Whether you’re a fan of superhero movies or not, Marvel’s Black Panther is an absolute must-see.
IMDb summarizes the Marvel movie’s plot as follows: “T’Challa, the King of Wakanda, rises to the throne in the isolated, technologically advanced African nation, but his claim is challenged by a vengeful outsider who was a childhood victim of T’Challa’s father’s mistake.”
Image from The Independent
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Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film features an almost all-black cast, including Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, and Michael B. Jordan. Moreover, a massive amount of the film’s crew and post-production team were black too. With awesome representation both in front and behind the camera, Black Panther, is unrivaled in its diversity, claiming the title of the biggest global debut for a mainly black cast.
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The movie made $242 million nationally and $426 million worldwide within the first three days of its release, according to The Huffington Post, making it the second-highest-four-day opening in history, following right behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This also makes Black Panther’s opening the fifth largest of ALL. TIME. How awesome is that?! It has also earned a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the higher than any other Marvel movie previously produced.
An age-old argument in Hollywood is that films geared towards featuring examples of black culture won’t interest global audiences. These record breaking stats prove just the opposite.
Huffington Post featured an unnamed black woman at the premiere of the movie, saying, “We’re excited because we get representation in a film. That’s not about slavery, that’s not about trials and tribulations, but about a powerful African empire, which is where we come from in the first place.”
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Though there are representations of black people in the media, they’re often loaded with stereotypes and racial and class prejudices, leading them to be inaccurate and unvaried portrayals. Black Panther shatters this trend by portraying a futuristic, technologically advanced African country that has been mostly untouched by white European colonialism. This is a stark difference to the majority of films and TV shows out there that only depict black people as thugs, gang members, or sidekicks.
Image from Farabale Weekly
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What Black Panther does is the exact opposite – T’Challa is a KING, as well as the main superhero. There’s also Letitia Wright’s character, Shuri, who is the 16-year-old technological mastermind, as well as princess of Wakanda. Speaking of the film’s depiction of women, Wakanda has an entirely female army. How cool!! Most of the characters are dark skinned as well, resisting the colorism that is, unfortunately, so prevalent in today’s society. The film does an amazing job in featuring multi-faceted characters and avoiding tokenizing.
Image from USA Today
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Overall, Black Panther is an interesting tale with a refreshing amount of diversity, and a much-needed narrative that will hopefully become more prevalent in future films. Go see it as soon as you can!
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