Directed by Ryan Coogler
Written by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole, based on the comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, Florence Kasumba, John Kani, David S. Lee, Nabiyah Be, Isaach De Bankolé, Connie Chiume, Dorothy Steel, Danny Sapani, Atandwa Kani, Ashton Tyler, Denzel Whitaker, Seth Carr, Alexis Rhee
Soundtrack: Ludwig Göransson
I don’t know if anybody had the vision in 1998 that in twenty years time Marvel would be eighteen movies deep into a run of who-knows-how-many dozens of connected films grossing billions-upon-billions of dollars at the box office, but I do know that it all started with Blade.
That’s right. The financial success of Blade was enough to convince Marvel that this whole movie thing was worth getting into (after some, shall we say, false starts in the 80s and early 90s). Ten years later, bing-bang-boom, we’ve got Iron Man, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is off to the races. Ten years on from there, enter Black Panther. In a way, you could say it’s all come full circle.
But enough about that. Is the movie any good?
Yes, very much so.
Black Panther is decidedly among the better MCU films thus far, is refreshingly story-driven, and has the most stand-alone feel of its peers since the original Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014.
More than that though, it’s got a lot of meat to it.
For one thing, the basic story is downright Shakespearean (King dies, Prince ascends the throne, and so on and so forth), but the film also delves into such real-world issues as the African vs. African-American experience, political isolationism, and violent vs. non-violent revolution, all naturally worked into the script without feeling like they were tacked on by some committee.
Of course, Black Panther is also a superhero movie, and a pretty good one at that. I wouldn’t call it entirely perfect (some of the visuals felt a little lacking, and a few creative choices felt a bit off), but I liked that it was something of an origin story without starting all the way back at square one, and I particularly enjoyed the array of enjoyable characters (unlike some other movie).
If I have a couple of nitpicks, for one, it bums me out that seemingly everybody can put on an effective accent except for Chadwick Boseman as the titular character (although Forest Whitaker for some reason decided to sound like an Afrikaner…weird), and, second, I felt like Michael B. Jordan’s performance was a little too “I’m from the streets!” I thought a little subtlety could have gone a long way there, but, like I said, these are nitpicks.
Overall, I have to hand it to Ryan Coogler for making yet another quality film that’s undoubtedly part of a larger franchise but also has enough legs to stand on its own, and credit to Marvel for letting him do it his way. I was feeling pretty superhero-fatigued heading in, and I was worried there wouldn’t be enough to overcome that, but, in that respect, the movie triumphed.
Hail to the King, baby.
Rating: ★★★★☆
P.S.
Of course stingers, duh.
P.P.S.
As usual, thanks to Alamo Drafthouse for the glass.
