Not Ryan Coogler’s best work, but Black Panther’s mixture of big-budget special effects, intimate mythology and a yearning for what might have been is much needed.
USA
4*
Director:
Ryan Coogler
Screenwriters:
Ryan Coogler
Joe Robert Cole
Director of Photography:
Rachel Morrison
Running time: 135 minutes
Oakland, California, is where the revolutionary Black Panther Party was born in 1966. It is also where Oakland native Ryan Coogler, whose first two features – Fruitvale Station and Creed – are modern-day masterpieces, starts his superhero movie adaptation of the famous Marvel Comics character, in 1992, before moving to the present. But in a majestic, visually striking opening sequence, he tells the story of Wakanda, a nation hidden in the heart of Africa and endowed with limitless sources of the supermetal vibranium that have ensured the country’s financial survival and technological prowess despite its isolation.
The presentation of this history lesson calls to mind the opening minutes of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, but the work of Coogler’s director of photography, Rachel Morrison, is much more sophisticated, as we appear to swing through time in an unbroken take whilst time unspools in the valleys below. Connecting Wakanda with Oakland is also the job of the camera, as it eventually swoops into the opening scene over a basketball court and settles on a young boy, who looks up and sees a space ship hovering above his apartment block. The links that Cooger and Morrison establish between past and present, poverty and technology, are a continual source of wonder because it is unusual to see this level of care taken in constructing a superhero film.
The titular Black Panther, king of the Wakandans, is played by Chadwick Boseman. Also known as T’Challa, he is the son of the former King T’Chaka, portrayed by South African veteran actor John Kani, and South Africa features everywhere in Black Panther. Not only is Wakandan really the Xhosa language (Nelson Mandela’s mother tongue and the second-most widely spoken language in the country), but one of the story’s main villains, Ulysses Klaue, is a white South African whose speech drips with an Afrikaans accent. Finally, the name T’Chaka is, of course, an unmistakable reference to one of the greatest military leaders the world has ever seen: Shaka, king of the Zulus.
But just as Shaka’s heirs could never match his acumen for waging battle, T’Challa does not do well in a comparison with his father, T’Chaka. This much is evident in his pitiful display of brawn shortly before his investiture: What is expected to be a coronation turns out to be something much more uncertain, as four of Wakanda’s tribes agree to T’Challa’s status as the new sovereign, but one tribe rejects him. This tribe, the Jabari, re-appears after centuries in hiding and have had no part in Wakanda’s development as an ultra-modern civilisation filled with technology that goes far beyond anything else on Earth, never mind the rest of the African continent. They are sceptical of the Wakandans’ talk of unity, particularly when they are themselves hiding out from the rest of the world.
This uneasy unity, of being one while being many, is an issue South Africa has sought for decades to address, even dubbing itself the Rainbow Nation. But for all the utopian idealism such metaphors inspire, it takes hard work for peace to be sustainable, and the tension is evident in Black Panther, too. Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), who is a Wakandan spy in Nigeria and helps to save a group of women from an unnamed terrorist group (clearly Boko Haram), continually pushes T’Challa to share Wakanda’s knowledge and riches with the less-developed world instead of hoarding it for itself.
The same thread runs through the film’s most complex vein, as its powerful male characters struggle to decide whether to help the world’s vulnerable or to turn inward and be selfish with the endless vibranium resources. While T’Challa is reluctant to find a solution, the arrival of Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), a US war veteran and covert operations specialist who knows how to bring down a foreign government, forces him to face reality.
Although he is clearly the villain, Killmonger’s past (he grew up an orphan), justified feelings of betrayal (his father, N’Jobu, was T’Challa’s uncle, and he was killed by his own brother, King T’Chaka) and sense of purpose (he wants to use Wakanda’s technology to give power to the world’s disadvantaged black populations), not to mention his extraordinary good looks, all make him a complex character whom we empathise with even as we root for his enemies.
Such complexity is a welcome change from the standard big-budget and superhero fare. But it’s a shame T’Challa isn’t seen to be struggling with this issue more seriously. In fact, the ruler of the world’s most technologically advanced nation is surprisingly ill-prepared for the throne and the duties that come with it.
Just like Eddie Murphy’s Akeem Joffer in Coming to America, T’Challa seems to have skipped any and all discussions in the royal household about the road to being a king. His friendly demeanour endears him to most of his people, but he is clearly uncomfortable as regent, and his decision to change Wakanda’s approach to the outside world, well-intentioned though it may be, seems to be made without him realising how difficult it will be.
One of the film’s first scenes take place at the “Museum of Great Britain”, which houses artefacts looted by the British Empire over the centuries. There is a nagging question throughout as to whether things will change for Wakanda once it opens up to the world and its riches are discovered. Will it suffer the fate of fellow African countries whose resources have been plundered through outside meddling? Or will its mixture of tradition and advanced technology (not unlike a religious superpower such as the United States) protect it against the onslaught of an aggressive globalisation?
Although by far one of the best superhero films out there, Black Panther nonetheless never veers too far from the well-beaten path of its predecessors, and the good inevitably triumphs over the bad without much of a scuffle. The film raises many issues that will require a thorough probing in a sequel, however, and if these issues are addressed head-on and in keeping with the rules of the real world instead of those of superhero fiction, it will easily clear the bar set by this first instalment.