Image via Marvel
“You are a good man with a good heart. And it’s hard for a good man to be king.” – King T’Chaka
Black Panther, released in theaters on Feb. 16, 2018, celebrates its fifth anniversary today. It remains one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s finest achievements. The film tells a bold, worthy story about traumatic loss—of family, of identity, of home—and it asks us to identify with its villain as much as its hero.
The best villains are the ones that we empathize with. We knew Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) was wrong, that his plan to arm the oppressed people of the world would result in a pyrrhic victory at best and a slaughter of his people at worst. But damned if we didn’t feel his rage and his willingness to burn the world down because he’s traveled it, lived it and seen the worst it has to offer.
On the other side is T’Challa, a good man with a good heart. He could have killed his cousin without giving him an audience. He could have kept a shameful family secret buried forever; his father, whom he idolized and placed on a pedestal, was deeply flawed. But T’Challa believed that the ugly truth was preferable to a well-intentioned lie.
The first time he fought Killmonger, T’Challa showed mercy; he could have killed his opponent at least twice, but allowed him to recover his stance both times. T’Challa misread his adversary as family, as someone who could be reasoned and appealed to—as someone who wasn’t irreparably broken and beyond redemption. It nearly cost him his life.
The second time he fought Killmonger, T’Challa did not hesitate at the moment of truth. The stakes were clear and high. They outweighed his personal concerns. But we see his guilt and sorrow for doing what was necessary. He could not fix or redeem his father’s mistakes—his blind eye to the world’s suffering, and his abandonment of his brother’s only son. The best he could do was prevent further damage and resolve to do better moving forward.
In an interview with YR, director Ryan Coogler alluded to this narrative complexity: “Erik’s confrontation makes T’Challa a better king.” That’s because T’Challa sees the truth in Erik’s words. Wakanda flourishes, but at what cost? How many refugees died? How many neighbors were forced into slavery? How many famines ran rampant? There is a middle ground between fighting people’s wars for them and turning a blind eye to preventable atrocities. And until T’Challa became king, Wakanda did not want to find that middle ground.
So much of the film depended upon its juxtaposition of the aural, visual, and thematic. The Oscar-winning score, composed by Ludwig Göransson, featured traditional African instruments and music. The film also employed hip-hop to invoke the Black experience in America. The lead single “All The Stars,” featuring Kendrick Lamar and SZA, was a global hit. Lamar crafted an entire album of songs separate from the score, even though Coogler had originally requested a mere handful. Black Panther was aspirational and inspired the creatives who brought it to life.
With Black Panther, Coogler marked himself as a prodigal filmmaker. His directorial debut, the critically adored Fruitvale Station, cost less than a million dollars to make, and it stands in direct contrast to the big-budget excess of Black Panther, which was made for $200 million. But Coogler used that extra money to bring Wakanda—an Afrofuturistic utopia, untouched by colonialism and rank exploitation—to colorful, brilliant life. Costume designer Ruth Carter, who won an Oscar for her work on the film, took inspiration from actual tribes in Africa. She started in the past with the Maasai tribe of Kenya and with the Ovahimba tribe of Namibia—and projected how these styles might incorporate themselves into a future that could not be.
It’s a bitter irony that some of the most joyful scenes in the movie—where we see a united people dancing, celebrating, mixing tribal cultures, and embracing a technology centuries ahead of that in the present—are undercut by sadness. We see glorious Wakanda, but right prior, we also see scenes of men trafficking women in Nigeria and scenes of Oakland, California, in the early ‘90s, where kids play with a bottomless crate instead of a basketball hoop. There’s fantasy, and then there’s real life. The film explores questions like, what could have been? What could we still be, if we get the boot off our necks?
The performances lift this film to another level; they are as complex and nuanced as the script demands them to be. Michael B. Jordan plays a charismatic Killmonger, with an angry bravado that masks a childhood trauma; every time the veneer drops, it breaks your heart. Angela Bassett is regal as Queen Mother Ramonda. There is no one more suited to play a royal elder, and she may win an Oscar for reprising the role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Letitia Wright, on the other hand, plays Princess Shuri as a decisively young, genius child whose technology is groundbreaking, even by lofty MCU standards. Winston Duke plays M’Baku as a contradiction: a muscular warrior with a goofy streak, a fierce opponent who nurses his adversary to health, an ambitious conqueror who rejects the mantle when given it.
And then there’s Chadwick Boseman. The late actor gives a beautiful performance as King T’Challa, and he imbues the Black Panther with a gentleness and wisdom beyond his years. Boseman fought cancer at the same time he made this film. When we watch a film so centered around mortality and what we leave behind, it’s impossible not to think of Boseman’s condition and of how much he silently suffered behind the scenes.
Boseman approached his career like a man who knew he didn’t have time left. He played Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, and James Brown—the sorts of transformative roles that the average actor would take on once in a career, if at all. And in his T’Challa, we see the same type of urgency—to leave a definitive mark and impression—before he died of the disease.
And so, as we commemorate the fifth anniversary of Black Panther and rewatch it on Disney+ (The studio swapped the classic Marvel intro with the Boseman montage from Wakanda Forever), let us celebrate a life well lived. Let us celebrate a film that popularized a Black icon for a new generation, and gave kids of color a superhero who looked like them to look up to.
Yes, it’s an entertaining superhero flick. But it’s so much more than that. It’s a statement of positivity that disavows cynicism and embraces death as a change of worlds—a journey to the Ancestral Plane, where we’ll see the people we love once again.