T’Challa’s character are within that dilemma — tradition versus change, and old ways versus new ways.

“How do I acknowledge the modern world,” Narcisse puts it, “while at the same time preserving the history that got me here?”

What makes Wakanda so special?

The history that got T’Challa here is that of Wakanda, an African nation that has never been conquered by outsiders. Whether other tribes, European colonists, Nazis or mad scientists, Wakanda has remained its own.

(Wakanda is also special because of a unique natural resource, but more on that later.)

This means that Wakanda’s culture — its arts and philosophies, its design aesthetic, and even the focus of its scientific efforts — are largely uninfluenced by foreign cultures. To many fans, and to many creators, Wakanda represents a dream of an Africa undisturbed by European colonization and European cultural dominance.

And that makes Black Panther stories a part of the genre of Afrofuturism.

What is Afrofuturism?

“Afrofuturism is a way of looking at the future — or alternate realities — which references African cultures or cultures in the African diaspora,” writer and filmmaker Ytash Womack told me in a phone interview. “It is [an] intersection between black culture, the imagination, liberation, technology and mysticism. You see it a lot in art, artistic visions, artistic aesthetics; but it’s also a way of looking at the world as well.”

Womack is the author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture , and the director of the Afrofuturist short film “A Love Letter to the Ancestors From Chicago.” She told me that the term “Afrofuturism” was coined relatively recently, in the 1990s. The work of many artists — from musicians like Sun Ra and the Arkestra and Parliament-Funkadelic to writers like Octavia Butler and Samuel L. Delaney — has been sort of grandfathered into the genre since. (Contemporary Afrofuturist creators include Janelle Monáe and N.K. Jemisin.)

So Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were not thinking of Afrofuturism when they came up with Black Panther. But their character has become a part of the subgenre because of how he has evolved over time, through the work of Black Panther artists and writers after them.

T’Challa is part of a line of heroes stretching back — and, should he one day have children — forward in time. And there have even been times in Marvel continuity when he has been able to directly draw on the power of his ancestors, through a connection to the spirits of all the Black Panthers who came before him.

“One of the things that makes [Afrofuturism] different from other science fiction traditions is that there’s an understanding that the future, the past and present are all part of the same thing,” said Womack. “The future isn’t just seen as this space way out there and the past isn’t way in the distance.”

Black Panther’s connection to the feminine is also central to his place in the Afrofuturism pantheon, according to Womack. Over time, T’Challa has become supported by a solid cast of female characters — and not just one who serves a female panther god. He relies on Wakanda’s Queen Mother, Ramonda, and also his half-sister Shuri, who even served as Wakanda’s queen and its Black Panther for a while. And T’Challa is always attended to by his bodyguards, the Dora Milaje (more on them later).

Womack also pointed out that T’Challa is unusual for a superhero in that he has an obligation — not just a self-appointed responsibility — to a community.

“That’s very Afrofuturist,” she said, “in the sense that there’s this intersection of community. [Then] you have this balance of masculinity and femininity that’s embraced and encouraged, and then you have this time dynamic where the future, past and present is overlapping a bit.”

“Afrofuturism,” Womack explained, “is a reminder that people of the African continent and diaspora have contributed to ideas around the future — ideas around space and time in history — and that they continue to do so today. So we are very much a part of that story in the past, and we are a part of that story in the future, and we’re part of that story today.”

What is vibranium?

A great part of Wakanda’s story is its technology. The country has made huge advances in methods of propulsion, communication, weaponry and medicine — and, of course, Wakanda’s cloaking technology has allowed it to hide all of that from the outside world for as long as it desired. It is the most technologically advanced human society in the Marvel Universe.

Wakanda’s technological prowess comes from its land. In the distant past, the country was the site of a massive meteorite strike, and the resting place of that meteorite, the Great Mound, is now the site of a massive vibranium mine. Vibranium’s properties allow it to completely absorb vibrations — from the impact of bullets to sound itself. Harnessing vibranium launched Wakanda’s technological progress decades ahead of the rest of the world.

The presence of so much of a rare substance in Wakanda is one of the reasons that the country has kept itself hidden for so long, so that it wouldn’t have to fend off invading armies all of the time. When Wakandans did leave — often to study the sciences and return with what they had learned — they swore themselves to secrecy about their origins.

It was rare, but not unheard of, for outsiders to discover Wakanda with noble intentions. T’Challa’s stepmother, Ramonda, is one. And T’Challa’s grandfather, Azzuri the Wise, once became so impressed by the valor and integrity of an outsider that he gave him the rarest of gifts: a piece of pure vibranium. That vibranium served the outsider well, after he had it fashioned into an incredibly durable shield.

Who are the Dora Milaje?

A relatively recent addition to the Black Panther mythos, the Dora Milaje (pronounced DOOR-uh meh-LAH-shay ) were created by Priest (a comics writer who has also been credited under the names “Christopher Priest” and “Jim Owsley”) for his 1998 ongoing series Black Panther . They are a highly trained, all-female group of warriors who are sworn to protect the king of Wakanda.

The Dora Milaje were apparently created as a way of keeping peace within Wakanda — each village would send its most promising young candidate to the capital to become a trained fighter among the king’s retinue. Originally, they were also considered his “concomitants,” meaning that he was expected to choose one of them to become his wife.

Obviously, neither T’Chaka nor T’Challa obeyed that particular stricture. And Ta-Nehisi Coates, the most recent writer to take on Black Panther at Marvel, has been working to change that particular aspect of the concept.

“The Dora Milaje are raised to be the bodyguards for Black Panther, for the king of Wakanda, but depending on whose rendition you’re looking at, they’re also raised to potentially become his wife,” he told Vice in 2016 . “Given what I know of men in the real world and what I know of men throughout history, that’s a situation that’s ripe for abuse. So it occurred to me that some of the Dora Milaje might have issues with that.”

In Coates’ Black Panther , two of the Dora Milaje, Ayo and Aneka, fall in love with each other, instead of their king. They grow disillusioned with T’Challa’s focus on more global and cosmopolitan concerns, and defect from the Dora Milaje in order to become avenging vigilantes on behalf of marginalized and abused women in the Wakandan countryside. Eventually, of course, they find themselves allied with their king again, but on a somewhat more equal footing.

Ayo, played by Florence Kasumba, made a very memorable appearance in Captain America: Civil War , and she will be appearing again in Black Panther . Lupita Nyong’o ( 12 Years a Slave , Star Wars : The Force Awakens ) and Danai Gurira ( The Walking Dead ) are also playing Dora Milaje by the names of Nakia and Okoye, respectively.

Who are Black Panther’s villains, Ulysses Klaue and Erik Killmonger?

Ulysses Klaue (played by Andy Serkis in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Black Panther ) has a long history with more than one Black Panther. While searching for a steady source of ultra-rare vibranium to fuel his mad science, Klaue discovered Wakanda and attempted to take its mines by force. He and his strike team were eventually routed by Wakandan troops, but not before Klaue had killed the Black Panther — T’Chaka, that is — whose son T’Challa had taken up Klaue’s own sonic weapon and turned it on its creator in revenge.

Klaue escaped with his life, but T’Challa had blasted away his right hand. So he did what any self-respecting supervillain would: He replaced it with another powerful sonic weapon, capable of translating sound into physical force, and started calling himself Klaw. (And even later than that he became a being of pure sound, but you probably don’t have to worry about that.)

But Klaue appears to be something of a minor villain in Black Panther , while the main show is all about Erik Killmonger. In the comics, Killmonger is a Wakandan native who grew up in exile because of his father’s support of Ulysses Klaue. Killmonger believes that T’Challa has allowed Wakanda to come under the corrupting influence of outside cultures, particularly white ones, and seeks to take the throne for himself, in order to guide the country back to his ideal traditions.

It seems like Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger will have similar goals, but not necessarily similar motives. Entertainment Weekly described the character as “a Wakandan exile who seeks to overthrow the new king.”

“The best way to describe him and T’Challa’s relationship is Magneto and Professor X,” Jordan told MTV News in 2017 . “He has his eyes on the throne, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get there.”

Anything else?

OK, so, one day every year, any Wakandan citizen can challenge the Black Panther to single combat, and if they win, they become ruler of Wakanda. So every year, T’Challa spends a whole day fighting and beats everybody, every time.

This seems like an uncertain way to run a government, but it sure is a heck of a way to write a comic book.

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'Black Panther' Is A Superhero Story You Haven't Seen Before — And It's Thrilling

Glen Weldon

T'Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) settle their differences, Wakanda style. Matt Kennedy/Marvel Studios hide caption

T'Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) settle their differences, Wakanda style.

In 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — two Jewish kids from Cleveland who were reading the alarming news coming out of Europe — created precisely the hero necessary to put things right: an impossibly strong and nigh-invulnerable paragon of virtue and butt-kicking they called Superman. He could have ended Hitler's advance with a snap of his fingers — and he definitely would have, if only he weren't a creature of pure fantasy. Three years later, as the Nazi threat escalated, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby went a step further, summoning into being a hero who was essentially an American flag come to dynamic, Hitler-punching life. They called him Captain America, because subtlety is not what superhero comics are about.

There's a poignancy in the fact that these two heroes were products of grim necessity — a global menace threatened our way of life, and a nation gripped by fear and anxiety found in Superman and Captain America twin release valves. By indulging in the belief that someone big and strong and primary-colored could rescue them and beat the bad guy, Americans managed to steal a few moments of vicarious satisfaction.

There was a hole in the world, so they created heroes to fix it.

That same poignancy permeates Black Panther , which is Marvel Studio's 18th superhero movie, though it certainly doesn't feel like it. Ryan Coogler's third film is, happily, no by-the-numbers, big-budget hero narrative of the sort to which we've grown inured — it's by turns as intimate and immediate as 2013's Fruitvale Station and as stirring as 2015's Creed.

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Black panther's mythical home may not be so mythical after all.

Chadwick Boseman is T'Challa, king of Wakanda, an unimaginably advanced, ruthlessly isolationist African nation that hides its riches and its tech from the world at large. Wakanda, as vividly and gorgeously realized here, is a soaring Afro-futurist utopia powered by the world's rarest, hardest and blue-glowiest metal, vibranium. (Fair warning: If one were to sneak a flask into a screening of Black Panther and drink every time any character says the word "vibranium," one would spend the film's final hour in the lobby having one's stomach pumped by a team of professionals.)

It's a credit to the production team that, even after 18 times at-bat, we're still finding innovative way to visualize superhero tech (this time out, it's a kind of Matrix -meets-Magic-Sand sort of deal), and still turning out fight choreography and stunts capable of quickening even the most jaded pulse (a nighttime car chase through the streets of Busan, South Korea, includes a moment engineered to elicit cheers, because Coogler knows what these films are about).

Plus there are war rhinos, so. I mean.

