Chadwick Boseman on the throne as T’Challa, King of Wakanda—the Black Panther. Photo Copyright © 2018 by Marvel Studios.
"WAKANDA FOREVER!" has become the battle cry of many people of African descent around the world. There is an energy inherent in conversations about Marvel’s fictional Wakanda that has been missing from black collective thought for fifty years. People attended the opening nights of February’s much anticipated Black Panther in Pan-African garb; they beat drums and shouted, “Hotep!” for the first time in a generation. Old revolutionaries and more conservative civil rights activists suddenly seemed hopeful. Had the revolution come? Had we moved on up, to paraphrase The Jeffersons’ theme song?
In some ways, this is a remarkable response to a movie that is not inherently sociological but merely mythical. Having said “merely,” I remind myself that myth is history, and perception is reality. Black Panther was created by Marvel Comics titans Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1960s. Is it remotely possible that a powerful image can, in turn, create an alternative universe that has benefits in this reality?
I certainly hope so given the frenzy that has greeted this movie within the black community. It has already sparked a more positive conversation about black life than anything in the last few decades, dominated as they were by mass incarceration, drive-by shootings, police brutality, “legal” murders, etc. President Barack Obama was the only bit of temporary relief straddling the last two decades, as if the country had decided that it ought not to push black people too far, lest we blow.
Now, there is a conversation about Black Panther, a king in the mythical Wakanda, somewhere in Africa. The movie’s plot is based on the accidental impact of a material called vibranium on this land, which has given its citizens amazing technological power. Wakanda, however, has opted not to show itself to the world, preferring to keep its highly advanced society secret.
This is the dramatic direction of the movie: For if Wakanda is so powerful, why did it allow other black people to be enslaved, brutalized and degraded, especially when the “colonizers” came? This is, at one level, the source of the tension between Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), the ostensible villain, and his cousin King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the recently crowned young monarch.
While the question of Wakanda’s responsibility to other black people is provocative, it is not clear that the answer is. In fact, the movie hints at a possible engagement between Wakanda and other black people (predictably, African-Americans) by movie’s end, and I suppose one might take from that a message about the potential of Africa’s more dynamic engagement with its Diaspora. I must say, of this, I’m not hopeful. “Africa,” as concept, has long been subordinate to individual nationalisms, and the search for an actual Africa, apart from the sociologically constructed idea or Wakandan mythologizing, is particularly challenging.
Still, this is a movie. And if one gets beyond the elegiac quality of the black reaction, it is not a bad movie as superhero movies go.
The reaction even across the world has been surprising and overwhelming. The movie made US$700 million in ten days, putting it in very rarified air. It is a Hollywood truism that black stars do not play well overseas, the one exception being Will Smith, whose career has been on the skids since After Earth. This movie is hailed as proof that the truism has been exploded, but has it been? Marvel movies are very strong in the international community, so it may be necessary to wait for a black movie that is not within a franchise before we declare victory.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s no mistaking Black Panther’s success. At a production budget of US$200 million, and an estimated marketing budget of about the same amount, in ten days, the film has paid for itself and made a US$300 million profit. With a practically all-black cast! That is unheard of. And it’s not just black folk going to see it. In the US, about 37 percent of the audience is black, 30 percent white and 18 percent Latino. We don’t usually see this kind of a demographic spread for movies.
Overseas, Britain and Korea are leading the way. In Britain, the black audience would be primarily African and Caribbean, but we can be fairly certain that not too many brothers were in Seoul to make it a hit there. Black Panther opened in China with a solid US$66.5 million in its first three days. If it continues to find traction there, then the numbers will be astronomical.
So this movie has been a cultural touchstone and a financial success. But what is it as a movie?
It is, as I’ve said, a decent superhero movie. I like the all-female Dora Milaje soldiers/secret service, and there is something arresting about Daniel Kaluuya, who plays W’Kabi, T’Challa’s confidant and head of security. The cinematography is gorgeous, and the use of the afterlife creative. Costumes are off the charts, the best I’ve seen in a Marvel movie.
As with most Marvel Cinematic Universe fare, the storyline is barely OK but not any worse than other superhero movies. It has all the necessary elements, though some are familiar from other movies or genres. T’Challa’s inventive teenaged sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), is similar to Q in the James Bond franchise; the female soldiers are very much like the Amazons in DC Comics’ Wonder Woman. More of an issue was the limited scope of the superhero’s purpose in Black Panther: it left me empty.
Superheroes save the planet, the universe or the omniverse. Our hero simply fights for his own kingdom against his cousin. There is no existential threat to human life, and that is what separates the hero, who fights for tribe—or, writ large, the nation—from the superhero, who fights for all humankind. Ultimately, Black Panther features a war over territory, with modest amounts of barely thought-out philosophy about black people’s responsibility to each other thrown in. After all the hype, I’m still expecting something more.
Last updated November 15, 2018.
Ronald A. Williams is the author of several books, among them A Death in Panama and A Voice from the Tomb. His most recent novel is The Dark Land.
