BEFORE: Finally getting around to posting this review - I saw the film during the first week of its release, but it just didn't link to anything in the February romance chain. Plus in December I planned out February's schedule and then about halfway into March, and I didn't think about leaving openings for new releases until about mid-February, and then of course it was too late to re-adjust. So, I did what I've done in previous years for the various Marvel movies - go see the film, and then try to work it into the chain later. Yeah, it's a little deceptive, and it works against the spirit of what I'm trying to do here, but some compromises have to be made when justifying my linking chain. (I guess I could have NOT seen "Black Panther" right away and waited for April, but considering that it could leave theaters in late March, I didn't want to take that chance.)
If I've planned this right, then Stan Lee carries over from "Yoga Hosers".
THE PLOT: T'Challa, the King of Wakanda, rises to the throne in the isolated, technologically advance African nation, but his claim is challenged by a vengeful outsider who was a childhood victim of T'Challa's father's mistake.
AFTER: I read most of the Marvel Comics, with a focus on the Avengers, X-Men and Star Wars books. I do buy and read "Black Panther" comics, but I never really felt a connection to the character, maybe as a white male raised in America I never will. I think that's part of my problem, overall I just can't relate to an African king the way I can to, say, Peter Parker, former nerdy American high-school student. Despite being Spider-Man, Peter Parker always had trouble with bullies, trouble with bosses, trouble with girlfriends, trouble trying to get home to dinner with his aunt...things were always going wrong for him somewhere, and we all know that feeling, we've lived that feeling. But how many of us know what it's like to be the king of a country, and to have to fight off challengers to the throne? I'm guessing not many.
There's something else that bothers me about the comic book, at least the current run of it, written by Ta-Nahesi Coates. Sometimes an issue will get so bogged down in politics that it feels like someone forgot what superhero comics should be about, which is the action. I sometimes get to the end of a "Black Panther" comic and ask, "OK, what was that all about? Nothing really happened in this issue..." So I was very glad to see that the "Black Panther" film does NOT have this problem. Oh, there are some politics in it, but it's mostly action, which SHOULD be the focus of most comic books.
There's a big buy-in, because you have to first believe in an African country that's not poor or underdeveloped, just the opposite in fact, but they want the world to BELIEVE that they're poor and underdeveloped, an isolationist strategy that protects their technology and resources, the biggest being a mountain-sized pile of vibranium, which in the Marvel Universe is not only the rarest metal on earth, but also one of the strongest (technically the just-as-fictitious adamantium, the metal that coats Wolverine's skeleton and claws is stronger.). In the MCU, vibranium was used to make Captain America's shield - though back in the day, when I started reading comics, his shield was an alloy of vibranium AND adamantium. At that time vibranium wasn't known for its strength, but for its ability to absorb vibrations, that's why Cap's shield was both strong and able to resist force and pressure.
But let me focus here. The hereditary mantle of the Black Panther comes with the title of king, so the ruler of Wakanda also gets the power of the gods, like strength and agility and the power to commune with his dead ancestors. You may say that the superpower comes from a plant, which gets its energy from the vibranium, but if you believe that the gods sent the asteroid full of vibranium to Earth in the first place, then by transitive properties, the superpowers come from the gods. And the king of Wakanda must use this power to protect his country and its resources, hiding them from the outside world, no matter the cost.
It's hard to say that's a bad political strategy, because Wakanda became the only (fictional) African country that wasn't conquered or colonized by Europeans, so they were able to flourish on their own, with their own rules and tribal traditions, and not be involved in the slave trade or tyrannical rule by others. So it makes sense that the new king, T'Challa, would want to stay the course and not provide aid to other countries. But as seen in "Captain America: Civil War", King T'Challa also gets the chance to hang out with the Avengers and save the world - though the real motive there might have been to learn all that he could about American superheroes. In the comic books, they've strongly implied that the Black Panther joined the Avengers just to spy on them.
By watching the film, where T'Challa takes a number of operatives on a mission to capture Ulysses Klaue (an arms-dealer character seen in "Avengers: Age of Ultron" who becomes a super-villain made out of sound, at least in the comic books...) I finally caught on to what makes "Black Panther" tick, and what makes him so cool. He's like a one-man Avengers squad, if you think about it - he's got the tech resources of Iron Man, the leadership ability of Captain America, the weapons and marksmanship of Hawkeye, the connection to the gods like Thor, and the politics and spy-stuff of Black Widow. OK, so he doesn't have the anger of the Hulk, but that's really a positive if you think about it.