As for the story, it is a truth universally acknowledged that wherever there is a palace, there must be palace intrigue: T'Challa's claim to the throne is challenged by Michael B. Jordan's fabulously monikered Killmonger, who manages to mong quite a few kills before facing off against his rival. Like all of the best villains, Killmonger's motivations are grounded in his zeal to correct a great injustice — one may quibble with his master plan's methodology (i.e, the wholesale slaughter of billions), but you gotta admit: Dude has a point.

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The Walking Dead 's Danai Gurira, as Okoye, leads Wakanda's elite corps of female warriors, the sight of which in combat provides many of the film's most thrilling moments. Shuri (Letitia Wright), T'Challa's wry and brilliant younger sister, supplies the kingdom with its tech, and the film with its laugh lines. Lupita Nyong'o plays a love interest who's actually interesting — a young woman who chafes against Wakanda's age-old policy of hoarding its wealth and tech from the world. Angela Bassett is on hand, along with her cheekbones, to look regal and fierce in costume designer Ruth E. Carter's royal couture.

There's also a couple of middle-aged white dudes (Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis) doing stuff somewhere in the background, but never mind, the film isn't about them.

Which, of course, is truly what's new here.

The genre of superhero cinema is wider and deeper than many give it credit for, because the stories we've seen thus far have followed similar arcs, starring similar actors, in similar settings. In Black Panther , Coogler, too, rounds the familiar bases: Yes, those T'Challa versus Killmonger scenes do duly check the "Hero Fights Evil Version of Himself" box; yes, you've seen elements of that car chase before; and yes, the sudden but inevitable death of a supporting character does inspire T'Challa to scream "NOOOOOOO!" because that's the law.

But in a much more crucial way, Black Panther is a story we haven't seen told before in popular cinema — a story about black people completely untouched by colonialism, who exist entirely outside the global systems of institutionalized racism.

It's a fantasy, in other words — but then, that's exactly what superhero stories are for. It's difficult to explain the simple, inspiring and empowering joy of seeing a version of oneself onscreen, to those who've spent their lives unthinkingly soaking in it. A key reason for Wonder Woman 's runaway success last summer was that moment she climbed out of that trench, revealed herself to the world, withstood an onslaught of machine-gun fire and proceeded to get Amazonian on some enemy soldiers. Male heroes have been doing something similar for decades, in and out of spandex, but now, women in the audience got the chance to feel the raw and blissfully uncomplicated power of representation and understand what the nerds in their life saw in this silly stuff. Black Panther is filled with similar moments: a pan-African cast getting hero moment after hero moment in a gorgeous Afro-futurist setting where the light is always golden, and the tech is always glowy.

There is a hole in the world, a big one. And although one movie, one fictional hero, can't fix it, it can tell a story — a new story — that millions have hungered for.

Correction Feb. 19, 2018

An earlier version of this story mistakenly listed the setting of a car chase as Seoul.

Black Panther Is More Than a Superhero Movie

The director Ryan Coogler's addition to the Marvel pantheon is a superb genre film—and quite a bit more.

Note: Although this review avoids plot spoilers, it does discuss the thematic elements of the film at some length.

After an animated introduction to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, Black Panther opens in Oakland in 1992. This may seem an odd choice, but it is in fact quite apt. The film’s director, Ryan Coogler, got his start in the city, having been born there in 1986. His filmmaking career has its roots there, too, as it was the setting for his debut feature, Fruitvale Station .

A bunch of schoolboys (a fictionalized young Coogler perhaps among them) play pickup hoops on a court with a milk-crate basket. But in the tall apartment building above them, two black radicals are plotting a robbery. There’s a knock on the door and one of the men looks through the peephole: “Two Grace Jones–lookin’ chicks—with spears!” I won’t recount the rest of the scene, except to note that the commingling of two very different iterations of the term “Black Panther”—the comic-book hero and the revolutionary organization, ironically established just months apart in 1966—is in no way accidental, and it will inform everything that follows.

Yes, Black Panther is another multizillion-dollar installment in the burgeoning Marvel Cinematic Universe. But that is not all that it is. Other superhero movies have dabbled in big ideas—the Dark Knight trilogy most notably, and the X-Men franchise to a lesser degree. But their commitments to the moral and political questions they contemplated were relatively haphazard and/or peripheral. The arguments Black Panther undertakes with itself are central to its architecture, a narrative spine that runs from the first scene to the last.

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The hero of the tale is, of course, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the king of Wakanda and, as the Black Panther, protector of his people. Having drunk the nectar of a mystical flower, he has the strength of many men; in a suit woven of bullet-proof vibranium, he is virtually indestructible. (That’s the Marvel part.) Indeed, Wakanda itself is built on the bounty of a meteorite bearing vibranium—the strongest metal on Earth—that struck Africa millennia ago. Technologically advanced beyond the dreams of any other nation, Wakanda cloaks itself from the world behind an illusory rainforest. As far as the rest of the world knows, it is a “third-world country—textiles, shepherds, cool outfits.”

An advanced African civilization, thriving in isolation, untouched by war or colonialism: This is the first alternative vision of the world Coogler explores, but neither the last nor the most intriguing.

As the new king—his father having been killed in Captain America: Civil War , the movie that first introduced Black Panther—T’Challa is supported, and occasionally hindered, by an assortment of family, colleagues, and rivals: his younger sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), a precocious tech genius who outshines even Tony Stark; his regal mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett); the kingdom’s high priest, Zuri (Forest Whitaker); the surly chief of a rebellious clan, M’Baku (Winston Duke); T’Challa’s best friend and chief of the border guard, W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya); his chief general and head of the Dora Milaje, an all-female royal honor guard, Okoye (Danai Gurira); and his former flame, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), who is also a covert agent for the Dora Milaje.

When we first meet Nakia, she is working undercover to bust a ring of human traffickers operating in Nigeria. (When T’Challa “rescues” her from the traffickers, she is nonplussed: “What are you doing here? You’ve ruined my mission!”) Nakia’s experience in poor, neighboring countries has led her to question Wakanda’s policy of secrecy and isolation. Think, after all, of the good their nation’s wealth and knowledge could do in the world, and in Africa in particular. “Wakanda,” she tells T’Challa, “is strong enough to help others and protect itself.” This is Coogler’s second vision: an African nation that could serve as a beacon of hope—curing diseases, offering foreign aid, accepting refugees—across the continent and beyond.

The isolation that Nakia is now questioning has been imperiled just once before. In the early 1990s, a South African arms trader named Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, for once appearing in the flesh rather than motion capture), aided by one of the revolutionaries we met back in Oakland (a tragic, excellent Sterling K. Brown), penetrated Wakanda’s border and absconded with a small cache of vibranium.

But far graver threats now loom. Klaue has begun working with Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), a mysterious American black ops soldier trained in assassination and regime destabilization. And Killmonger offers yet a third vision of Wakanda’s potential geopolitical legacy: as the vanguard of a global revolution to invert the existing racial order. With Wakanda’s technology and weapons, insurgents from Africa to, well, Oakland, could successfully rise up against their (primarily white) persecutors. “The world’s going to change, and this time we will be on top,” Killmonger declares, adding, with knife-edge irony, “The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire!”

The interplay between these competing Afrocentric visions is heady stuff, and not what one generally anticipates from a superhero film. Yet Coogler, working from a script he co-wrote with Joe Robert Cole ( American Crime Story ), manages to integrate them smoothly into the genre. Whether or not this is the best film Marvel Studios has made to date—and it is clearly in the discussion—it is by far the most thought-provoking. (Though my colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates played no direct role in the film, his recent work on the Black Panther comics was a substantial inspiration. And Vann R. Newkirk II has more, much more, on the thematic resonances of the movie .)

As should be apparent by now, Black Panther brings together one of the most impressive principally black casts ever assembled for a major Hollywood movie. (Klaue is one of only two significant white characters, along with CIA agent Everett K. Ross, played by Martin Freeman.) A particular standout is Jordan, who has now starred in all three of Coogler’s feature films. (He deserved a superhero role this rich for suffering through Josh Trank’s disastrous Fantastic Four .) As has been noted ad nauseum, the single most common flaw of Marvel’s movies to date has been their lack of intriguing or memorable villains. (Ronan the Accuser? Malekith the Dark Elf? Please.) Killmonger—vicious yet relatable, especially once you know his backstory—single-handedly improves that track record to a remarkable degree.

It is notable, too, that so many of the film’s central characters are female. In a spirit journey, T’Challa speaks with his dead father, who counsels him to “surround yourself with people you trust.” T’Challa follows this advice and, as a result, surrounds himself almost exclusively with women. On a brief, Bondian foray to a casino in Busan, South Korea, T’Challa brings along Nakia and Okoye as teammates. A later mission has a still-greater female/male ratio of three-to-one. This is a film that does not merely pass the Bechdel test , it demolishes it. Moreover, there is an uncommon richness to the female characters, in their interactions both with T’Challa—as mother, as sister, as ex-lover, as bodyguard—and with one another. A scene late in the film in which Nakia and Okoye question the basis of one another’s loyalties is among the best in the entire movie.

And, yes, of course, Black Panther is still a Marvel movie, with all that entails. Happily, the film is allowed to stand mostly on its own, without major tie-ins to the broader Marvel universe apart from Freeman’s CIA agent. (The second post-credits sequence includes a character that you should have, but probably won’t have, seen coming.) The production and especially costume design —both of which emphasize African elements—are top-notch, and the overall visuals arresting: the panthers that T’Challa encounters in his spirit dream; the glowing spiral staircase that winds its way down into Shuri’s lab; the Kong-skulled palace of a renegade Wakandan tribe.

The fight sequences are also better than usual—in particular, two instances in which T’Challa must submit to the Wakandan ritual of blood-combat to retain his throne. And while the movie concludes with a customarily big, CGI-laden battle, at least neither side is populated by faceless Chitauri or Ultron-bots. If anything, the finale more closely resembles those of the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings pictures. (Two words: war rhinos.)

In T’Challa’s spirit dream, his father also offers the advice that “it’s hard for a good man to be king.” Which raises the question: Is it hard for a good movie to be king? If the formidable box office predictions for Black Panther are remotely accurate, the answer will be a resounding no—and quite rightly so. All hail the new king.

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Black Panther review – Marvel's thrilling vision of the afrofuture

The latest big-screen superhero story is a subversive and uproarious action-adventure, in which African stereotypes are upended and history is rewritten

Director Ryan Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole tackle the superheroes of colour question with this surreal and uproarious movie version of Marvel’s Black Panther legend, in which the sheer enjoyment of everyone involved pumps the movie with fun. It’s an action-adventure origin myth which plays less like a conventional superhero film and more like a radical Brigadoon or a delirious adventure by Jules Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs. Those were the colonial-era mythmakers whose exoticism must surely have influenced Stan Lee and Jack Kirby when they devised the comic books in the 1960s, supplying the Afro- in the steely afrofuturism of Black Panther that generations of fans have treasured and reclaimed as an alternative to the pop culture of white America. But it’s the –futurism that gives Black Panther his distinctive power.

