What makes the Marvel superhero
movies so much more popular than DC's attempts is one simple fact: they know
how to tell stories. For the most part, their films are variations on The Hero's
Journey. Although the heroes often stay home, the "region of supernatural
wonder" described by Joseph Campbell is the world they enter when they
become superheroes. Along the way they acquire mentors and other allies. They
usually face some crisis that seems to destroy them, only to rally and win the
day in the end. And in one of Marvel's strongest variations on the genre, they
also have a lot of fun. Only Deadpool
(2016) has done more to make super-heroing look like release for geeks with a
sense of humor.
All of that helps make Black Panther such a persuasive
entertainment. The fact that the journey is undertaken by a person of color
living in an idealized vision of the black motherland makes the film more than
just an appealing adventure, however. It's a cultural statement. As activists around the country fight,
seemingly in vain, to prove that black lives matter, T'Challa (Chadwick
Boseman) is doing just that on-screen and at the box office. And the film
itself presents an allegory for conflicts within the African-American
community, with T'Challa, nurtured by his African heritage, fighting for a
politics of inclusion against his cousin Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), a
refugee from U.S. racism (and the errors of his and T'Challa's fathers), who
wants to assume the mantle of colonist in revenge for centuries of
exploitation.
Lest Killmongr's turnabout
colonialism seem too attractive, the filmmakers differentiate him from T'Challa
clearly before they ever meet. At the beginning, T'Challa fights to save Nakia
(Lupita Nyong'o) from kidnappers who resemble Boko Haram. He loves her so much
that when he first sees her he freezes, forcing the head of his female guard,
Okoye (Danai Gurira) to save them. By contrast, Killlmonger greets his lover,
Linda (Nabiyah Be) with a passionate kiss, but when his temporary colleague Ulysses
Klaue (Andy Serkis) holds her hostage, Killmonger shoots her rather than give
in to his betrayer. That part of the contrast gets a little uncomfortable. The
more frankly sexual relationship and Killmonger's casual murder of his lover
play into racial stereotypes. The later suggestion that his behavior is a
result of living in a racist society doesn't quite dispel that discomfort.
Of course, there's always been a
hint of racism beneath Marvel's Black Panther mythos. Although T'Challa was the
first black superhero featured regularly in comics, he was still a creation of
white writers. His powers spring from a meteor that crashed into Africa in an
area that would become the advanced nation of Wakanda, providing the land with
the miracle metal Vibranium. The suggestion, however, that it took a meteor to
advance the people of Wakanda tends to overlook the richness of the cultures
that flourished in Africa before colonial incursions, suggesting advancement
would otherwise have been denied the race. To their credit, Marvel eventually
started hiring black writers like Christopher Priest, Reginald Hudlin and
Ta-Neishi Coates to script the characters' various titles.
It may seem ironic that a studio
as pervasive as Disney is releasing Black
Panther — economic colonists commenting on colonialism — but to their
credit they've hired the promising young African-American Ryan Coogler to
direct and co-write (with Joe Robert Cole). And you have to love a movie whose
first trailers created a Twitter storm among people complaining that it was
"too black."
Coogler, who's already earned
critical laurels with Fruitvale Station
(2013) and Creed (2018), delivers an
almost perfect comic book adaptation. The film moves through some pretty
stunning landscapes, making Wakanda a true region of supernatural (or should
that be super-scientific) wonder. Working with his usual production designer,
Hannah Beachler, he's created some eye-popping sets, particularly the
conjunction of two waterfalls that serves as the arena in which the nation's
leaders face challenges to their royal titles. Coogler's usual composer, Ludwig
Goransson, researched traditional African music and uses West African
instruments in the score, while the fight choreography also mimics African
fighting styles.
There are the inevitable plot
holes. W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), the head of Wakanda's security, lost his
parents years earlier in an attack by Klaue and demands T'Challa kill him or at
least bring him back to Wakanda to stand trial. When Killmonger presents him
with Klaue's dead body, W'Kabi sides with him automatically. Why doesn't
anybody point out to him that Killmonger had rescued Klaue from T'Challa and
the CIA, preventing T'Challa from bringing the villain back? Wouldn't that fact
mitigate his support of the usurper? For that matter, when exactly does the
king become the Black Panther. The film establishes that his powers are derived
from a flower grown near the vibranium deposit. But in T'Challa's first
appearance, in Captain America: Civil War
(2016), he dons the Black Panther costume and goes into battle as soon as the
previous king has died. Was he carrying some of the flower with him? And the
motivation for leaving Killmonger behind back in the 1990s, when T'Challa's
father first confronted his straying brother (N'Jobu, Killmonger's father) and
had to kill him, doesn't make a lot of sense. He killed him to save the future
priest Zuri, who had been spying on him. What exactly is he covering up? Is the
fact that his brother betrayed Wakanda something nobody ever needed to know, or
is it just that they needed something to motivate Killmonger's villainy?
Coogler keeps things moving well
enough and his cast is strong enough to keep the plot afloat for the films two
hour plus running time. The humor, particularly as handled by Letitia Wright as
T'Challa's scientific genius sister, Shuri, and Martin Freeman as CIA agent
Everett K. Ross (though his material isn't as good as what Clark Gregg gets to
play as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson) comes in handy whenever the film is in
danger of taking itself too seriously. However serious the crises may be in the
Marvel movies, there's a buoyancy running through them that reminds us of what
we love about comic book superheroes. Yes, it's wonderful when they reflect
tensions within the real world the rest of us are stuck in, but they're also an
escape — a chance to live in the world where we can all be a little stronger, a
little braver, a whole hell of a lot hotter and, at least in the Marvel films,
much more clever than we get to be in our own lives.
