Black Panther: Marvel's most grand product or Marvel's First Sociological Thesis?

Anyone feeling a bit nostalgic for some Magneto-Xavier love? Don’t worry! Marvel comes to the rescue packaging the good old X-Men fight-between-ideals story in a more world-relevant issue and throwing in a bit of monarchy and a whole lot of Africa into the mix. And wait, there’s a bit of James Bond and the Phantom as well (those who know it will see the connection).

And really though, it’s not at all bad. It might just be better than expected.

Wakanda as shown in the film.

So Marvel’s much awaited Black Panther came out this week, with a nearly all-black cast, with the exceedingly revolutionary concept of Afro-futurism, where we get to peek into life at Wakanda, a hypothetical and fictional African nation which is way more advanced than the rest of the world that shares a common Imperialist history, due to the availability of a resource (the metal Vibranium) that allowed them to leap - technologically and societally - ahead of other civilisations by several decades. To maintain their superior status without getting involved in the world’s chaos, this nation uses special technology to hide in plain sight and disguise itself as a third-world country, disconnected from world politics since the beginning of the Time of Man.

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             ...Black Panther is a principally commercial film from the Marvel banner with cliche’ film troupes sprinkled all over it – a monarchy in trouble, a fight for the throne between warring relatives, and the entire world somehow in danger; many might even find some fleeting similarities with The Lion King in terms of the general plot movement.

But that doesn’t mean that the film doesn’t have its merits...

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The film follows straight after the events of Captain America: Civil War, with Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) gearing up to take over the Wakandan throne as well as the mantle of the Black Panther, a superhuman Wakandan protector, after the death of his father King T’Chaka. In the process of apprehending an old enemy from Civil War - Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) – he comes across Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) a claimant to the throne with a radically different idea on how Wakanda should exist and what it should strive toward.

Black Panther is a principally commercial film from the Marvel banner with cliche’ film troupes sprinkled all over it – a monarchy in trouble, a fight for the throne between warring relatives, and the entire world somehow in danger; many might even find some fleeting similarities with The Lion King in terms of the general plot movement.

But that doesn’t mean that the film doesn’t have its merits.

Erik Killmonger (Right) challenges T'Challa (Left) for
the Throne of Wakanda

Unlike the typical fight-for-the-crown stories, there is no unilateral device of good v. bad in the movie, like the X-Men films. Marvel does a repetitively good job with the character development of its villains (except for a couple of 2D villains in the past (Obadiah Stane in Iron Man, that elf guy from Thor 2, Blonsky and General Ross in The Incredible Hulk)) and it shows here again with Erik Killmonger. The audience gets to sympathize with both the antagonist and the protagonist based on their respective back-stories and no character is an absolute shade of black or white. Shades of Character! CHARACTER!!

The film is not flimsy, and has it’s layers. Other than a good villain, we see the development of a king and the soon-to-be newest addition to the Avengers in their fight against Thanos in the upcoming Infinity War. The film starts with exploration into T’Challa’s relationship with his late father, the seemingly all-good, benevolent Mufasa-like king who taught his son the ropes of being a king, seemingly so benign he could be called a god, but as the film advances we see a deeper spiritual connection between father and son, through which the new king gets to learn that his seemingly great father made mistakes too, mistakes that could seemingly shatter the pedestal on which he placed his father, and mistakes through which he learns that however big or great the position of a man may be, in the end he is still a man, who must stay as close to the ground as any other. We see a mirror image of the same in Erik Killmonger who, though fighting for an arguably noble cause and possessing the elements of a far-reaching king, might not eventually possess the elements befitting a good man. Also the film reasonably answers audience’s questions regarding the source and reach of the Black Panther’s superhuman powers, which had been left unanswered in Civil War.

__________________________________                ...Marvel does a repetitively good job with the character development of its villains  and it shows here again with Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan)...

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In Black Panther, we get to see an amazing conceptualisation of Afrofuturism and get to imagine how the African continent might have turned out as a society with a similar or greater kind of advantage over their Imperial oppressors, and we see this take effect in their clothes, architecture, symbolism and it’s anything but spectacular. We see a good connect between the design of these elements in the film and the contemporary comic book depictions, and hats off to the entirety of the film’s costume and VFX team for providing this visual feast.

Clockwise to Center - General Okoye (Danai Gurira),
M'Baku (Winston Duke), Ramonda (Angela Bassett),
Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), Shuri (Letitia Wright),
Zuri (Forest Whitaker), Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o),
W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) and T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman)

Then we have the biggest thing to speak about – the all black cast! For probably the first time, we have a film that builds upon and moves forward from its roots in the ‘blaxploitation’ subgenre, showcasing a story with a total of two white characters, and an advanced, rich society where blacks are not a minority but the superior people; not the criminal on the run, but the police force chasing him, complete with their own MI5-ish intelligence organisation and cool gadgets and their own king for a James Bond; and yet succeeding as both a mainstream universally awaited comic book film - catering to the millions of Marvel fans the world over by providing a neat standalone entry into the MCU’s continuity with an extremely likeable and kickass superhero – as well as a sociological concept that sets out to tap into a completely new audience who get a major superhero/action hero that they can actually relate with, after nearly a century of filmmaking history.

Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue

Coming to the performances, before we move on to the principal cast, we must concede to the energy-ball that is Andy Serkis. Serkis in playing Ulysses Klaue provides a haunting yet comically entertaining rendition of a South African black-market arms dealer, and easily one of the most welcome performances in the film, with a neat South African accent and a dangerously eccentric personality. As for the remainder of the cast, it was a commendable performance from the entirety, especially from the principal leads i.e. Boseman, Jordan, Wright, Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia (T’challa’s ex-lover and a Wakandan warrior) and Danai Gurira as Okoye (the leader of the Dora Milaje). We could have expected better from Angela Bassett who plays Ramonda, the queen-mother of Wakanda, and somehow fails to shed her American persona completely and sound more locally African like her co-stars.

VERDICT: 4 () out of 5 toots of The Bugle

Black Panther seeks to be much more than a simple cliche’d popcorn flick with an all black-cast. And despite all the familiar elements, there is eventually something new and absolutely lovely. 

P.S. - Throwback to the time we saw Black Panther first in Civil War