Chadwick Boseman plays T’Challa, a prince with a sensitive, handsome, boyish face and something introspective, vulnerable and self-questioning in his style. After the death of his father (shown in Captain America: Civil War , from 2016), T’Challa succeeds to the throne of the fictional African state of Wakanda, which lies west of Lake Victoria, on territory that is occupied in the real world by Uganda, Rwanda and northern Tanzania.

Wakanda is, on the face of it, dirt-poor as well as mountainous, jungly and inaccessible. But the point is that the Wakandans have deliberately cultivated the west’s condescending stereotypes of Africa as camouflage, to prevent outside interference. For beneath the foliage, Wakanda is a secret city state with more flying cars and suspended monorails than you can shake a stick at. It’s a hidden world of supermodernity – though it is nonetheless the land that democracy forgot. And all powered by the hidden element known as vibranium, which supplies limitless energy, and is harnessed by T’Challa in the armoured bodysuit he wears as Black Panther.

T’Challa’s brilliant sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) is his Q figure, a scientist who designs equipment and weaponry. Lupita Nyong’o is Nakia, a Wakandan intelligence agent for whom T’Challa may very well have feelings. Angela Bassett is T’Challa’s widowed mother Ramonda; Forest Whitaker is elder statesman Zuri – basically, the Merlin of T’Challa’s court – and Daniel Kaluuya (from Get Out) plays border tribe chief W’Kabi, a man of uncertain loyalties.

But there are problems in Wakanda, not all stemming from the film’s few white characters: CIA man Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) blunders into Wakandan power politics, and white South African career criminal Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) plots to steal their vibranium. The Wakandan exile Erik Killmonger (Michael B Jordan) wants to take over T’Challa’s throne and overturn his quietist approach, take advantage of Wakanda’s technological superiority, stand up for racially oppressed African Americans and black people everywhere, and establish a new Wakandan empire of righteousness on which the sun will never set. Our first view of Erik is when he is visiting an exhibition of looted African artefacts in the “Museum of Great Britain” in London.

This setup teases us with its resemblances to Thor and Asgard, as well as its inversions and theme-variants on the Lion King myth, yet it is very much not about a wicked uncle killing a noble king. The vibranium is vitally important; absurd, of course, but very much aligned with all those other natural resources that somehow only enrich people outside Africa: gold, diamonds, rubber and the coltan in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that we need for our smartphones. Deadpan, the film allows us to register the difference between T’Challa and Erik as an African and an African American – Erik being burdened by the traumas and injustices of American history in a way T’Challa is not. It used to be remarked that Barack Obama, born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father, was freed of that burden; his successor, under the impression that there is somewhere in Africa called “Nambia”, is not burdened by any great interest in Africa, but perhaps Nambia is his own creative concept neighbouring Wakanda.

And where do we go after this? Does Black Panther get to be another subordinate bit-part player in future Marvel ensemble movies? I hope not: I want stories where Black Panther takes on people outside Wakanda and I hope that Nakia gets a movie of her own. The intriguing thing about Black Panther is that it doesn’t look like a superhero film – more a wide-eyed fantasy romance: exciting, subversive and funny.

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• Superhero movies
• Film adaptations
• Lupita Nyong'o
• Forest Whitaker
• Daniel Kaluuya

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The Revolutionary Power of Black Panther

Marvel’s new movie marks a major milestone By JAMIL SMITH

The first movie I remember seeing in a theater had a black hero. Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, didn’t have any superpowers, but he ran his own city. That movie, the 1980 Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back , introduced Calrissian as a complicated human being who still did the right thing. That’s one reason I grew up knowing I could be the same.

If you are reading this and you are white, seeing people who look like you in mass media probably isn’t something you think about often. Every day, the culture reflects not only you but nearly infinite versions of you—executives, poets, garbage collectors, soldiers, nurses and so on. The world shows you that your possibilities are boundless. Now, after a brief respite, you again have a President.

Those of us who are not white have considerably more trouble not only finding representation of ourselves in mass media and other arenas of public life, but also finding representation that indicates that our humanity is multi­faceted. Relating to characters onscreen is necessary not merely for us to feel seen and understood, but also for others who need to see and understand us. When it doesn’t happen, we are all the poorer for it.

This is one of the many reasons Black Panther is significant. What seems like just another entry in an endless parade of super­hero movies is actually something much bigger. It hasn’t even hit theaters yet and its cultural footprint is already enormous. It’s a movie about what it means to be black in both America and Africa—and, more broadly, in the world. Rather than dodge complicated themes about race and identity, the film grapples head-on with the issues affecting modern-day black life. It is also incredibly entertaining, filled with timely comedy, sharply choreographed action and gorgeously lit people of all colors. “You have superhero films that are gritty dramas or action comedies,” director Ryan Coogler tells TIME. But this movie, he says, tackles another important genre: “Superhero films that deal with issues of being of African descent.”

Black Panther is the 18th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a franchise that has made $13.5 billion at the global box office over the past 10 years. (Marvel is owned by Disney.) It may be the first mega­budget movie—not just about superheroes, but about anyone—to have an African-American director and a predominantly black cast. Hollywood has never produced a blockbuster this splendidly black.

The movie, out Feb. 16, comes as the entertain­ment industry is wrestling with its toxic treatment of women and persons of color. This rapidly expanding reckoning—one that reflects the importance of representation in our culture—is long overdue. Black Panther is poised to prove to Hollywood that African-American narratives have the power to generate profits from all audiences. And, more important, that making movies about black lives is part of showing that they matter.

The invitation to the Black Panther premiere read “Royal attire requested.” Yet no one showed up to the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on Jan. 29 looking like an extra from a British costume drama. On display instead were crowns of a different sort—ascending head wraps made of various African fabrics. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o wore her natural hair tightly wrapped above a resplendent bejeweled purple gown. Men, including star Chadwick Boseman and Coogler, wore Afrocentric patterns and clothing, dashikis and boubous. Co-star Daniel Kaluuya, an Oscar nominee for his star turn in Get Out , arrived wearing a kanzu, the formal tunic of his Ugandan ancestry.

After the Obama era, perhaps none of this should feel groundbreaking. But it does. In the midst of a regressive cultural and political moment fueled in part by the white-nativist movement, the very existence of Black Panther feels like resistance. Its themes challenge institutional bias, its characters take unsubtle digs at oppressors, and its narrative includes prismatic perspectives on black life and tradition. The fact that Black Panther is excellent only helps.

Back when the film was announced, in 2014, nobody knew that it would be released into the fraught climate of President Trump’s America—where a thriving black future seems more difficult to see. Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville chaos last summer equated those protesting racism with violent neo-Nazis defending a statue honoring a Confederate general. Immigrants from Mexico, Central America and predominantly Muslim countries are some of the President’s most frequent scapegoats. So what does it mean to see this film, a vision of unmitigated black excellence, in a moment when the Commander in Chief reportedly, in a recent meeting, dismissed the 54 nations of Africa as “sh-thole countries”?

As is typical of the climate we’re in, Black Panther is already running into its share of trolls—including a Facebook group that sought, unsuccessfully, to flood the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with negative ratings of the film. That Black Panther signifies a threat to some is unsurprising. A fictional African King with the technological war power to destroy you—or, worse, the wealth to buy your land—may not please someone who just wants to consume the latest Marvel chapter without deeper political consideration. Black Panther is emblematic of the most productive responses to bigotry: rather than going for hearts and minds of racists, it celebrates what those who choose to prohibit equal representation and rights are ignoring, willfully or not. They are missing out on the full possibility of the world and the very America they seek to make “great.” They cannot stop this representation of it. When considering the folks who preemptively hate Black Panther and seek to stop it from influencing American culture, I echo the response that the movie’s hero T’Challa is known to give when warned of those who seek to invade his home country: Let them try.

The history of black power and the movement that bore its name can be traced back to the summer of 1966. The activist Stokely Carmichael was searching for something more than mere liberty. To him, integration in a white-dominated America meant assimilation by default. About one year after the assassination of Malcolm X and the Watts riots in Los Angeles, Carmichael took over the Student Non­violent Coordinating Committee from John Lewis. Carmichael decided to move the organization away from a philosophy of pacifism and escalate the group’s militancy to emphasize armed self-defense, black business ownership and community control.

In June of that year, James Meredith, an activist who four years earlier had become the first black person admitted to Ole Miss, started the March Against Fear , a long walk of protest from Memphis to Mississippi, alone. On the second day of the march, he was wounded by a gunman. Carmichael and tens of thousands of others continued in Meredith’s absence. Carmichael, who was arrested halfway through the march, was incensed upon his release. “The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over,” he declared before a passionate crowd on June 16. “We been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start sayin’ now is Black Power!”

Black Panther was born in the civil rights era, and he reflected the politics of that time. The month after Carmichael’s Black Power declaration, the character debuted in Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four No. 52. Supernatural strength and agility were his main features, but a genius intellect was his best attribute. “Black Panther” wasn’t an alter ego; it was the formal title for T’Challa, King of Wakanda, a fictional African nation that, thanks to its exclusive hold on the sound-absorbent metal vibranium, had become the most technologically advanced nation in the world.

It was a vision of black grandeur and, indeed, power in a trying time, when more than 41% of ­African Americans were at or below the poverty line and comprised nearly a third of the nation’s poor. Much like the iconic Lieutenant Uhura character, played by Nichelle Nichols, that debuted in Star Trek in September 1966, Black Panther was an expression of Afrofuturism—an ethos that fuses African mythologies, technology and science fiction and serves to rebuke conventional depictions of (or, worse, efforts to bring about) a future bereft of black people. His white creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, did not consciously conjure a fantasy-world response to Carmichael’s call, but the image still held power. T’Challa was not only strong and educated; he was also royalty. He didn’t have to take over. He was already in charge.

“You might say that this African nation is fantasy,” says Boseman, who portrays T’Challa in the movie. “But to have the opportunity to pull from real ideas, real places and real African concepts, and put it inside of this idea of Wakanda—that’s a great opportunity to develop a sense of what that identity is, especially when you’re disconnected from it.”

The character emerged at a time when the civil rights movement rightfully began to increase its demands of an America that had promised so much and delivered so little to its black population. Fifty-two years after the introduction of T’Challa, those demands have yet to be fully answered. According to the Federal Reserve , the typical African-American family had a median net worth of $17,600 in 2016. In contrast, white households had a median net worth of $171,000. The revolutionary thing about Black Panther is that it envisions a world not devoid of racism but one in which black people have the wealth, technology and military might to level the playing field—a scenario applicable not only to the predominantly white landscape of Hollywood but, more important, to the world at large.

The Black Panther Party, the revolutionary organization founded in Oakland, Calif., a few months after T’Challa’s debut, was depicted in the media as a threatening and radical group with goals that differed dramatically from the more pacifist vision of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Lewis. Marvel even briefly changed the character’s name to Black Leopard because of the inevitable association with the Panthers, but soon reverted. For some viewers, “Black Panther” may have undeservedly sinister connotations, but the 2018 film reclaims the symbol to be celebrated by all as an avatar for change.

