Waaaakandaaaa!!! It’s finally here, but does it live up to expectation or make us long for Coming to America instead? Michael B. Jordan and the cast trended on twitter claiming #BlackPantherSoLit but is it? Let’s dig in...
Ryan Coogler (co-writer and director) burst onto the scene with a heart-breaking true story Fruitvale Station (2013) with a very young Michael B. Jordan (who plays Erik Killmonger in Black Panther) playing Oscar Grant who was murdered by the police. The movie moved me to tears.
With Creed (2015), still with Michael B. Jordan as lead, Coogler showed he can do commercial spectacle films with heart but with Marvel would he be able to handle major budgets, studio control and deliver something that still says this was made by the same young man who made Fruitvale Station?
The answer is hell Y-E-S.
Coogler has delivered one of the most nuanced comic book movies that ranks up there with Winter Soldier, Civil War, The Dark Knight and BvS (don’t come at me about BvS). Below are the reasons why I truly believe #BlackPantherIsSoLit.
Reasons why #BlackPantherIsSoLit
1. Casting
You can’t drop a weave without hitting an Oscar winner or Oscar nominated actor in this movie from Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave), Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker… they can fill a whole paragraph and bring their A-game.
The rest of the cast is like the best of the best of black upcoming actors. If you are a black actor in Hollywood and you're not in this movie, your agent sucks.
Michael B. Jordan is hot property, Danai Gurira has been killing it on The Walking Dead, Sterling K. Brown killed it in O.J. Simpson… even the token white dude Smeagol aka the great Andy Serkis and the young Bilbo Baggins Martin Freeman are A-grade actors and they deliver.
Boseman is our king folks, the battle of ideas between Boseman and Jordan is amazing to watch.
One other thing that makes it specially wonderful with the casting is that our South African and fellow African actors from the continent are represented well, starting with the legend ntate John Kani, who pulled a Will Smith to get son Atandwa Kani into the movie, we have mme Connie Chuime and Florence Kasumba.
Which leads me to my second reason why #BlackPantherIsSoLit...
2. Themes
“Get Out” was last years great black peoples wish fulfillment moment in cinema and Coogler is aware that Black Panther is most definitely that for 2018 and he delivers.
The film touches on white superiority, colonization, issues around black identity, what holds us back as a people and what can propel us forward as a people… the film is deep.
Whilst doing all this, Coogler manages to make this film about family ties that can be interpreted as family ties between the continent and the African diaspora.
With Michael B. Jordan representing the angst that the diaspora may have against the continent and Chadwick representing the change the continent needs to be for a more prosperous people within and outside the continent.
Yet the movie even takes a step forward, during these time of S***hole countries statements by Trump, it reminds us of a lesson that is no longer popular, that Madiba tried to push, that there is more that unites us than divides on a humanity level. This from a Marvel movie… mind blown to smithereens.
Which leads me to my 3
rd reason #WhyBlackPantherIsSoLit.
3. It doesn't feel like a Marvel jokey-jokey movie
Last year we had Thor and some folks loved it to bits, but I hated how it kept undercutting its own drama with humour.
Here there is humour, but the film is not all about how many gags and jokes we can cram in… the drama and themes are left to go into some very heavy places and the jokes are reserved strictly for comedic moments within story.
#WhyBlackPantherIsSoLit
4. The Production team
Coogler is the man. He insisted on bringing his own Director of Photography, the lovely Rachel Morrison, (the first ever female to be nominated for Director of Photography Oscar for Mudbound), who now happens to be the first lady ever to shoot a Marvel movie too. Not bad from someone who used to shoot indies like Fruitvale Station.
He brought his other constant collaborator, production designer Hannah Beachler (Moonlight) who dug in deep guys on the costume and sets. From referencing ancient Nigerian pictograph script, to having costumes reference Basotho all the way to the Himba people design, making it cohesive and not just a mish mash of cultures.
She uses clothing and set to distinguish each people that make up Wakanda which makes the movie come alive with colour and vibrancy. She also uses cultural artefact to build advanced technology with Kimoyo beads on it.
Then, if that was not good enough, Coogler brought Ludwig Göransson to score and Kendrick Lamar to curate the official soundtrack. We have “Wololo” in the movie and it doesn't feel jarring at all.
Yes, the actors struggle with isiXhosa and the pronunciation is not always perfect but the fact that you have one of our own languages spoken in a major Hollywood blockbuster by our distant cousins and our very own actors warms the heart. The idea to keep a native African language in the movie is progressive.
5....
But above all #BlackPantherIsSoLit because it does that wonderful thing that great art does; it not only speaks to our world but it shows that young boy in Langa, in Oakland, California, in Morogoro, Tanzania, that black child, it is possible to dream and make it.
You don’t have to be the white guy's side kick, the black child can be the big brains that come up with wonderful inventions like Shuri (spectacularly portrayed by Letita Wright).
It shows the black child that, as Africans, we have a sense of nobility. We have a code. We are not just rampant savages pronged to civil war but a people who have their own challenges and qualities.
It tells the black child that you too can have dreams and they can come true too. Whereby a child born and raised in Oakland, California (Ryan Coogler), the home of the Black Panther party, can one day come back to Oakland, California to set his great movie about a character called Black Panther uniting the diaspora to the motherland. Dreams can come true.
Ryan Coogler did the thing to make the pots happen
bathong and we busk in his glory #BlackPantherIsSoLit. You got to have something fundamentally wrong for you not to see that after watching it.
It felt like: James Bond Skyfall had a baby with Coming to America during a threesome with Long Walk to Freedom and Civil War with uncle Shaft watching and it birthed waaakanda!!
Rating
*****
index
* rubbish ** ja nee ***its aight ****now we cooking with gas *****it’s a Classic ,man