I didn't really care for the Everett Ross character before either, not in the "Civil War" film, and not in the comic books, where he was portrayed as a total douche. But in this film, with Martin Freeman playing a cool CIA spy (instead of a State Department toadie), I dug him a lot more. In fact the whole supporting cast is great here, from T'Challa's mother and sister to the Dorae Milaje (female warriors) right down to the 5 tribes of the nation, even the Jabari tribe led by M'Baku (who in the comics has the very culturally insensitive super-villain name "Man-Ape").
But what bothered me, and I hope this doesn't come off as racist, because it's not intended that way at all, was the portrayal of African culture via the accents and the body modifications. This felt like a form of "cultural appropriation", because it was all a bit too much, and that's not even a culture I have any connection to, but I feel the need to explain this a bit further. Like, I get the tribal scarring on the torso of the Killmonger character - that's a part of who he is, and it's also a part of African culture. But then there was the guy with a plate in his lip, and they found a way to get him into nearly EVERY crowd shot, so then it starts to feel a little more like exploitation. I convinced myself that they found one real African guy with a lip-plate, and decided to use him as much as possible - but it turns out he's an actor and the lip-plate was a fake add-on, and somehow that seems even worse. "Hey, let's get the guy with the lip-plate in the next shot, too, so we can show how incredibly diverse we're pretending to be..."
Chadwick Boseman, for example, does not have an African accent, he's an American. Is it OK to ask him to talk "more African" to play this role? I'm not sure, any more than it would be to ask a white man to talk "more black", or even to ask a black man to talk "more black". Maybe they'd say "more street" or "more urban" - but if it's wrong to have Johnny Depp play Tonto and speak in broken English, like a Native American who can't quite master the language, then it's also wrong to ask a bunch of American and British actors to speak "more African" to play a role. At some point I realized the whole thing was ridiculous, in addition to being sort of racist. When they screen "Black Panther" in African countries, for example, are they going to have to add subtitles, because the American actors are speaking "African-like", but not in an actual African language?
SNL did a skit about this just last week, where they showed a couple of white men doing the "Wakandan salute" after seeing the film, and a number of African-Americans told them to just stop doing that, because they looked ridiculous - it was worse than watching white people rap or try to act all "street", so it just came off as cringe-worthy. To me, it was just as cringe-worthy to see these American actors trying to act and speak in a more "native" style. I think it's probably safer to avoid these cultural stereotypes altogether, because it leads to a line of thinking where "all Italians talk like this" or "all Germans are organized and fanatics" or "all Africans dress and talk like this". If any one of those is not OK, then all of them are therefore not OK.
NITPICK POINT: Shuri, the Black Panther's sister, is portrayed as a technical genius - she's invented a system that allows her to drive a car remotely from thousands of miles away. (There should be a signal delay involved due to the distance, which would make reacting to traffic and other emergencies difficult, but let's put that aside for the moment...) But this genius forgot that in some countries, people drive on the other side of the road? So, is she smart or not? This was added for the sake of humor, I guess, but I didn't find it funny, the thought that she could run someone over or cause a crash just because she forgot to check this little detail that everyone else knows. A real genius would have added some kind of check in the system that would automatically keep track of which countries drive on the left and which drive on the right, and have a sort of "pop-up" reminder before the driving would begin.
Also starring Chadwick Boseman (last seen in "Gods of Egypt"), Michael B. Jordan (last seen in "Creed"), Lupita Nyong'o (last heard in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Andy Serkis (ditto), Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya (last seen in "Sicario"), Martin Freeman (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Forest Whitaker (last seen in "Arrival"), Angela Bassett (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Florence Kasumba (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Sterling K. Brown (also last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), John Kani (last seen in "Captain America: Civil War"), Sebastian Stan (ditto), David S. Lee, Isaach de Bankole (last seen in "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"), Nabiyah Be, Sydelle Noel, Denzel Whitaker, Atandwa Kani, Ashton Tyler, Connie Chiume, Dorothy Steel, Danny Sapani, Francesca Faridany, Seth Carr,.
RATING: 8 out of 10 charging rhinos
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