The urgency for change is partly what Carmichael was trying to express in the summer of ’66, and the powers that be needed to listen. It’s still true in 2018.

Moviegoers first encountered Boseman’s T’Challa in Marvel’s 2016 ensemble hit Captain America: Civil War , and he instantly cut a striking figure in his sleek vibranium suit. As Black Panther opens, with T’Challa grieving the death of his father and coming to grips with his sudden ascension to the Wakandan throne, it’s clear that our hero’s royal upbringing has kept him sheltered from the realities of how systemic racism has touched just about every black life across the globe.

The comic, especially in its most recent incarnations as rendered by the writers Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay , has worked to expunge Euro­centric misconceptions of Africa—and the film’s imagery and thematic material follow suit. “People often ask, ‘What is Black Panther? What is his power?’ And they have a misconception that he only has power through his suit,” says Boseman. “The character is existing with power inside power.”

Coogler says that Black Panther , like his previous films—including the police-brutality drama Fruitvale Station and his innovative Rocky sequel Creed —explores issues of identity. “That’s something I’ve always struggled with as a person,” says the director. “Like the first time that I found out I was black.” He’s talking less about an epidermal self-awareness than about learning how white society views his black skin. “Not just identity, but names. ‘Who are you?’ is a question that comes up a lot in this film. T’Challa knows exactly who he is. The antagonist in this film has many names.”

That villain comes in the form of Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, a former black-ops soldier with Wakandan ties who seeks to both outwit and beat down T’Challa for the crown. As played by a scene-­stealing Michael B. Jordan, Killmonger’s motivations illuminate thorny questions about how black people worldwide should best use their power.

In the movie, Killmonger is, like Coogler, a native of Oakland. By exploring the disparate experiences of Africans and African Americans, Coogler shines a bright light on the psychic scars of slavery’s legacy and how black Americans endure the real-life consequences of it in the present day. Killmonger’s perspective is rendered in full; his rage over how he and other black people across the world have been disenfranchised and disempowered is justifiable.

Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, also includes another important antagonist from the comics: the dastardly and bigoted Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis). “What I love about this experience is that it could have been the idea of black exploitation: he’s gonna fight Klaue, he’s gonna go after the white man and that’s it—that’s the enemy,” Boseman says. He recognizes that some fans will take issue with a black male villain fighting black protagonists. Killmonger fights not only T’Challa, but also warrior women like the spy Nakia (Nyong’o), Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the rest of the Dora Milaje, T’Challa’s all-female royal guards. Killmonger and Shuri (Letitia Wright), T’Challa’s quippy tech-genius sister, also face off.

T’Challa and Killmonger are mirror images, separated only by the accident of where they were born. “What they don’t realize,” Boseman says, “is that the greatest conflict you will ever face will be the conflict with yourself.”

Both T’Challa and Killmonger had to be compelling in order for the movie to succeed. “Obviously, the superhero is who puts you in the seat,” Coogler says.

“That’s who you want to see come out on top. But I’ll be damned if the villains ain’t cool too. They have to be able to stand up to the hero, and have you saying, ‘Man, I don’t know if the hero’s going to make it out of this.’”

“If you don’t have that,” Boseman says, “you don’t have a movie.”

This is not just a movie about a black superhero; it’s very much a black movie. It carries a weight that neither Thor nor Captain America could lift: serving a black audience that has long gone under­represented. For so long, films that depict a reality where whiteness isn’t the default have been ghettoized, marketed largely to audiences of color as niche entertainment, instead of as part of the mainstream. Think of Tyler Perry’s Madea movies, Malcolm D. Lee’s surprise 1999 hit The Best Man or the Barbershop franchise that launched in 2002. But over the past year, the success of films including Get Out and Girls Trip have done even bigger business at the box office , led to commercial acclaim and minted new stars like Kaluuya and Tiffany Haddish. Those two hits have only bolstered an argument that has persisted since well before Spike Lee made his debut: black films with black themes and black stars can and should be marketed like any other. No one talks about Woody Allen and Wes Anderson movies as “white movies” to be marketed only to that audience.

Black Panther marks the biggest move yet in this wave: it’s both a black film and the newest entrant in the most bankable movie franchise in history. For a wary and risk-averse film business, led largely by white film executives who have been historically predisposed to greenlight projects featuring characters who look like them, Black Panther will offer proof that a depiction of a reality of something other than whiteness can make a ton of money.

The film’s positive reception—as of Feb. 6, the day initial reviews surfaced, it had a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes —bodes well for its commercial prospects. Variety predicted that it could threaten the Presidents’ Day weekend record of $152 million, set in 2016 by Deadpool .

Some of the film’s early success can be credited to Nate Moore, an African­-American executive producer in Marvel’s film division who has been vocal about the importance of including black characters in the Marvel universe. But beyond Wakanda, the questions of power and responsibility, it seems, are not only applicable to the characters in Black Panther . Once this film blows the doors off, as expected, Hollywood must do more to reckon with that issue than merely greenlight more black stories. It also needs more Nate Moores.

“I know people [in the entertainment industry] are going to see this and aspire to it,” Boseman says. “But this is also having people inside spaces—gatekeeper positions, people who can open doors and take that idea. How can this be done? How can we be represented in a way that is aspirational?”

Because Black Panther marks such an unprecedented moment that excitement for the film feels almost kinetic. Black Panther parties are being organized, pre- and post-film soirées for fans new and old. A video of young Atlanta students dancing in their classroom once they learned they were going to see the film together went viral in early February. Oscar winner Octavia Spencer announced on her Insta­gram account that she’ll be in Mississippi when Black Panther opens and that she plans to buy out a theater “in an underserved community there to ensure that all our brown children can see themselves as a superhero.”

Many civil rights pioneers and other trailblazing forebears have received lavish cinematic treatments, in films including Malcolm X , Selma and Hidden Figures . Jackie Robinson even portrayed himself onscreen. Fictional celluloid champions have included Virgil Tibbs, John Shaft and Foxy Brown. Lando, too. But Black Panther matters more, because he is our best chance for people of every color to see a black hero. That is its own kind of power.

Jamil Smith is a journalist born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Black Panther review: an electrifying, Afrofuturist superhero movie

Ryan Coogler’s spectacular film diverges from one tradition while honouring another, in the process becoming a unusually poignant, political entry in the Marvel franchise.

☞ Black Panther to the rescue?

Kelli Weston Updated: 15 March 2018

from our forthcoming April 2018 issue

Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa aka Black Panther in the film of the latter name

The latest big-screen superhero spectacle, Black Panther, from director Ryan Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole, begins with a history lesson. A colourful animated sequence unravels the origins of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, as told by a father to his son. Wakanda, the home of our hero T’Challa (played with muted gravitas by Chadwick Boseman ), has disguised itself to the outside world as a poor farming nation, in keeping with the stereotypes that often reduce the continent to a single country.

USA 2018 Certificate 12A  134m 22s

Director Ryan Coogler

Cast T’Challa / Black Panther Chadwick Boseman Erik Killmonger Michael B. Jordan Nakia Lupita Nyong’o Okoye Danai Gurira Everett K. Ross Martin Freeman W’Kabi Daniel Kaluuya Shuri Letitia Wright M’Baku Winston Duke N’Jobu Sterling K. Brown Ramonda Angela Bassett Zuri Forest Whitaker Ulysses Klaue Andy Serkis

[1.90 : 1]

UK release date 13 February 2018 Distributor Walt Disney UK powster.com/marvel/black-panther ►  Trailer

In fact, the entirely self-sufficient Wakanda has never been conquered by outside forces and is the most technologically advanced nation in the world thanks to vibranium, a rare sound-absorbent metal, desperately coveted by those aware of its more violent effects. All at once lush and bucolic, urban and futuristic, with gargantuan rhinos and flying spacecraft and, perhaps most importantly, populated by a people of rich tradition, Wakanda soon becomes emblematic of the film’s loftier themes: it’s a tale of home, and so a tale of history, and so a tale that begs for cultural specificity even in its fantastical framework. Thus Black Panther diverges from the tradition of the superhero films that have come before it, films that by their very nature strive to appease, not to offend.

To be sure, Black Panther is very much a product of its genre. It’s a dynamic, electrifying ride of a film, with balanced measures of comedy, action and heart. But so much of that heart, so much of what will likely resonate with audiences, cannot be extricated from the immovable politics and inherent implications of a black superhero (though he has been preceded by the Blade trilogy and 2004’s Catwoman , among others). The birth of Black Panther in 1966 (created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) predated the official formation of the American Black Panther Party, but coincided with an era of independence for many African countries. It is nearly impossible to divorce Wakanda from its very real neighbours, ripped apart by colonisation and plundered of their natural resources. And to their credit, Coogler and Cole embrace these politics wholeheartedly.

John Kane as King T’Chaka

Black Panther follows the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016) after the sudden death of King T’Chaka ( John Kani ). Still mourning his father, T’Challa returns home to his mother Ramonda (a regal Angela Bassett ) and his witty, engineer-savant sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), whose innovative weapon and gadget designs protect her brother and her country. With their support, he ascends to the throne as Wakanda’s king and warrior-protector Black Panther, and immediately finds himself at the centre of an age-old battle between tradition and modernity, and more pressingly, between justice and revenge.

When black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue ( Andy Serkis ) crosses his radar, T’Challa enlists the help of old flame Nakia ( Lupita Nyong’o ), a Wakandan spy, and Okoye ( Danai Gurira ), the head of the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s elite all-female royal guard. Klaue absconded with a portion of vibranium years ago and murdered the parents of T’Challa’s best friend W’Kabi ( Daniel Kaluuya ), but their plans to bring him to justice are thwarted by American black-ops soldier Erik ‘Killmonger’ Stevens ( Michael B. Jordan ), who harbours a secret connection to Wakanda. Erik, like T’Challa, has lost a beloved father, but unlike T’Challa, he grew up poor on the streets of Oakland (a nod to the film’s Oakland-born director). A ruthless fighter, Erik sets his sights on the throne, determined to avenge his father and save, in his mind, the oppressed peoples the Wakandans could easily aid but choose to ignore.

Earlier in the film, as part of the coronation ritual, T’Challa visits his dead father in the ‘ancestral plane’ and the dead king tells his son, “It is hard for a good man to be a king.” This pronouncement does not – at least in the current instalment – foreshadow T’Challa’s internal character arc. He is noble, almost to a fault, and in fact one of the film’s few flaws is that he almost never betrays any semblance of moral complexity. These words instead become an indictment of the seemingly gracious former king.

Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia and Letitia Wright as Shuri

Each of Coogler’s three films has been concerned with the legacy of fathers. His assured debut Fruitvale Station (2013) unfolds the final day in the life of Oscar Grant III – killed by a California transit police officer in 2009 – and much of the film’s emotional weight resides in the wide, unknowing eyes of the daughter Grant will leave behind. Creed (2015) and now Black Panther both follow protagonists burdened by history and haunted by a looming inheritance, men who set out to forge their paths in the name of fallen fathers, soon revealed to be not quite heroes but deeply complicated figures whose sins endure beyond the grave to trouble their sons. How these sons ultimately reckon with the humanity of the men they have made into legends and how powerfully they allow the past to guide their steps will prove the measure of their character.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is no stranger to the tragedy of patrilineal trauma, with Thor, Tony Stark and lately Peter Quill all grappling with varying degrees of filial strife. But what in part distinguishes Black Panther, the film and the man, from other Avengers is this reverence for ancestors, and the ripples – the curses and blessings – that the past sends across generations into the present. It lends the movie a refreshing poignancy and vitality rarely found in the age of superhero films.

Comparisons to The Lion King (1994) are well earned, but the film also feels a natural heir to classic Afrofuturist cinema such as Space Is the Place (1974) and The Brother from Another Planet (1984). Moreover, Coogler brings a deft, nuanced grace to questions of generational hauntings and Wakanda’s responsibility to the outside world. For, ultimately, Erik embodies all the rage and pain of the African diaspora, of a people displaced and cheated out of an inheritance.

Michael B. Jordan as Erik ‘Killmonger’ Stevens

Jordan, in this his third collaboration with Coogler, commands the screen with a simmering gaze and a bitter, acerbic delivery, in a magnetic performance sure to earn Killmonger the rabid fanaticism that has attached to Loki and Heath Ledger’s Joker before him. Boseman, for his part, despite having the more thankless role of the two, carries the film with a quiet dignity one might rightfully expect of a man raised to be king.

That said, the real stars of Black Panther are its women, both before and behind the camera. Most superhero films – and Marvel has generally been no exception – struggle to give their women characters enough, if anything, to do. The Dora Milaje – ‘the Adored Ones’ – can boast one of the most impressive combat sequences in recent memory; Gurira as their staunch traditionalist general is a revelation throughout, and her fight scenes easily outshine any between T’Challa and Erik. Nyong’o makes for a compelling love interest, one who has her own ambitions, and Bassett is an elegant, endearing Queen Mother. But it is Wright, the charming, lively Q to her brother’s Bond, who emerges as the bright star of the film.

Rachel Morrison , who recently became the first woman nominated for an Academy Award in the cinematography category for her work on last year’s Mudbound , produces some remarkably stunning visuals here, while Ruth E. Carter ’s costumes cement the film’s Afrofuturist aesthetic with elaborate designs inspired by real-life African tribes such as the Xhosa, Dogon and Suri, among others.

A meticulously crafted film, Black Panther establishes itself as a kinetic, powerful entry in the superhero genre.

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Further reading

Black Panther to the rescue?

Kofo Owokoniran

Film of the week: Creed

Jason Anderson

Film of the week: Fruitvale Station

Review: Wonder Woman defies the warring bores

Burning illusions: the long road to Black British film stardom

The dead zone? Superpower – Africa in Science Fiction review

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Fight for rights, will to power: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

The battle of Chicago: The Spook Who Sat by the Door

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Lizzie Francke

The superhero movies of 2016: brawl without end?

I sing the body elastic: a lament at the straightening of superheroes

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Why ‘Black Panther’ Is a Defining Moment for Black America

Ryan Coogler’s film is a vivid re-imagination of something black Americans have cherished for centuries — Africa as a dream of our wholeness, greatness and self-realization.

Credit... Photo Illustration by Najeebah Al-Ghadban. Source photographs: Matt Kennedy/Marvel Studios.

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By Carvell Wallace

• Feb. 12, 2018

T he Grand Lake Theater — the kind of old-time movie house with cavernous ceilings and ornate crown moldings — is one place I take my kids to remind us that we belong to Oakland, Calif. Whenever there is a film or community event that has meaning for this town, the Grand Lake is where you go to see it. There are local film festivals, indie film festivals, erotic film festivals, congressional town halls, political fund-raisers. After Hurricane Katrina, the lobby served as a drop-off for donations. We run into friends and classmates there. On weekends we meet at the farmers’ market across the street for coffee.

The last momentous community event I experienced at the Grand Lake was a weeknight viewing of “Fruitvale Station,” the 2013 film directed by the Bay Area native Ryan Coogler. It was about the real-life police shooting of Oscar Grant, 22, right here in Oakland, where Grant’s killing landed less like a news story and more like the death of a friend or a child. He had worked at a popular grocery, gone to schools and summer camps with the children of acquaintances. His death — he was shot by the transit police while handcuffed, unarmed and face down on a train-station platform, early in the morning of New Year’s Day 2009 — sparked intense grief, outrage and sustained protest, years before Black Lives Matter took shape as a movement. Coogler’s telling took us slowly through the minutiae of Grant’s last day alive: We saw his family and child, his struggles at work, his relationship to a gentrifying city, his attempts to make sense of a young life that felt both aimless and daunting. But the moment I remember most took place after the movie was over: A group of us, friends and strangers alike and nearly all black, stood in the cool night under the marquee, crying and holding one another. It didn’t matter that we didn’t know one another. We knew enough.

On a misty morning this January, I found myself standing at that same spot, having gotten out of my car to take a picture of the Grand Lake’s marquee. The words “ Black Panther ” were on it, placed dead center. They were not in normal-size letters; the theater was using the biggest ones it had. All the other titles huddled together in another corner of the marquee. A month away from its Feb. 16 opening, “Black Panther” was, already and by a wide margin, the most important thing happening at the Grand Lake.

Marvel Comics’s Black Panther was originally conceived in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two Jewish New Yorkers, as a bid to offer black readers a character to identify with. The titular hero, whose real name is T’Challa, is heir apparent to the throne of Wakanda, a fictional African nation. The tiny country has, for centuries, been in nearly sole possession of vibranium, an alien element acquired from a fallen meteor. (Vibranium is powerful and nearly indestructible; it’s in the special alloy Captain America’s shield is made of.) Wakanda’s rulers have wisely kept their homeland and its elemental riches hidden from the world, and in its isolation the nation has grown wildly powerful and technologically advanced. Its secret, of course, is inevitably discovered, and as the world’s evil powers plot to extract the resources of yet another African nation, T’Challa’s father is cruelly assassinated, forcing the end of Wakanda’s sequestration. The young king will be forced to don the virtually indestructible vibranium Black Panther suit and face a duplicitous world on behalf of his people.

This is the subject of Ryan Coogler’s third feature film — after “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed” (2015) — and when glimpses of the work first appeared last June, the response was frenzied. The trailer teaser — not even the full trailer — racked up 89 million views in 24 hours. On Jan. 10, 2018, after tickets were made available for presale, Fandango’s managing editor, Erik Davis, tweeted that the movie’s first 24 hours of advance ticket sales exceeded those of any other movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The black internet was, to put it mildly, exploding. Twitter reported that “Black Panther” was one of the most tweeted-about films of 2017, despite not even opening that year. There were plans for viewing parties, a fund-raiser to arrange a private screening for the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem, hashtags like #BlackPantherSoLit and #WelcomeToWakanda. When the date of the premiere was announced, people began posting pictures of what might be called African-Americana, a kitsch version of an older generation’s pride touchstones — kente cloth du-rags, candy-colored nine-button suits, King Jaffe Joffer from “Coming to America” with his lion-hide sash — alongside captions like “This is how I’ma show up to the Black Panther premiere.” Someone described how they’d feel approaching the box office by simply posting a video of the Compton rapper Buddy Crip-walking in front of a Moroccan hotel.

None of this is because “Black Panther” is the first major black superhero movie. Far from it. In the mid-1990s, the Damon Wayans vehicle “Blankman” and Robert Townsend’s “The Meteor Man” played black-superhero premises for campy laughs. Superheroes are powerful and beloved, held in high esteem by society at large; the idea that a normal black person could experience such a thing in America was so far-fetched as to effectively constitute gallows humor. “Blade,” released in 1998, featured Wesley Snipes as a Marvel vampire hunter, and “Hancock” (2008) depicted Will Smith as a slacker antihero, but in each case the actor’s blackness seemed somewhat incidental.

“Black Panther,” by contrast, is steeped very specifically and purposefully in its blackness. “It’s the first time in a very long time that we’re seeing a film with centered black people, where we have a lot of agency,” says Jamie Broadnax, the founder of Black Girl Nerds, a pop-culture site focused on sci-fi and comic-book fandoms. These characters, she notes, “are rulers of a kingdom, inventors and creators of advanced technology. We’re not dealing with black pain, and black suffering, and black poverty” — the usual topics of acclaimed movies about the black experience.

In a video posted to Twitter in December, which has since gone viral, three young men are seen fawning over the “Black Panther” poster at a movie theater. One jokingly embraces the poster while another asks, rhetorically: “This is what white people get to feel all the time?” There is laughter before someone says, as though delivering the punch line to the most painful joke ever told: “I would love this country, too.”

Ryan Coogler saw his first Black Panther comic book as a child, at an Oakland shop called Dr. Comics & Mr. Games, about a mile from the Grand Lake Theater. When I sat down with him in early February, at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, I told him about the night I saw “Fruitvale Station,” and he listened with his head down, slowly nodding. When he looked up at me, he seemed to be blinking back tears of his own.

Coogler played football in high school, and between his fitness and his humble listening poses — leaning forward, elbows propped on knees — he reminds me of what might happen if a mild-mannered athlete accidentally discovered a radioactive movie camera and was gifted with remarkable artistic vision. He’s interested in questions of identity: What does it mean to be a black person or an African person? “You know, you got to have the race conversation,” he told me, describing how his parents prepared him for the world. “And you can’t have that without having the slavery conversation. And with the slavery conversation comes a question of, O.K., so what about before that? And then when you ask that question, they got to tell you about a place that nine times out of 10 they’ve never been before. So you end up hearing about Africa, but it’s a skewed version of it. It’s not a tactile version.”

Around the time he was wrapping up “Creed,” Coogler made his first journey to the continent, visiting Kenya, South Africa and the Kingdom of Lesotho, a tiny nation in the center of the South African landmass. Tucked high amid rough mountains, Lesotho was spared much of the colonization of its neighbors, and Coogler based much of his concept of Wakanda on it. While he was there, he told me, he was being shown around by an older woman who said she’d been a lover of the South African pop star Brenda Fassie. Riding along the hills with this woman, Coogler was told that they would need to visit an even older woman in order to drop off some watermelon. During their journey, they would stop occasionally to approach a shepherd and give him a piece of watermelon; each time the shepherd would gingerly take the piece, wrap it in cloth and tuck it away as though it were a religious totem. Time passed. Another bit of travel, another shepherd, another gift of watermelon. Eventually Coogler grew frustrated: “Why are we stopping so much?” he asked. “Watermelon is sacred,” he was told. “It hydrates, it nourishes and its seeds are used for offerings.” When they arrived at the old woman’s home, it turned out that she was, in fact, a watermelon farmer, but her crop had not yet ripened — she needed a delivery to help her last the next few weeks.

