BLACK PANTHER
Marvel’s Black Panther was a landmark for black cinema. Empire asks three film writers to talk about its incredible impact
A panel of experts discuss the Marvel smash hit. They never freeze.
MAKING $1.3 BILLION at the worldwide box office and receiving the kind of raves most blockbusters don’t come within a mile of receiving, Marvel Studios’ Black Panther was a true phenomenon. More than that, though, it was a groundbreaking film in many ways, with director Ryan Coogler shaping the kind of tentpole we had constantly been told Hollywood couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make — the received wisdom being that films aimed at diverse audiences just wouldn’t connect. Last year alone, the likes of Get Out, Girls Trip and The Big Sick proved that little theory wrong, but Black Panther eclipsed them all and, in doing so, rewrote the rule book. Here three BAME film experts, Ellen E Jones, Jimi Famurewa and Amon Warmann, get together to talk about the movie’s impact culturally, cinematically, and personally.
Amon Warmann: I was more pumped to see Black Panther than I was for Infinity War, and for anyone who knows me, that’s a big statement. Watching the film for the first time was just special.
Jimi Famurewa: There was this unbelievable hunger for it all over social media. Initially I was worried. It felt like it was made by a family member. It’s strange seeing people talking like your relatives and people that look like you. I was so on its side that there was a slightly nervous feeling. My memory of the first 20 minutes or so was that it was good, but finding its feet. My appreciation for it has grown since, reading more about it and letting the significance of what it achieved sink in.
Ellen E Jones: For me, the representation isn’t there in the same way because it’s very much a film for dark-skinned black people and I’m a light-skinned mixed-race woman. But one of the things that people haven’t said as much about this film, that
I really like, is the real step forward for specifically black, British, working class actors. Letitia Wright, I’ve seen her down Stratford Westfield. Both her and Daniel Kaluuya are from council estates in North London, which I grew up on, so I felt a connection with them. That was exciting. I was cheering them on.
Famurewa: There was so much goodwill that it now seems strange to contemplate it as anything less than a hit.
Jones: Do you remember The Birth Of A Nation, though? That also had this period of goodwill and it rapidly disappeared, so it could have gone away.
Warmann: The thought of it not being good never really entered into my mind. If it wasn’t I’d have been devastated, but when I heard that Ryan Coogler was going to direct — Creed is basically my favourite film of the past five years — and Michael B. Jordan was going to be in it, and you look at the reaction to Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War, and Marvel’s track record, and all the trailers, I was always confident.
Jones: Several things were happening in the run-up to this movie. Obviously the Black Lives Matter movement was hugely influential, especially how explicitly and boldly political it is. But I write about TV
as well, things like Insecure and Atlanta. These shows are written by, starring and directed by black people. These were really cool shows, and critically acclaimed, so I think that paved the way for it as well.
Warmann: It definitely would have been much different a few years ago. Wesley Snipes was going to play Black Panther all the way back in the ’90s, and I’m just thinking what that would have looked like now.
Famurewa: You can almost see, five or ten years ago, a very different version of this where he’s in America, he’s the outsider...
Jones: Surrounded by a white supporting cast, no strong women.
Famurewa: Yeah. A kind of Coming To America, fish-out-of-water thing... Warmann: Even though I love that film. Famurewa: It’s such an unbelievably bold move to set so much of it in Africa.
Warmann: To be so unapologetically black. Famurewa: Yeah, and to have a huge tentpole film like this have a complex, thorny discussion of black identity.
Jones: As the token non-marvel fan, having that kind of compelling villain is everything. As soon as Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger starts saying these things about colonialism, then I’m like, “This is not your average comic-book movie.” You’re truly emotionally torn between him and T’challa. They both have really good points.
Warmann: I watched it at the press screening and then went to the UK premiere. Normally, at a press screening, I am one of maybe two black people in the room. The premiere was at the Hammersmith Apollo and I remember seeing ridiculous amounts of black people. Not only that, but black people in cosplay, Afro hair, it was insane! They were playing ‘Man’s Not Hot’ at the UK premiere of a Marvel movie.
Famurewa: People were dressing in traditional attire for normal screenings; there was this mass celebration. My son affected my relationship with it. His birthday was superhero-themed. Warmann: Good parenting.
