Marvel movies have been disposable. They’ve been designed to be the same. And even the best ones have only shown glimmers of the personality behind the camera. All that changes with “Black Panther.” In fact, so much has changed with this film. It signals not just a new step forward for Marvel, but a shift in the modern blockbuster’s ability to be political and current, and it’s an absolute leap forward in what we should demand from black cinema.
That’s in part because this very clearly is a Ryan Coogler film. “Black Panther” starts and ends in Oakland in the early ‘90s, as personal a setting as you could get from Coogler. And though Black Panther’s native African nation of Wakanda may not be real, the story Coogler is telling is certainly rooted in reality. Continue reading “Black Panther”