When I was a kid, I refused to eat watermelon in front of white people. To this day, the word itself makes me uncomfortable. Coogler told me that in high school he and his black football teammates used to have the same rule: Never eat watermelon in front of white teammates. Centuries of demonizing and ridiculing blackness have, in effect, forced black people to abandon what was once sacred. When we spoke of Africa and black Americans’ attempts to reconnect with what we’re told is our lost home, I admitted that I sometimes wondered if we could ever fully be part of what was left behind. He dipped his head, fell briefly quiet and then looked back at me with a solemn expression. “I think we can,” he said. “It’s no question. It’s almost as if we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that we can’t have that connection.”

“Black Panther” is a Hollywood movie, and Wakanda is a fictional nation. But coming when they do, from a director like Coogler, they must also function as a place for multiple generations of black Americans to store some of our most deeply held aspirations. We have for centuries sought to either find or create a promised land where we would be untroubled by the criminal horrors of our American existence. From Paul Cuffee’s attempts in 1811 to repatriate blacks to Sierra Leone and Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa Black Star shipping line to the Afrocentric movements of the ’60s and ’70s, black people have populated the Africa of our imagination with our most yearning attempts at self-realization. In my earliest memories, the Africa of my family was a warm fever dream, seen on the record covers I stared at alone, the sun setting over glowing, haloed Afros, the smell of incense and oils at the homes of my father’s friends — a beauty so pure as to make the world outside, one of car commercials and blond sitcom families, feel empty and perverse in comparison. As I grew into adolescence, I began to see these romantic visions as just another irrelevant habit of the older folks, like a folk remedy or a warning to wear a jacket on a breezy day. But by then my generation was building its own African dreamscape, populated by KRS-One, Public Enemy and Poor Righteous Teachers; we were indoctrinating ourselves into a prideful militancy about our worth. By the end of the century, “Black Star” was not just the name of Garvey’s shipping line but also one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever made.

Never mind that most of us had never been to Africa. The point was not verisimilitude or a precise accounting of Africa’s reality. It was the envisioning of a free self. Nina Simone once described freedom as the absence of fear, and as with all humans, the attempt of black Americans to picture a homeland, whether real or mythical, was an attempt to picture a place where there was no fear. This is why it doesn’t matter that Wakanda was an idea from a comic book, created by two Jewish artists. No one knows colonization better than the colonized, and black folks wasted no time in recolonizing Wakanda. No genocide or takeover of land was required. Wakanda is ours now. We do with it as we please.

Until recently, most popular speculation on what the future would be like had been provided by white writers and futurists, like Isaac Asimov and Gene Roddenberry. Not coincidentally, these futures tended to carry the power dynamics of the present into perpetuity. Think of the original “Star Trek,” with its peaceful, international crew, still under the charge of a white man from Iowa. At the time, the character of Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, was so vital for African-Americans — the black woman of the future as an accomplished philologist — that, as Nichols told NPR, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself persuaded her not to quit the show after the first season. It was a symbol of great progress that she was conceived as something more than a maid. But so much still stood in the way of her being conceived as a captain.

The artistic movement called Afrofuturism, a decidedly black creation, is meant to go far beyond the limitations of the white imagination. It isn’t just the idea that black people will exist in the future, will use technology and science, will travel deep into space. It is the idea that we will have won the future. There exists, somewhere within us, an image in which we are whole, in which we are home. Afrofuturism is, if nothing else, an attempt to imagine what that home would be. “Black Panther” cannot help being part of this. “Wakanda itself is a dream state,” says the director Ava DuVernay, “a place that’s been in the hearts and minds and spirits of black people since we were brought here in chains.” She and Coogler have spent the past few months working across the hall from each other in the same editing facility, with him tending to “Black Panther” and her to her much-anticipated film of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” At the heart of Wakanda, she suggests, lie some of our most excruciating existential questions: “What if they didn’t come?” she asked me. “And what if they didn’t take us? What would that have been?”

Afrofuturism, from its earliest iterations, has been an attempt to imagine an answer to these questions. The movement spans from free-jazz thinkers like Sun Ra, who wrote of an African past filled with alien technology and extraterrestrial beings, to the art of Krista Franklin and Ytasha Womack, to the writers Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor and Derrick Bell, to the music of Jamila Woods and Janelle Monáe. Their work, says John I. Jennings — a media and cultural studies professor at the University of California, Riverside, and co-author of “Black Comix Returns” — is a way of upending the system, “because it jumps past the victory. Afrofuturism is like, ‘We already won.’ ” Comic books are uniquely suited to handling this proposition. In them the laws of our familiar world are broken: Mild-mannered students become godlike creatures, mutants walk among us and untold power is, in an instant, granted to the most downtrodden. They offer an escape from reality, and who might need to escape reality more than a people kidnapped to a stolen land and treated as less-than-complete humans?

At the same time, it is notable that despite selling more than a million books and being the first science-fiction author to win a MacArthur fellowship, Octavia Butler, one of Afrofuturism’s most important voices, never saw her work transferred to film, even as studios churned out adaptations of lesser works on a monthly basis. Butler’s writing not only featured African-Americans as protagonists; it specifically highlighted African-American women. If projects by and about black men have a hard time getting made, projects by and about black women have a nearly impossible one. In March, Disney will release “A Wrinkle in Time,” featuring Storm Reid and Oprah Winfrey in lead roles; the excitement around this female-led film does not seem to compare, as of yet, with the explosion that came with “Black Panther.” But by focusing on a black female hero — one who indeed saves the universe — DuVernay is embodying the deepest and most powerful essence of Afrofuturism: to imagine ourselves in places where we had not been previously imagined.

Can films like these significantly change things for black people in America? The expectations around “Black Panther” remind me of the way I heard the elders in my family talking about the mini-series “Roots,” which aired on ABC in 1977. A multigenerational drama based on the best-selling book in which Alex Haley traced his own family history, “Roots” told the story of an African slave kidnapped and brought to America, and traced his progeny through over 100 years of American history. It was an attempt to claim for us a home, because to be black in America is to be both with and without one: You are told that you must honor this land, that to refuse this is tantamount to hatred — but you are also told that you do not belong here, that you are a burden, an animal, a slave. Haley, through research and narrative and a fair bit of invention, was doing precisely what Afrofuturism does: imagining our blackness as a thing with meaning and with lineage, with value and place.

“The climate was very different in 1977,” the actor LeVar Burton recalled to me recently. Burton was just 19 when he landed an audition, his first ever, for the lead role of young Kunta Kinte in the mini-series. “We had been through the civil rights movement, and there were visible changes as a result, like there was no more Jim Crow,” he told me. “We felt that there were advancements that had been made, so the conversation had really sort of fallen off the table.” The series, he said, was poised to reignite that conversation. “The story had never been told before from the point of view of the Africans. America, both black and white, was getting an emotional education about the costs of slavery to our common American psyche.”

To say that “Roots” held the attention of a nation for its eight-consecutive-night run in January 1977 would be an understatement. Its final episode was viewed by 51.1 percent of all American homes with televisions, a kind of reach that seemed sure to bring about some change in opportunities, some new standing in American culture. “The expectation,” Burton says, “was that this was going to lead to all kinds of positive portrayals of black people on the screen both big and small, and it just didn’t happen. It didn’t go down that way, and it’s taken years.”

Here in Oakland, I am doing what it seems every other black person in the country is doing: assembling my delegation to Wakanda. We bought tickets for the opening as soon as they were available — the first time in my life I’ve done that. Our contingent is made up of my 12-year-old daughter and her friend; my 14-year-old son and his friend; one of my oldest confidants, dating back to adolescence; and two of my closest current friends. Not everyone knows everyone else. But we all know enough. Our group will be eight black people strong.

Beyond the question of what the movie will bring to African-Americans sits what might be a more important question: What will black people bring to “Black Panther”? The film arrives as a corporate product, but we are using it for our own purposes, posting with unbridled ardor about what we’re going to wear to the opening night, announcing the depths of the squads we’ll be rolling with, declaring that Feb. 16, 2018, will be “the Blackest Day in History.”

This is all part of a tradition of unrestrained celebration and joy that we have come to rely on for our spiritual survival. We know that there is no end to the reminders that our lives, our hearts, our personhoods are expendable. Yes, many nonblack people will say differently; they will declare their love for us, they will post Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela quotes one or two days a year. But the actions of our country and its collective society, and our experiences within it, speak unquestionably to the opposite. Love for black people isn’t just saying Oscar Grant should not be dead. Love for black people is Oscar Grant not being dead in the first place.

This is why we love ourselves in the loud and public way we do — because we have to counter his death with the very same force with which such deaths attack our souls. The writer and academic Eve L. Ewing told me a story about her partner, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago: When it is time for graduation, he makes the walk from his office to the celebration site in his full regalia — the gown with velvet panels, full bell sleeves and golden piping, the velvet tam with gold-strand bullion tassel. And when he does it, every year, like clockwork, some older black woman or man he doesn’t know will pull over, roll down their window, stop him and say, with a slow head shake and a deep, wide smile, something like: “I am just so proud of you!”

This is how we do with one another. We hold one another as a family because we must be a family in order to survive. Our individual successes and failures belong, in a perfectly real sense, to all of us. That can be for good or ill. But when it is good, it is very good. It is sunlight and gold on vast African mountains, it is the shining splendor of the Wakandan warriors poised and ready to fight, it is a collective soul as timeless and indestructible as vibranium. And with this love we seek to make the future ours, by making the present ours. We seek to make a place where we belong.

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APERCU: Literature & Cultural Diversity

discourses on difference

Finally Essay on Black Panther

Aidee Tejeda Manzano

April 27 th 2018

English 129

Split Paths

The Marvel Film Black Panther directed by Ryan Coogler is ostensibly a typical comic book superhero-villain narrative: Killmonger (Erick Stevens) as the murderous villain with no mercy and the Black Panther (T’Challa) as the brave prince of Wakanda. However, these two characters actually represent two opposing conceptions of black identity in the world. Killmonger is an allegory for African American pain and a hero for diasporic Africans. While, T’Challa is an allegory for ancestral privilege and a hero for the Wakandans. But, overall both of these characters are anti-heroes.