Famurewa: He has the costume and the action figure. I loved superheroes growing up, but if you were being Batman you were pretending to be the white guy hero, and he has somebody who looks like him.
Jones: Black girls as well. Shuri, Nakia, and the Dora Milaje all have things going on that aren’t the men in their lives. For one film to be doing all of that.
Famurewa: He has Black Panther Lego, including Okoye, and he gets to see women who are not just being saved. So that’s a really important point as well. Those women get all the best lines and they’re the heart of it.
Warmann: You talk about your five-yearold. My mum has not watched an action film, or a superhero film, but she has seen Black Panther four times. We have had indepth conversations about Wakanda. She is Nigerian, and she’s not really a film person at all. I never imagined having these discussions with my mum.
Jones: It strikes me when you say that, it’s so remarkable that there hasn’t been a backlash. Whenever there’s that burden of responsibility on a piece of art, a film that everyone’s been waiting for and wanted to see themselves in for so long, so often you get someone who says, “Hang on a minute.”
Famurewa: I can definitely see people objecting that the respectable, placid, noble, Poitier type was presented as the hero.
Jones: But Killmonger was compelling enough that it didn’t happen.
“It’s so rare that you get any film, of any genre, that tackles political themes and ideology in such an honest, courageous way.” Ellen E jones
Famurewa: You’re right. Even things like Forrest Whitaker’s accent was fond teasing rather than backlash.
Jones: I’ve been writing a lot about the received wisdom in Hollywood about the kind of movies that are going to make money. Black actors don’t open movies, gay stories don’t open movies, that kind of thing.
Warmann: And more diversity equals more money. If you’re a smart executive now, Black Panther is the example that you point to.
Jones: Another need this film addressed is that this is a really good and important film for white American straight men. Most people who love cinema, who aren’t white American men, are being asked to perform a jump of empathy and you don’t even realise you’re doing it. If you’re a certain type of white American man you don’t go to see Moonlight, or Ghostbusters, because you’ve never been trained to do that empathy jump. In the received Hollywood wisdom, that’s why they say there’s a limit on how much money these films can make. But they went to see this, and they had to make that empathy jump, and hopefully it’s the beginning of that becoming more common. So as much as it’s a great thing for representation for people who haven’t seen themselves represented onscreen, I think it’s also going to expand the cinematic horizons of the audience who usually have their needs met.
Warmann: Pride is the word I keep coming back to. I’ve had it watching films like Selma, when I see a black person in authority doing something cool. I never had that feeling in a superhero movie, though. That’s why that first post-credit scene in the United Nations was a big deal for me. I’m hopeful this will open doors. I’m not convinced, but they’re running out of myths to stand on, which is a good thing.
Famurewa: There’s something about this film that seemed to bottle some lightning. It’s people of African descent not being defined by their colonial history, or by being a minority, but thinking back to what was before. It identified a need and did it in a really confident and entertaining way. I think there’s going to be more of that.
Warmann: Past Avengers 4, I can see Black Panther being at the forefront of the MCU with Captain Marvel and Spider-man, the sort of New Avengers. That would be massive. Also, in the comics, Shuri becomes the Black Panther. Just imagining that is another level of awesome. I can see the fist pumps in the cinema already.
Jones: What makes this transcend for me is the depth of the political themes and the ideology, the Black Panther [party] stuff you could read into it, the diaspora stuff, the colonialism and impact of slavery ideas. It’s so rare that you get any film, of any genre, that tackles that stuff in that honest, courageous way.
Warmann: The fact that you get Killmonger’s final line [“Just bury me in the ocean, with my ancestors who jumped from the ships because they knew death was better than bondage”] in a Marvel movie is mad. There are so many firsts in this movie, some of which we never knew that we needed until this movie.
Famurewa: I remember a time when it was not cool to be African. The only African characters you saw on screen were in Coming To America, or the hectoring African student in Desmond’s. Now, you’ve got Afrobeats stars, you’ve got Daniel Kaluuya, John Boyega, and that’s another wave that Black Panther has ridden, that wave of pan-africanism. It fitted within the Marvel framework and hit all its marks, but did it in its own way.