Panther: First Look (No Spoilers)
Well, my date and I got stuck in LA traffic and almost missed it. But that story is for another time.
Despite toiling under the now very tired superhero movie formula (Act Three: The Hero Faces Off Against His Doppelganger!) director Ryan Coogler manages to pull off a few surprises– something I honestly did not think possible. This is not my Black Panther– it is a young king who is still learning and thus still growing and thus capable of being surprised in ways my T’Challa never could. Michael B. Jordan’s more linear and bombastic villain’s hip hop soundtrack tends to drown out Chadwick Boseman’s far more nuanced, surgical prince-who-would-be-king, so you’re likely to read lots of praises or complaints about Jordan “stealing” this movie. The actual thieves are the women– Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira, and Lupita Nyong’o, who are given the most dynamic of the action scenes and who, along with an absolutely glorious Angela Bassett, solve all of the plot’s problems (including rescuing T’Challa)–which is both good and bad. But Jordan’s Killmonger is kind of an idiot. He is an idiot who has a legitimate case– real complaints and concerns about Wakandan tradition along with a thirst for simple revenge (revenge always works in plots)– but make no mistake about it: movie Killmonger is an idiot–something he was not in my comics.
While taking absolutely nothing away from Stan Lee, who was one of the people who taught me this biz, or Jack “King” Kirby, I was disappointed and a little disturbed by one thing. I would guess at least 80% of the characters up on that screen were created by Don McGregor, who was in attendance at last night’s premiere. Forget me or Reginald Hudlin or even Ta-Nehisi Coates (who sat with us), the vast and rich infrastructure of this film was a product of years of hard investment by Don, who was paid some paltry page rate. Don built the world of Wakanda, literally, maps of the place and extensive biographies and character sketches. He deserved much more than to be buried in a “Special Thanks” paragraph in the closing credits. Stan wrote, to my knowledge, only one Black Panther story, and Jack jettisoned virtually everything Don did when he did his own run on the book. Black Panther the movie is Don McGregor’s world brought to glorious life. I’d have liked him to have a larger credit for it (and better seats than waaaaay in the back with the rest of us peons).
There are at least four audiences for this film: Black Panther comic book fans, general comic book fans, African American general audiences and general audiences. This film offers high octane entertainment to all of these groups, but it will be the African American general audiences–who neither know nor care who I am–who will struggle the hardest to make it through the first act of this film without tearing up. The film’s glorious fairy tale of a highly advanced African civilization is enough to drop even the most cynical among us to our knees. A love letter to African Americans, the first half hour of this film had me wiping away tears at the sheer beauty of a people–my people–brought to glorious and amazing life in ways I never could on a static comic book page. Here, Black Panther finally had a soundtrack, and it is the soundtrack of my ancestors, my homeland. It was emotionally overwhelming and something I’d not quite prepared myself for.
There are many laugh out loud moments in the film but almost none of them come from Martin Freeman’s Everett K. Ross. Freeman does the best he can, often eliciting big laughs with simple body language and facial expressions–the mark of a master thespian. But the film gives Ross little to do and almost no lines, which will disappoint fans of my run while the other audiences will simply wonder what he was doing there in the first place.
Unfortunately, by either decree or simple fate, and despite my pleadings with the decision makers, Black Panther nonetheless sticks to formula. Are we really not capable of creating a film that resolves its core conflicts without the predictable big fight at the end? The best parts of the film–and there are many–are the places where Coogler is allowed to vary from this formula or, even better, practice a kind of slight of hand where he doesn’t really fool me so much as he waves a hand puppet, “Hey! Look over here!” distracting me long enough that when the film snaps back to formula I am actually surprised where I, a grizzled old writer, really shouldn’t have been.
All of the performances–including Freeman’s–are near-flawless. These are brilliant actors chewing scenery through each and every frame of this film. They all seem to know they are working on a landmark film–likely the biggest-budget blockbuster film with a mostly black cast, and every single actor here rises to the occasion.
While I’d have wished for much more originality in the final act of the film, I do not hold Mr. Coogler responsible for not reinventing the wheel. But I _am_ tired of watching the same movie over and over and over and over and over– And Then They Fight! I like even less the lesson these films repeatedly teach our children: conflict resolution through violence.
Having said that, I am overwhelmed by a sense of relief that the movie far exceeds my fears about what this thing might have been. It is an amazing spectacle with a rich, thick, multi-layered, often conflicted and expertly nuanced pseudo-Hamlet at the center–a brilliant performance that is bound to be overrun by Jordan’s more flamboyant, focused and bombastic challenger. My self-interest in the success of this film notwithstanding, I am confident the film will be a huge hit with African American audiences and certainly with comic book (and comic book film) fans, leaving only Priest-specific Black Panther fans a bit disappointed, and, of course, the Donald Trump crowd who will hate it even as they buy their ticket.
at Priest wanting Freeman to be a clown and steal shine from others
