SPOILERS AHEAD
There’s going to be a lot of the chatter in the days (weeks, months, years) to come about how Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther stands resolutely apart from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’ll be time to talk about Black Panther’s place within the specific contexts of black cinema; Afrofuturism; the modern trend of “Man, Donald Trump fucking sucks”-fueled masterpieces; the young, brilliant career of writer-director Ryan Coogler; and a whole host of other lenses by which we can examine and view the film.
But make no mistake, Black Panther is a Marvel Studios production, recognizable as such even with a paucity of Infinity Stones and glory shots of the Avengers Tower in the NYC skyline. And while Black Panther has a lot on its mind beyond the standard concerns about power and responsibility that consume many a superhero picture, Coogler and his team have also tied their film into perhaps the single most prevalent thematic underpinning of the MCU.
So for today, let’s talk about how Black Panther, while being perhaps the most singular and ambitious film ever released by Marvel Studios in the decade since Robert Downey Jr. declared “I am Iron Man,” is of a piece with what has come before, as Coogler synthesizes the central preoccupation of the MCU into something vibrant and alive.
Let’s talk about legacy.
“Those are your weapons in the hands of those murderers! Is this what you want? Is this what you wish the legacy of the great Tony Stark to be?”
Legacy. What we leave behind after we’re gone, to our family, our people, our world. How we’re remembered. The comforting lies and hard truths that the past leave for the present to build a future with. The events that become stories that become legends.
Legacy has been a central preoccupation of the MCU since day one, as it is perhaps the most critical concern of this shared universe’s signature character. Tony Stark is introduced to us as a man who cares about only the present moment and whatever his next rush is going to be. The next gamble, the next woman, the next billions dollars. He passes around high-tech weaponry like its candy, barely giving a second thought to the implications of the WMDs he distributes. Him getting blown up by his own hardware is what begins his transformation into Iron Man, and it’s what gets the ball rolling on this entire galaxy of super-beings.
The theme of legacy has remained critical to virtually every single film featuring Tony Stark, as his new awareness of the impact of his actions and his determination to do better causes all sorts of compound problems for himself and the world at large. Iron Man 2 frames this as bluntly as humanly possible: firstly on an emotional level, as Tony is at death’s door for the duration of the film, leading him to do some serious soul-searching about what will become of his work and name after he is gone. And secondly, on a practical, plot-y level, not only is the villain a wronged relic from the Stark family’s past, but Tony spends the film unraveling a scavenger hunt left to him by his father, Roger Sterling as Walt Disney as Howard Stark. Turns out that dear old daddy left behind a legacy that, once solved, allows Tony to solve his pressing mortality problem and save the day! Hooray for, uh, convenience!
“When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you.”
Anyway, most of the films don’t grapple with this subject matter with this sort of ham-fisted literal-mindedness. Movies ranging from The Incredible Hulk to Iron Man Three to Ant-Man to The Avengers: Age of Ultron find one or more of the heroes struggling with the notion that they are in some way responsible for the creation of the very antagonist that is causing the shit to hit the fan, metaphorically speaking. I mean, I don’t remember anybody literally flinging poo around, but there may have been a mid-credits bit that I missed or something. Fecal matter gets around, you can’t always control it.
Other films explore the opposite side of the coin, with the Guardians of the Galaxy duology, Thor: Ragnarok, Dr. Strange, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Spider-Man: Homecoming finding the heroes cleaning up after bad parents or earlier generations who have somehow broken the world(s) and left the kids to clean up their mess. Each film features a moment of heartbreak for one or more titular heroes as they discover that some person or institution that they loved and/or trusted is actually morally compromised and broken. In these films, the hero must not only stop a bad guy from putting the Interchangeable Glowing Thing into the Super Magical ‘Splosion Thingamajig, they have to reconcile with the knowledge that their worldview was shaped by someone and/or something that was manifestly unworthy of that reverence.
So here’s the thing about Black Panther and why it’s maybe the most thematically dense of any of the MCU films to date: See those two categories above? Black Panther fits into both.
I knew within literal seconds of Black Panther starting up that Ryan Coogler had threaded that thinnest of mainstream cinema needles: Dude somehow managed to make an intensely personal film out of a $200 million blockbuster based on existing studio IP. Coogler’s films are consumed with the nature of fatherhood and the relationships between fathers and sons, and so when Black Panther kicks off with a father telling a son (although which father is telling the story to which son is a revelation that makes Black Panther’s story all the more resonant) the legend of Wakanda, a mythical African nation that grew so advanced and so well-hidden that the tentacles of colonization never found purchase, I knew we were in safe hands.