Killmonger and T’Challas upbringings were those of an orphan and a prince. Killmonger was stripped of this birthright, he is the son of King T’Chaka’s brother N’Jobu. N’Jobu had taken a war dog assignment in the United States. During his time in the states he witnessed the oppression of his people such as mass incarceration and poverty He falls in love with an African American woman. Killmonger’s father helps Ulysses Klaue steal vibranium from Wakanda in an effort to gain the resources to aid his suffering brothers and sisters. T’Chaka confronts him and ends up killing him. In T’Chaka’s defense the murder was to the save the life of Zuri, when frankly it was to maintain a lie about Wakanda being a primitive country. T’Chaka’s attempt to save a life damned Killmonger’s life. Killmonger is left alone in the hoods of California to survive. By his own merit, Killmonger graduates from MIT and joins the military’s ghost units. In the military he severs the role of a tool to take down governments. Killmonger only knows stories of Wakanda and its surreal beauty. A Wardog tattoo is left to him by his father, as his key into his native land. A native land, that he kind of resents. The land that outcast his father and his people (non-Wakandan Blacks).

T’Challa is the son of T’Chaka, making Killmonger and him cousin, and is the Black Panther. T’Challa is surrounded by support and culture from his family. He wants for nothing, expect for aid in progressing through life without his father. His father who he idealized and worshiped just to find out he was not the man he believed him to be. T’Challa’s ancestral privilege blinded him from seeing the truth and Killmonger’s desire to use Wakanda’s resources to support other blacks globally. This ancestral privilege cuts him off from feeling connected to other black communitys’s worldwide, because he knows specifically what place he is from and what people are his. All of the Wakandans have always been home, as opposed to the black community of diasporic Africans Killmonger is from. In the eyes of the Wakandans presented in the film, with the exception of Nakai, they see only themselves as each other’s people. W’Kabi comments on foreign aid were simply “if you let refuges in they bring their problems,” T’Challa did not appear to oppose this comment ( Black Panther) . Through darker lenses Wakanda parallels US isolationism with not wanting to be involved with matters that do not concern them, but having spies planted all over the world.

Killmonger as an allegory for black pain was presented in the opening Museum scene. In the British museum scene with the African artifacts, Killmonger is casually browsing the art pieces. He is the only black person present in the scene and the only person being watched by the white security team. He confronts the museum curator by asking about a hand axe, he corrects her on where the axe is actually from (Wakanda). In a condescending tone she does not believe him. It is almost ironic that a white person will not believe a black person on their own history. Killmonger throws in her face that he will just take the artifact back, just as her ancestors stole it on the first place. The women’s face looks appalled as if he had said lies. By using medium and medium close-up shots of Killmonger and the museum curator, the directors were able to establish the tense dialog between the two characters. In this scene Killmonger is showing the desire all minorities have to want pieces of their culture and nation back. Because, if not being able to physically visit a piece of home can be a medium, an especially strong medium if home has never been seen. Killmonger fits this profile, since he was born in the United States and only heard stories about Wakanda. Before making his escape with the vibranium axe, Killmonger spots a traditional mask and says he is “feeling it”, even if it opposes his urban style ( Black Panther) . His denim jacket, white shirt, gold chain, hipster glasses, and dreadlocks to the side depicted Killmonger as the black community that has lost their connection to their ancestral state and have taken on the common style of their new world.

On the other hand, T’Challa when not in his Black Panther suit is shown in his traditional textiles alongside his family and friends who also embody traditional African culture. T’Challa is presented in his native land first, not visiting a foreign land like Killmonger. Multiple extreme long shots are done when introducing Wakanda, while when introducing Killmonger’s home only a vertical long shot of a apartment building is done in the perspective of young Erik (Killmonger). The extreme long shot of Wakanda shows its beautiful rural areas, its massive waterfall, the busy market place that is a melting pot for all the different tribes, and the high tech buildings. In Killmonger’s home everyone is alike, in T’Challa’s people can be differentiated based of their clothing and physical alternations. T’Challa’s people are all from different tribes, but they give the illusion of a common heart beat after the coronation with the “X” dance which sounds like a giant heartbeat. T’Challa’s home has light, colors, and traditional music from drums. He has the most beautiful sunset in the world, the sun set promised to Killmonger by his father, the sun set that was also his birth right. Just as all diasporic Africans and those stolen from their homelands deserved their sunsets.

Further examination of T’Challa’s coronation shows how accepted he was by the Wakandans because of his ancestral privilege. The common heart heat beat was for him and possibly followed his own. A long shot in the perspective of T’Challa after defeating M’Baku shows his people cheering him on and the sun light illuminating him. In the last step of the coronation, T’Challa must be transported to the ancestral plane. In his ancestral plane he is dressed in a white shirt with gold African prints on the collar. He is presented to his father and other ancestors in panther form. His ancestral plane is in a beautiful African savanna with a pink and purple sun set. He gets a positive message on how to rule in his father’s absence.

On the contrary, Killmonger’s coronation has an air of hostility. The Queen Mother, Ramonda, did not believe he had the right to challenge T’Challa for the thrown even after he reveled his royal linage. I was shocked that Killmonger was not received with any sympathy by anyone. These royals probably knew his father and knew what he suffered as a child, yet no one gave him a chance. Zuir who Killmonger knew as uncle James, does nothing in defense of Killmonger but jumps in the defense of T’Challa. This occurred similarly to how black issues are treated in our society. The recent increase in school shootings, emphasized how differently our society reacted to a shooting at a more privileged and white school as opposed to a shooting at a predominantly black school. Since Killmonger was not an original Wakandan they were ready to throw him out as an outsider. It was a great moment when Killmonger introduced himself in his native tongue and not English, I believe that showed his want to be accepted and his vailed connection to Wakanda. It exemplified that he was not some nomad, he has roots but those roots won’t bind him. During the fight for the crown, there were some moments when T’Challa fought hard but Killmonger physically was stronger. T’Challa was driven by his pride to defeat an outsider and Killmonger was driven by the suffering he endured to get what was his. Killmonger is presented as merciless, unlike T’Challa who showed mercy for M’Baku. These two situations cannot be clearly compared, because of the differences in context. Showing mercy to M’Baku would not make T’Challa lose Wakanda but if Killmonger had shown mercy to T’Challa he would have lost his dream.

The dream he wanted so badly he cut himself off emotionally in order to achieve. The dream the sheltered privileged T’Challa was given by birth. After defeating T’Challa, Killmonger says, “is this your king” to the Wakandas enforcing his belief that he is the rightful ruler of Wakanda. Even with his strength he is not accepted fully. The Wakandan citizens, except for the royal and military members, are not present to acknowledge him. He is giving one short “X” or heartbeat, it was given in fear not love. Killmonger’s ancestral plane takes the form of the small apartment in the hood. Instead of being presented in his prime state, he is shown as a vulnerable boy. His father is the only person there, reinforcing that Killmonger has no connection to his ancestor. As a child he tells his father that no tears have been shed for him and that death is common. That is the reality of Killmonger’s life. All he knows is death is a way to survive, unlike T’Challa who’s experience with loss has been limited. Killmonger’s acceptance of death makes it easy for him to want to completely eliminate the oppressor and control the world as a practical solution for his people. He does not care about the lives that will be lost. No tears were shed for his father, so why should he shed tears for the death of others. After returning from the ancestral plane, he forces the caretakers of the garden to destroy the heart shaped herb. This scene was contradictory, Killmonger wants to be a part of Wakanda but he also wants to destroy its past and re-direct its future.

The last scene of Killmonger is a long shot that comes in closer from behind him. All the audience see is the flames engulfing the garden and the king “full of hatred” ( Black Panther) . The scene that formally introduces Killmonger to his thrown is shot upside down and gradually fixes itself. The shot is accompanied with music by Kinderic Lamar, not drums like T’Challa’s, this scene was the power transition. As opposed to T’Challa’s simple silver “suit chain”, Killmonger is dressed with the large gold chain. Killmonger as the representation of black pain shows how out of its way black pain has to go to be noticed. All Killmonger has done has been exaggerate and he had to be extra in order for his pain to be seen.

His extreme radicalness was necessary to get the point across of how large black pain that a radical solution is the only one. Killmonger had to be radical to challenge T’Challa’s privilege. Challenging T’Challa’s privilege was the only way for T’Challa to be presented as an anti-hero not the perfect superhero. In the final scene, on his “deathbed” Killmonger says, “bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage,” he is confirming that he is the black man, women, and child whose history has been stripped and have been forced into oppression ( Black Panther) . Heavy is the head the wears the crown, but even heavier are the hearts of those that are chained down.

This spilt in identity in the black community is a shared with other minority groups that experience migration either by pull or push factors. As a Latina who was born in the United States but raised in Mexico for five years, I’ve experience both sides. When I moved back to the U.S. I felt T’Challa’s ancestral privilege. However, after living in the U.S. for several years and then returning to Mexico, I was not accepted. I was considered “white”, my cousins did not speak to me for a week because they did not think I spoke Spanish. As minorities our identities are split, complex, and sometimes unknown to us, however our pain persist.

Black Panther . Directed by Ryan Coogler, performances by Chadwich Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, and Michael B. Jordan, Marvel, 2018

Black Panther (film)

By ryan coogler, black panther (film) essay questions.

A subject of intense debate after the film’s release was the question of whether Killmonger was in fact right to attempt mass rebellion and whether the film was wrong to portray him as a villain. Discuss the ways in which the film both supports and refutes Killmonger’s vision.

Regardless of the morality or lack thereof of Killmonger’s plan, there are quite deliberate attempts to make him unpalatable to the audience as a character. He is impulsively violent, frequently killing people unnecessarily and generally enjoying the havoc he wreaks on everything around him. However, Killmonger is also granted a level of righteousness and cathartic powe as he externalizes the trauma of African American oppression, and many elements of how he is represented, such as Jordan’s charismatic performance, lead us to sympathize with him

Explain the significance of the scars on Killmonger’s body and discuss what they reveal about his character.

When Killmonger fights T'Challa, we see that he has scars all over his body, scars that he branded onto himself. The significance of these scars is that each represents a person that Killmonger has killed, and every kill was made in order to prepare him for the day that he would challenge and kill T'Challa and take the throne as King of Wakanda. The fact that KIllmonger has warped his body in this way suggests that violence has come to define everything about him. He is totally committed to his mission to kill T’Challa and overthrow oppressive governments.

What does T’Challa’s return from near death illustrate about his character and journey?

Dying, or coming near death, and then returning is a common recurring element in religions, mythologies, and stories of all kinds. Some examples are Osiris, Orpheus, and Jesus Christ. Usually characters who go through this arc gain some kind of insight or wisdom from their journey. T’Challa must fall (literally and figuratively) from a high point to a low point so that he may learn the ways in which he was wrong. He visits the land of the dead (the Ancestral Plane) and realizes the error of his ways. Only then can he come back to a high point (both back to life and to the top of a mountain) and defeat Killmonger.

What is the symbolic and historical significance of Ulysses Klaue and his theft of Wakandan vibranium?

