Standing in the bay of a speeding Wakandan jet, a member of the African nations special forces unit the Dora Milaje advises their king, TChalla: Dont freeze. Calmly, the leader replies I never freeze. Hes assured, regal, radiating a near subzero-temperature sense of cool. And then, donning the mask of the legendary superhero known as the Black Panther, he torpedo-drops from the sky. A car explodes beneath him. He effortlessly somersaults through the air, lands sideways on a building in a neon-lit metropolis, races along the buildings wall and sails right onto the speeding car. Then the Avenger skewers the drivers side tire and tosses it away like a bottle cap. Screen time: 10 seconds. How long have we been waiting to watch that moment become a reality? A lifetime.
Literally from the jump, director Ryan Coogler and Co. make it clear that we will be watching a black superhero fully in control and completely occupying the center-stage spotlight. Watch Chadwick Bosemans Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War, and youll see a charismatic character who fills a void in the conflicted do-gooder group. Watch the new trailer, however the one that dropped months ago for his stand-alone film and youll seesomeone with the arrogance of Shaft, the coolness of Obama and the hot-headed impulsiveness of Kanye West. This TChalla is accessible, awe-inspiring and perhaps most importantly, human.I think the question that Im trying to ask and answer in Black Panther is, What does truly mean to be African?' the filmmaker recently told Rolling Stone. The MCU has set itself in the real world as much as possible so what does it mean for TChalla to move around as this black man in a movie reality that tries to be a real world?
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All of which means that, after decades of trying to nail the modern black superhero, we may finally be getting what weve asked for and getting it right. This journey hasnt been without effort. The Blaxploitation films in the 1970s gave black audiences their own heroes:Shaft, Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, Slaughter,Foxy Brown.They were inner-city vigilantes, detectives, nurses and ex-cons that waged anti-establishment wars against authority, drugs, gangs and corruption one-man (or woman) hit-squads operating against the real-world political backdrop of Nixons law and order campaign. Occasionally, movies like Shaft Goes to Africa, where Richard Roundtree wears an African dashiki and is equipped with a large unassuming staff thats a piece of advanced tech, and Dolemite(that broad hat, that flashy suit pimp-style outfit) had their protagonists don something like costumes and adopt something close to alter-egos to mete out justice.
These black men and women didnt cower in the face of danger, white power or guns; their combination of sex appeal and swagger made many audiences fall in love with them. To say that mileage may vary among these portraits of sticking it to the Man would be putting it mildly. But in hindsight, you can see how the Blaxploitation movies influenced a
generation of black musicians and artists by selling a profoundly Afrocentric image, as well as spawning a legacy that can be seen in everything from hip-hop to stand-up comedy.And though the Black Panther first appeared during the Civil Rights era, the main wave of black superheroes that followed think Luke Cage, Black Lightning, the Falcon, Storm of the X-Men were children of the Blaxploitation age. They just werent getting screen time. At all.
In the Nineties and the early 2000s, attempts to make black superhero movies tended to play like Blaxploitation-lite, running the gamut from intentionally hilarious (1993s Meteor Man and 1994s Blankman) or hilariously bad (Steel and Spawn,both 1997). They were usually analogues of white superheroes like Superman and Batman at best, and a one-note joke at worst. The one exception, the Great Black Hope, was 1998s Blade, the first in a series about a leather-clad, mixed breed vampire hunter played by Wesley Snipes. It was critically embraced, commercially successful ($333 million in box-office receipts) and a high-water mark for an obscure superhero character in from an obscure comic book horror series. The franchise ended on a sour note but it also provided a blueprint for what would become Marvel Studios eventual MCU pop-culture takeover.
Still, even Blades success wasnt enough to get more top-tier black superheroes films on the big screen. Audiences had to be content with Halle Berrys African-born mutant superhero Storm, Don Cheadles War Machine, Anthony Mackies Falcon strong performances that still had the whiff of consolation prizes. Hollywood grapevine chatter pondered if Will Smith could play Captain America and Donald Glover campaigned to be cast as Spider-Man; cue widespread backlash from a largely white mainstream fan-base. The less said about poor Michael B. Jordan in that ill-conceived Fantastic Four reboot, the better.
Yet Black Panther already feels different from all of this. Coogler has set out to do something with the modern black superhero that all previous iterations have fallen short of doing: making it respectable, imaginative and powerful. The Afro-punk and Afrofuturism aesthetics, the unapologetic black swagger, the miniscule appearances from non-black characters its an important resetting of a standard of whats possible around creating a mythology for a black superhero. The trailers point to a new direction for depicting not only black superheroes, but also how we imagine our heroes. Hes not being played for laughs. Hes not a sidekick or born out of dire circumstances. His story, one of an ingrained birthright, legacy and royalty is a stark difference for how we tend to treat most black superheroes and black superhero movies.
The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about the danger of a single storyabout Africa, about black brilliance, our humanity and the black experience for too long. There would never be a time when this movies creation wouldnt mean something to black people in particular, and the inevitable backlash that this movie will receive for its celebration, existence and confidence in blackness will be a reminder that there are no new conversations, merely new opportunities to remind us of who we collectively are. Yet that wont matter because the people this movie will speak most deeply to a rainbow-coalition cross-section of black comic book readers, African-American movie audiences, Boseman/Jordan/Bassett/Nyongo fans, black-culture connoisseurs and pop-culture nerds will see something of themselves in this movie. They will also likely be both familiar and resistant to the disdain it will receive for merely existing. Like anything black in America, Black Panther will be politicized for being black, which is to say for being and for announcing itself as a having a right to be here and to be heard.
Since the dawn of the modern Golden-Age superhero, weve been treated to over 30 iterations and appearances of Superman, Batman and Spider-Man (multiply that threefold if you count cartoons, cartoon movies and video games). Weve had a stand-alone Howard the Duck movie, and a supergroup with a talking raccoon and a sentient tree as central characters. Wonder Woman, one of D.Cs most iconic characters created in the 1940s, got a TV show in the 1970s and didnt get a movie until last June.
Fast-forward to 2016, however, and you can stream Netflixs unapologetically AfrocentricLuke Cage series, while shows like Cloak and Dagger, Black Lightning and the recently-announced series Raising Dion(co-produced and starring Michael B. Jordan about a single mother discovers her young son has magical powers) in various stage of production. And now, finally, we have a Black Panther movie, one set to open on thousands of screens and get the full Marvel marketing-blitz treatment.
As a child in school, I rarely reached for the black or brown Crayola crayons in my superhero coloring books; I have a lifetimes worth of Halloweens where I weighed how often I could or should dress as the white superheroes. I couldnt find ones that looked like me both outside of and underneath the mask. An entire generation of children will now know that a black superhero, society, imagination and power can exist right alongside Peter Parker, Steve Rogers and Bruce Wayne. An entire generation of children will not know what it feels like to not see themselves reflected back on costume racks, coloring books or movie screens.Were at a pivotal time where these characters and stories are coming not out of permission or obligation, but necessity.
It has been someones time before again and again and again. But 2018s late winter will belong to Wakanda much like 2017s early summer belonged to Wonder Woman. Weve been waiting to see ourselves onscreen, flying through the air and running across buildings and dodging laserblasts from bearded colonialists our entire lives. The future is Ryan Coogler, Chadwick Boseman, TChalla, Black Panther. The future begins on February 16th.
Originally published on October 17th, 2017
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