Black Panther (movie review)

“A good man doesn’t make a good king.”  (from Marvel's Black Panther)

I might be paraphrasing, but it's one of the best lines from the movie that I could remember. I’ve just come from the special screening of the Marvel’s franchise blockbuster hit, Black Panther ! Box office predictions suggest that it will have one of the biggest opening weekends in the Marvel series history. So...claw your way to the movies and go see it. 

****spoilers ahead****

I'm not a big fan of action films.  I like flawed characters and heart-breaking dramas, but I was excited to see some of the best young black actors of today in a superhero flick.  Black Panther prowls and growls from the very beginning.  And it brings the boom! There’s a car chase in South Korea, and all kinds of fighting, both hand-to-hand combat and with weaponry of all kinds! There's some James Bond-esq moments that might make you swoon. Did I mention attack-rhinos?!! The visual effects are sic (that's a good thing). Filmed on location in Zambia, Uganda and South Africa--and also in a studio in Georgia, the movie feels like a vacation.  I still can't tell which scenic shots were where. The CGI (do they still call it that?) was so good,  it was hard to determine what was really real ("real" in the movie-making realm sense, that is). 

I can't help but wonder, who was in the room with Joe Robert Cole and Ryan Coogler as they wrote the screenplay from Jack Kirby's original concept in Marvel Comics.  But,  I almost got the feeling they had a checklist of relevant topics that the NAACP, Black Lives Matter, and 43 of the current Black members of Congress... may've emailed over. These socially relevant hints don't come off preachy, just #WOKE.

HERE'S WHAT BLACK PANTHER MIGHT BE SUGGESTING:

• Black People really really really need to come together and stop letting our subtle differences divide us.  
• Guns are primitive. 
• Black Americans are mistreated and misplaced Africans. 
• Sharing wealth and technology is the best thing to do because EVERYONE benefits from it.

Black Panther makes Michael B. Jordan's character, Erik Killmonger do the heavy lifting with most of the aforementioned topics. 

Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images

Michael B. Jordan's character, Erik Killmonger is a dangerous revolutionary and unapologetically so.

And Jordan (even with long twists atop of his face) is still lovable even as a bad guy. The thing is, he’s really not a bad guy (murder aside that is). He was left behind to fend for himself in Oakland (ahem, Fruitvale Station, anyone?!). He has none of the benefits of his birth right and as a result becomes an emotionless killing machine who thinks violence is the only way. After all, isn't Erik Killmonger, just really really pissed off?  (Like a lot of Black Americans who have continually been victimized by an unjust system that wants to see them locked up or dead).  Keep your ears open for the statement about 2 million Blacks catching hell in the USA and how no one wants to help them. It’s a sobering point that makes one wonder, if Africa (any of the continent's 50 plus countries) had the power to help, would they?  Of course, Killmonger’s plan is all wrong... because giving people weapons to “defend” themselves only begets more violence. His goal is to show the world that Wakanda is unf_ckable with and ultimately make the rest of the world fear the nation. Hello... isn't that what the USA does all the time?!! Yet, he’s criminalized for it in the film, hmmm. 

*insert blank stare*

I was both dumbfounded and disappointed, when Killmonger dies. His final words are something to the tune of, "Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped ship,because they knew death was better than bondage". Um... that was super heavy— and I wasn’t sure if it fit...there in that particular moment.  T'Challa was going to give him another chance. I mean what was the take away from this? Death before dishonor? When Jordan’s character, Killmonger isn’t throwing down heavy statements,  he has some cute and funny one liners that make him worthy of redemption. It’s a shame, there was none for him. 

#WakandaForever

 I think there's a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would prefer to stay within the African-American community - that we get a little nervous when you start having scenes or dialogue that we know is going to be viewed and heard on a national or global scale.  -- Gabrielle Union