Coogler’s previous film, the brilliant Creed, was about a young man chasing after the legacy of his beloved, deceased father, and that’s right where Black Panther gets going. But while Adonis Creed never knew his father and defined him only as an absence, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) carries a lifetime of cherished memories and interactions with the former king with him as he ascends the throne. When he goes on a vision quest into the spirit realm to converse with his father (Black Panther doesn’t give a FUCK about trying to dress its spiritual/magical elements as advanced science, or any of the gobbledygook that Marvel slaps onto the likes of Thor or Dr. Strange), the reunion is joyous. Once he’s officially crowned as the new king, T’Challa shrugs off suggestions from friends like Nakia (Lupita N’Yongo) that he should lead Wakanda into a new, more proactive relationship with the world at large.
Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Enter Killmonger. Erik Killmonger.
Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger is already being hailed as the best villain in the MCU and…yeah. It’s pretty much no contest at this point, with only MAYBE Loki in the first Thor movie offering a passing resistance. There’s a lot that factors into why Killmonger is so indelible (partly it’s due to Jordan being one of the most charismatic, empathetic presences in modern cinema, partly it’s due to the fact that Killmonger is completely justified in his outrage, even as his actions are indefensible, etc.), but I think the reason Killmonger works so well within the context of Black Panther is that he forces T’Challa to confront both iterations of the theme we talked about up-top.
On the one hand, Killmonger is a walking, talking emblem of every mistake that T’Challa’s father, and all the rulers before him, made, resentment and fury wrapped within a ritualistically scarred avatar. Just his basic existence causes T’Challa to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about his father and Wakanda’s place in the world. Killmonger was orphaned and abandoned, left to fester and rot literally in the dust of Wakandans.
Killmonger is right to declare his right to the throne, right to seek vengeance against the family that butchered his father and left him behind, something T’Challa himself recognizes and states.
Now, characters carrying on a dialogue with the past is nothing new in film or fiction. But since this a comic book movie and shit can get all unreal up in here, Coogler takes this to a very literal extreme and has T’Challa literally visit the ghost dimension again to lambast his father and all the prior rulers of Wakanda for the way they failed Killmonger, and all the other children like him out there, oppressed and subjugated and desperate.
But even more to the point, Killmonger’s threat forces T’Challa to decide precisely what kind of ruler he wants to be, what kind of man he wants to be. He can no longer rest on the laurels of his father and rulers before him. Adonis Creed chased this from the outset, repeatedly insisting that Apollo Creed meant nothing to him. T’Challa has to be pushed to make this leap, and it’s some of the meatiest material that Boseman has yet been given to play as this character.
Thor and Captain America faced similar revelations in Winter Soldier and Ragnarok, but where those films resolved by having the respective heroes burn down the entire existing power structure and starting over, Black Panther offers a more thoughtful and mature worldview. While ‘burning it all down’ can often seem the most appealing option (if for no other than reason than it lets you bust out that GIF of Joan and Peggy in the elevator [Mad Men is sure coming up a lot, for some reason]) the world does not actually come with a refresh button.
Instead, T’Challa genuinely improves upon the errors of what came before. Rather than destroy, as Cap and Thor did, he builds, investing Wakanda’s energy and resources into improving the lives of children who might otherwise have become future Killmongers. T’Challa’s triumph is not blowing up a doomsday device or killing a villain (indeed, the actual death of Killmonger is one of the most heartbreaking moments in the entire MCU), but in offering up an example of conduct and possibility that will inspire millions (both in the film and in the real world).
It’s fair to say that Black Panther is unlike any other superhero film ever made by Marvel (or any studio for that matter). Hell, it’s fair to question whether or not Black Panther even qualifies as a ‘superhero movie’. It’s something else, something vibrant and alive that belongs under no simple heading.
But Black Panther is also a film within the MCU, and while it subverts and expands upon what has come before, the foundation laid down by the previous films is what allows the film’s twists and turns to truly resonate. It’s like when a really excellent performer takes a great song and puts their own spin it. Because you know the formula, the deviations stand out in sharper relief and let you see the personality of the new crooner with crystal clarity.
By zeroing in on the thematic ideas at the very core of the MCU, Coogler managed to make something bold and singular that also feels like it slides right in alongside the earlier films. It’s perhaps the most spectacular magic trick of this shared universe yet, and it allows Black Panther to both honor what came before while blazing its own trail for generations to follow, and grow.