* * *
Thunder (Nafessa Williams), Black Lightning (Cress
Williams) and their not very practical costumes
As dismal as the DC movies have
been at times (with 2017's Wonder Woman
and the Margot Robie portions of Suicide
Squad as welcome, if only partial
exceptions), their TV shows of late have been rather the opposite.
Between the gleeful stylization of Fox's Gotham
and the dorky, pin-up prettiness of the CW's series, they're almost as a great
an escape as the Marvel movies. Although all of the shows have explored
diversity in casting — and for a while Legends
of Tomorrow was one of the few action series with an out gay actor (Victor
Garber) top-billed — they haven't come close to dealing with current political
and social issues until the appearance of the CW's Black Lightning, which recently ended a very successful first
season.
As Disney/Marvel did with Black Panther, Warner Bros. and its
subsidiary, DC, had the intelligence to entrust their second black superhero
(Black Lightning appeared six years after John Stewart became a Green Lantern
in 1971) to African-American creators. Salim and Mara Brock Akil. Although they
set the action in the fictional city of Freeland, Georgia, it's very much a
part of contemporary America. There are demonstrations against a confederate
monument in one of the city's parks, the black residents are legitimately in
fear of the mostly white police force, and one of the first season's big bads,
rogue government agent Martin Proctor (Gregg Henry), gleefully exclaims that
his project to test a synthetic drug on the city's black residents (some become
addicts, others become meta-humans he plans to turn into an army) will
"Make America great again."
The series deals with issues
within the black community as well. The other big bad is Tobias Whale (Marvin
'Krondon' Jones III), an albino who plans to become the king of the mobs in
Freeland. He's the product of a lifetime of prejudice based on skin tone that
started with his own father. That's part of his motivation for taking on the
town's black criminal leaders. There's even a confrontation between the local
preacher and a police captain (Damon Gupton) who complains that the preacher
tries to reconcile his flock to their poverty while wearing a designer watch.
The series' superhero is a major
departure from most of the CW's other leads in age as well as race. Jefferson
Pierce (Cress Williams) is a high-school principle with echoes of Joe Clark.
He's used his influence with the local dealers, most of whom are his former
students, to keep his school a drug-free zone. His powers, which result from a
covert government experiment to control the mostly black Freeland with drugs,
allow him to generate electricity with which to shock opponents, block bullets,
fly and even read the city's power grid. It's a visual high to watch, though
his costume, with its lighted panels, doesn't seem the best choice for covert
action. Williams brings a lot of authority to the role, and it's a kick that
his sonorous voice can get even deeper when he's in superhero guise (a
convention of the CW superhero shows, where the heroes use some means or other
to disguise their voices while on duty). Williams connects well with his cast
mates and can handle the usual angst for a CW hero well (apparently having daddy
issues is a prerequisite for fighting crime). But he's also got a great smile,
and he's willing to get silly when he's dealing with his daughters.
The daughters started out as
something of a drag. They were somewhat cookie cutter versions of young African-American
women: Anissa (Nafessa Williams) the serious activist training to be a nurse
while teaching at the school and Jennifer (China Anne McClain), the rebellious,
sassy high-school party girl. During the first season, they develop powers,
which makes them more than just plot devices. Anissa, as it turns out, is a
lesbian (with her parents' support) who discovers she has super-strength. The
expression of that, with her using a stomp or a powerful hand clap to disable
opponents, provides more visual fun for the show, even if she's also saddled
with an impractical costume (long braids don't really work well in hand-to-hand
combat). Jennifer discovers powers similar to her fathers, though she rejects
the idea of giving her life over to heroics. And by the end of the season, the
writers were giving her some good sarcastic lines.
With 13 episodes to fill, the
series suffered a bit from padding. Most of the CW shows consist of 15 minutes
of action and 30 minutes of angst and recaps so that people picking up the show
later won't get too lost, which tends to drag things out. And there are the
inevitable plot elements that start out strong and then go nowhere. As the
writers developed Henry's efforts to build a meta-human army through drugs, the
writers seemed to forget they'd set up Whale as Black Lightning's arch-enemy.
For his part, Whale murders a drug dealer (Lala Johnson, played by William
Catlett) who caused too much trouble, then pays a ton of money to bring him
back from the dead, conditioned to do his bidding. Before Lala gets back under
Whale's thumb, he's a promising character, a ruthless dealer haunted by the
people he's killed, who become tattoos on his chest. Once Whale takes control
of him, that sets the stage for some good conflict, but all Whale can think to
do with him is wire him with explosives and send him after Henry's rogue
agents. That takes a lot of the bite out of the season finale.
But when the show moves it really
moves. And the strong cast (which also includes Christine Adams as Pierce's
long-suffering ex-wife and James Remar as his scientific backup) always manages
to find interesting things to do. It's off to a strong start, and with little
sign of improvements in the real world, it's a great source of wish
fulfillment. It's too bad we can't send Black Lightning and his daughters to
Washington or at least the Georgia state house.
