Coogler’s third strike is as complex and compelling as his first two.
I was worried about watching this film – almost as much as
Blade Runner 2049 (reviewed for TQF
here) albeit for entirely different reasons.
I wanted to like
Black Panther, but the odds seemed stacked against me.
I wanted to like it because I admire Ryan Coogler for his artistic genius and for the way in which he has extended both black consciousness and consciousness of anti-black racism in his previous two films,
Fruitvale Station (2013) and
Creed (2015).
Merely releasing a film with the title
Black Panther, which recalls the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of the 1960s and 1970s, in the era of Black Lives Matter, heightened racial tensions in the US, and Trump’s New Nationalism constitutes a political statement in itself.
The Alt-Right countered with attempts to sabotage the success of the film via social media, but their efforts proved spectacularly unsuccessful when
Black Panther broke several opening weekend box office records.
I felt this took a little of the pressure off me because regardless of what I write now the film is already a commercial and critical achievement by Coogler.
Why did I think the odds were stacked against me?
Despite many attempts, I just can't get to grips with superheroes as protagonists, with superhero narratives, or with the superhero aesthetic in general.
I can’t even manage a second viewing of
The Dark Knight Trilogy, which is by one of my favourite directors.
Black Panther is a Marvel Comics character, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966 (coincidentally, the same year in which the
Black Panther Party was founded), and
Black Panther is the eighteenth film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The film is also the second of three in which Black Panther appears, after
Captain America: Civil War (2016), and before
Avengers: Infinity War, due later this year.
