Black Panther

I went to see Black Panther yesterday.  I think it will make a lot of money and people will talk about it.

Anyway, what struck me at first was the very direct use of African themes and visuals.  There was no soft-pedaling anything for a white audience.  There was the curious casting of Englishman Martin Freeman as an American CIA agent, but aside from that, there wasn't any effort to include white...anything.  Even the white villain was South African.

By a half hour into the movie, I had ceased to notice this.  Instead, what struck me was how the movie took a common story archetype and twisted it slightly.  One of the most powerful and common stories, especially in movies, is the Chosen One narrative.  The basic idea is that some lonely, marginalized, seemingly unexceptional figure is, in fact, the Chosen One.  Luke Skywalker isn't just a lonely moisture farmer on a desert outpost.  Harry Potter isn't just an abused orphan living under the stairs.  Buffy isn't just a neurotic teenager.  Thomas Anderson isn't just an office drone/hacker.

Black Panther subverts this narrative in an interesting way. T'Challa knows exactly who he is.  The Wakandans know exactly who they are.  Even Killmonger knows who he is.  There is no doubt in these characters about their true identity.  Instead, they work constantly to hide their true identity from others.  It's as if they are also inverting the lesson of another Marvel hero: With great power comes a great lack of responsibility.  It is actually the "villain" who forces the hero to see the flaw in this line of thinking, opening up Wakanda to the rest of the Marvel Universe and setting up this summer's Infinity Wars extravaganza. 

Unlike most Marvel movies, the dialogue was not especially sharp and banter-filled, like Iron Man, Spiderman, the recent Thor or even Ant Man. Instead, the movie's best line was given to Killmonger as he dies, "Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, 'cause they knew death was better than bondage."  The problem with the movie is that it never knows exactly what to do with that sentiment.  Killmonger's rage is multifaceted; it's personal as well as political.  But the movie never really grapples with its political side.

Wakanda's long camouflage really was an act of cowardice, and Killmonger's anger - if destructive - was not misplaced.  T'Challa's decision to end it makes for the final twist on the Chosen One narrative.  It would be as if JK Rowling wrote all those books from Dumbledore's point of view, and in the end, Dumbledore appears to Muggles and solves all the world's problems.  T'Challa's final speech about the need to see each other as "one single tribe" is what make for his hero's journey.  It's just very different from most hero's journeys that we have seen.

So, while it's Afro-Futurism is a unique vision within the Superhero genre, there is more that is unique about Black Panther than simply how it looks or whose story it tells.