Klaue is a white South African, and his probable age indicates that he grew up in the country’s vicious and oppressive Apartheid regime which denied even the most basic human rights to its black citizens. It seems likely that Klaue has internalized many of the racist attitudes from this era, a notion supported by some of his words and actions in the film (calling Wakandans “savages”). He is also an arms dealer, a profession which has done much harm to parts of Africa by selling weapons to totalitarian military regimes and terrorist groups. Finally, his defining accomplishment is the vibranium theft; his status was won by stealing from Africans, like many a hostile foreign power before him. All in all, Klaue is made out to be a kind of microcosm of the myriad problems facing African countries in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Though much of the focus is on the male protagonist and antagonist, Black Panther is notable for its robust and interesting female characters, more so than most comic book films. Choose one of the female characters, and discuss how her perspective compares with T'Challa’s and/or Killmonger’s and adds depth to the story.

You may, for example, choose to write about Nakia and her desire to change Wakanda’s policies to help the world. She is bold and adventurous, wanting to go out into the world to fight injustice despite T’Challa trying to convince her to stay in Wakanda and become his queen. You could also contrast her vision of peaceful cooperation as a path to improving conditions of oppressed black people to the violent, hyper-masculine vision of Killmonger’s quest for world domination.

Black Panther (film) Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Black Panther (film) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What did Wakanda do to keep Vibranium safe and the county thriving?

Wakanda isolated itself from outside influences.

What is your question here?

Marcus Garvey black Panther

Study Guide for Black Panther (film)

Black Panther (film) study guide contains a biography of Randa Abdel-Fattah, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Black Panther (film)
• Black Panther (film) Summary
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Black Panther (film)

Black Panther (film) essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Black Panther (film) by Randa Abdel-Fattah.

• Erik Killmonger: Constructing the Perfect Antagonist
• Black Panther: T’Challa is More than a Superhero

Black Panther - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

Black Panther can refer to the superhero character from Marvel Comics or the political movement Black Panther Party. If discussing the superhero, essays might delve into the character’s history, his significance as one of the first black superheroes, or the impact of the 2018 film “Black Panther” on popular culture and discussions around representation. Alternatively, if discussing the Black Panther Party, essays might explore the party’s formation, its goals and methods for combating racial injustice, or the government’s response to its activities. Analyzing the legacy and impact of the Black Panther Party on subsequent social justice movements or discussing the portrayal and perception of the party in media and popular culture could also be of interest. Both topics offer a rich exploration of the themes of justice, representation, and the fight against oppression. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Black Panther you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

The Genre of “Black Panther” is Fantasy

Every epic hero has certain heroic characteristics, and have been challenged and pushed to the extremes. "Black Panther" is a superhero movie that broke box office sales. It tells a story of the challenges of T'Challa trying to take his rightful place as king. T'Challa, who is the Black Panther faces many challenges throughout the movie. When he returns to Wakanda, he is still battling the loss of his father. Before he becomes king he must face a powerful enemy […]

Film Review Black Panther

Marvel Studios has brought to us many excellent films but, "Black Panther" has touched base on something that marvel hasn't seemed to do before. Hollywood films have created many movies that often have similar plots and exhausted endings. This hollywood film, directed by Ryan Coogler, offers the viewer something deeper than what's been seen in a marvel movie. Coogler offers myth. It allows the viewer to learn the traditional story of Wakanda and the early story of its people. Black […]

The Panthers Created One of the Social Programs

Few revolutionary movements of the sixties have distilled as much underground glamor as the Black Panther Party, however, their trajectory is far from a fashion show. The Panthers created one of the social programs of regeneration of the poor neighborhoods of the most ambitious large American cities of their time and were the nucleus of a coalition of revolutionary movements with a strong ethnic and social implantation that came to have a certain weight in life American public, if only […]

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Black Panther Film Review Essay

For my review essay, I chose to critique the movie Black Panther. This film was released on February 16, 2018, in Pinewood Studios, that is located in Atlanta, Georgia. The writer/director of this film goes by the name Ryan Coogler. He has co-written and directed the film Creed (2015) and Fruitvale Station (2013). The co-scriptwriter of this film goes by the name Joe Robert Cole, and the cinematographer, Rachel Morrison. A couple main characters of the cast are: Martin Freeman […]

Topic about Movie Black Panther

My topic will be about the technology in the movie. Wakandians were very well aware about the type of technology they had and how it helped out its country a lot. Wakanda was pretty much getting powered by there special metal called vibranium. Vibranium was a very strong and rare metal that only Wakandians had. The world had thought that Wakanda was a third world country basically saying that they didn't have much and they needed help with their economy. […]

We Think about the Declaration of Independence

When we think about the Declaration of Independence, we associate it with life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and unalienable rights but completely disregard important statements like this on "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security" (Declaration of Independence 1776) Reading this […]

Black Panther is an Action Packed Marvel Movie

Black Panther is an action packed Marvel Movie about how a new king, T'Challa, must learn how to take care of his people of Wakanda without his father by his side. In a twist of fate T'challa's long lost cousin, Erik Killmonger, appears and takes the throne from him after taking part in the ritual of fighting for the kingdom. The movie is then based around T'challa trying to win back his rightful place as king in Wakanda. Upon watching […]

The Black Panther Became the Black Panther

The Black Panther became the black panther because he's very Strong,Speedy,Agility, Stamina( A lot of energy),Reflexes, and Superhuman Senses and his claws can rip through most likely anything .If the Black panther uses to much energy he would get much slower and also a lot weaker which makes it easier for enemies to attack or get away from him. The suit is the main thing that helps him when it comes to fighting and defeating his enemies.A lot of the […]

The Treatments of Blacks after Slavery

The treatment of blacks after slavery was beyond harsh even though they were free. Blacks had to face Jim Crow laws, police brutality, bloodthirsty KKK members, and so much more. Society viewed blacks as inferior and the progression of blacks in America was slow. It was not until 1964 when Congress approved the Civil Rights Act that forever changed history and the lives of people of color. The Civil Rights Act is a law that responded to demands of the […]

Black Panther Reflection Ryan Coogler

Although this wasn't the first time I went out to watch a superhero flick, the Ryan Coogler directed hit "Black Panther" was definitely the movie I had been waiting for and wasn't going to miss it. I had already watched this movie before on the its release day but had the opportunity to watch it again hosted at the university. It was a little different this time to watch with an disproportionate order of people of different race which brings […]

Black Feminism Black Panther Party

The Face of African American movements became increasingly Pro Black after the 1960s. Black youth throughout the country started to question the methods of the "Old Guard"; middle class Civil Rights leaders of the previous decade. The peoples desire for a new group led to the rise of the Black Power Movement. The Mobilization of the Black Power Movement rested on the fact that Black students around the country wanted to see change on and outside of their campuses. The […]

T’Challa, the New King and T’chaka

In the film, black panther, many elements were inspired by and brought directly from a variety of African communities. From design, to architecture, the film displays a plethora of details showcasing the richness and diversity behind Africa. What is really quite unique is that the film chooses to display all these elements within one area in Africa. A hidden gem, separated from the outside, these elements reside in Wakanda. Although Wakanda does not truly exist geographically, a lot of its […]

“Black Panther” is One of the Unique Movies

"Black Panther" is one of the unique movies by MCU in 2018. The movie itself is a masterpiece, which includes things, that have not been accepted for ages and have not been showed as norms for audience. The main character of the film is a symbol of a superhero and his role underlines, that not all of the heroes in films should not necessarily be white and hence, there is a massive power in black world and in black people, […]

The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party

When your hear the words "Black Panther Party" what's the first thing that comes to mind? Is it "a group of violent black people fighting for equal rights", or "a bunch of black people who had afros and wore all black" or does the famous line of "WAKANDA FOREVER!" come across your mind.Truth is...they were none of those things, they were so much more. If you were lucky, you might have touched on them during your history class, but can […]

From Liberia to Black Panther

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson, governor of Virginia, wrote "Notes on the State of Virginia" in response to the twenty-two queries asked by French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois. Barbé-Marbois asked these questions of Jefferson in order to understand how America's now free states were being governed. In Query XVI, Barbé-Marbois inquired about the administration of justice in Virginia, specifically concerning the issue of slavery. In regards to the possibility of emancipation, Jefferson suggested that all black people emigrate from the United States […]

The Cinematic Roar of “Panther”: an Exploration of Narrative and Nuance

When we think of influential movies that have left an indelible mark on both the cinematic landscape and the broader cultural zeitgeist, "Panther" is undeniably one such title. Nestled within the overarching umbrella of films tackling the Civil Rights Movement and the struggles faced by the African American community, "Panther" charts its own unique territory, focusing on the meteoric rise and societal impact of the Black Panther Party. This movie is more than just a cinematic endeavor; it's an immersive […]

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How to Write an Essay About Movie Black Panther

Understanding the cultural significance of 'black panther'.

Before writing an essay about the movie 'Black Panther,' it is crucial to comprehend its cultural and cinematic significance. Released in 2018, 'Black Panther' is a groundbreaking film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, notable for its predominantly Black cast and its blend of African culture with superhero tropes. Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film explores themes of power, identity, and heritage, set in the fictional African nation of Wakanda. Start your essay by discussing the plot of 'Black Panther,' the main characters, and the fictional world of Wakanda. Explain how the film diverges from typical superhero narratives and delve into its representation of African cultures and Afrofuturism. The film's impact on discussions about race, representation in Hollywood, and its role in the broader context of Black cinema is also essential to explore.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong essay on 'Black Panther' should be centered around a clear, concise thesis statement. This statement should present a specific viewpoint or argument about the film. For instance, you might analyze the portrayal of African cultures and its significance, discuss the social and political themes presented in the movie, or evaluate its impact on the superhero genre and popular culture. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay and provide a structured approach to your analysis.

Gathering Supporting Evidence

To support your thesis, gather evidence from the film itself, including key scenes, dialogue, and character development. Also, consider including reviews, critical essays, and audience reactions to provide a broader understanding of the film's impact. If discussing the film’s cultural significance, reference specific elements of African culture depicted in the movie and feedback from cultural experts. Use this evidence to support your thesis and build a persuasive argument, ensuring to address different perspectives and interpretations of the film.

Analyzing Key Themes and Elements

Dedicate a section of your essay to analyzing the key themes and cinematic elements of 'Black Panther.' Discuss how the film addresses issues such as leadership, responsibility, and the dichotomy between tradition and modernity. Explore the character development of T’Challa and Killmonger and their differing viewpoints on power and heritage. Also, examine the film’s visual style, use of music, costume design, and how these contribute to its storytelling and thematic expression.

Concluding the Essay

Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your discussion and restating your thesis in light of the evidence provided. Your conclusion should tie together your analysis and emphasize the significance of 'Black Panther' in both the cinematic landscape and its broader cultural context. You might also want to reflect on the film's legacy and its potential influence on future filmmaking and cultural representation.

Reviewing and Refining Your Essay

After completing your essay, review and refine it for clarity and coherence. Ensure that your arguments are well-structured and supported by evidence from the film and external sources. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers, educators, or film studies experts to further improve your essay. A well-crafted essay on 'Black Panther' will not only demonstrate your understanding of the film but also your ability to engage critically with its themes and cultural impact.

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