There’s no way Black Panther could possibly live up to the hype it’s receiving in the media. It’s not “revolutionary,” it’s not going to fundamentally change the movie industry, and it’s not the greatest superhero movie ever made. It’s a very good addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and tells as decent a solo origin story as any of the Marvel movies.
The Black Panther was introduced to the MCU during the events of Captain America: Civil War. This movie is set just weeks after the King of Wakanda is killed in a terrorist bombing (as seen during Civil War), and focuses on T’challa (Chadwick Boseman) and his transition from warrior to king. Shortly after assuming the throne, T’challa begins to question the role of Wakanda in the global community. With the arrival of a challenger to the throne, T’challa must defend his kingdom, face his father’s legacy, and decide whether Wakanda will continue to hide from the world, or if it will reach out to share its riches and technology to help solve the world’s problems.
The movie is a pretty good superhero film. There’s plenty of action, lots of fancy gadgets, and fantastic set pieces. The cast is good, although it would be nice to see someone other than Angela Basset in the strong black woman role, and someone other than Forrest Whitaker in any role. Like most of the Marvel movies, there’s a decent mix of action and humor, with a lot of violence, but not really any blood or gore. Some of the jokes seem a little forced, and there were a fair amount of references and stylistic choices that felt overly comic-booky (I had a similar feeling about aspects of the first Thor movie). One of the things that sets Black Panther ahead of some of the Marvel films is that its villain is better fleshed out, and more compelling. Instead of a random super powerful someone who wants X and then bam, pow, thwack! the superhero has to fight him, the villain Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) has a personal story that ties him more closely to T’challa, and the movie explores his motivations a bit better than some previous films have with their bad guys. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still an over-the-top bad guy, but at least there’s a bit more time spent explaining why he’s bad, and forcing T’challa to consider his own path based on Killmonger’s history.
Unfortunately, the media has turned this into more than just a comic book movie, and a lot of people seem to be insisting that Black Panther is a great, revolutionary, world saving film of great importance, for really no other reason than that the main hero is African, and there are positive portrayals of Africans and African culture. The phenomenon reminds me of some of the people who vocally voiced support for then candidate Obama, solely because they thought it would be good to have a black President. You would think there were never three hugely successful Blade movies with Wesley Snipes, that Will Smith never made any films portraying black men in a positive light, that Tyler Perry hadn’t inexplicably made a ton of money by making movies targeted primarily at African Americans, or that characters like Roger Murtaugh, Axl Foley, Agent J, Morpheus, etc never existed. I don’t want to downplay the importance of Black Panther as a black hero in both the comics and movie universes, and I completely understand the importance that this type of role can have in African American communities. However, those aspects don’t really magically turn a pretty good superhero movie into the next Citizen Kane or Seven Samurai.
Overall, Black Panther is a very fun trip to the movies, and like most of the Marvel films, pretty good for the whole family. There’s no sex, no foul language (although one characters gives another the finger), and the violence is fairly tame. Two thumbs up, just so long as you ignore some of the unreasonably high expectations set by fawning media.
