I've been a little exhausted by the whole Marvel Studios
experiment for the past couple years. The movies are usually passable
and that's it. Which is why there are hundreds of articles and videos with the thesis: Marvel has a fill-in-the-blank
problem. From unmemorable soundtracks to ugly colour grading and generic villains. This includes one of my own videos
critiquing Marvel's brand of comedy which overuses a technique called bathos, where dramatic moments are
consistently undercut by a joke. And it makes it difficult for me to get invested in their stories.
So, imagine my delight upon watching Black Panther and seeing director Ryan Coogler address almost every single issue.
It's like he said, "Oh, you thought Marvel had bad music okay, well, then have fun getting Killmonger's theme out of your head.
Oh, and speaking of Killmonger, I'm gonna make a villain who is you know actually interesting and intimidating and multi-dimensional.
We're not gonna waste a millisecond setting up other movies, and we're gonna have female characters that rock!
I heard you guys were tired of heroes fighting generic grey armies of henchmen at the end. Well,
then I'll make sure to clearly establish every faction involved in the final fight and make them all colourful and easily recognizable
so that you never get lost in the action.
Do you find Stan Lee cameos distracting? Well, actually, we're still gonna do that...we can't change everything after all! But bathos – gone!
Now stop complaining!" Now, there's maybe one or two moments in this movie that would qualify as bathos, but for me
it's not a binary thing where the movie is bad if it uses this technique and good if it doesn't. It's about the
frequency of use and the timing. I mean, in that new Thor movie they do it multiple times and practically every
scene. It's a movie where Thor loses his father, his three best friends, his home, hundreds of his fellow Asgardians
and I never really feel sad because Thor only
occasionally does. The rest of the time he seems to be having fun. And Black Panther is
strangely almost the same story as Thor Ragnarok.
And I'm gonna go into spoiler territory
from here on out, so if you haven't seen this movie, go and do that. I mean, think about it, both stories are my father,
the king, is dead and now a family member I didn't know I had has shown up to usurp the throne.
So I must atone for the sins of my father,
unite my friends and former enemies and restore order to my homeland. The difference is entirely about execution. Ryan Coogler took this
material seriously. This film gave me real characters and challenging themes. Thematically Marvel movies are pretty simple.
It's either become who you were meant to be or learn to work as a team. For the record, that's not necessarily a problem,
it's just what they are. But Black Panther, it's about the responsibility that people belonging to oppressed communities have when they managed to attain wealth and power for themselves.
It's about the legacy of slavery, colonialism...and I can't believe Marvel made this movie!
And it's not just about what it says, the themes it chooses to engage,
but the way it approaches them. The storytelling craft on display here is
But the way it approaches them the storytelling craft on display here is
impressive. It helps that the protagonist is already established from a previous film, since it gives the movie a lot more time to develop side
characters, allowing them to be just as vibrant and central as T'Challa.
The result is a world that feels more nuanced than any other in a Marvel film, and that's especially true for Killmonger.
I mean, oh my God, Killmonger!
I mean, he is unquestionably the most well-drawn villain in a Marvel movie. More than that he's one of the best movie villains...
period! So, what makes him such an effective
opponent? Well, rarely has the line "No one thinks they're the villain" been more applicable
because if you step back for a second the arc of his story isn't necessarily villainous. He's basically Batman.
I mean he loses a parental figure at a young age, vows revenge,
takes up an idealistic cause, spends his entire life in pursuit of that goal,
hones himself into a perfect weapon and executes on his plan to bring justice to the guilty.
It's pretty much the most archetypically heroic plotline
there is. And if it wasn't the most famous line in another Marvel franchise,
you could easily imagine Killmonger being the one to say "With great power comes
great responsibility."
He actually reminds me a lot of the villains in the Legend of Korra, which I talked about in this video.
He has correctly identified a huge problem in the world, he is right to criticize Wakanda's selfish policy of
isolationism. He's only really wrong in the means
he uses to realize his vision and that sets up an ending that is really impressive. In The Anatomy of Story, one of these
storytelling steps John Truby says is vital is self-revelation.
It's the moment the hero realizes what they've been wrong about
changes and grows. So, in Black Panther, T'Challa actually learns a moral lesson from his opponent.
He literally wakes up and gets woke at the same time!
But Truby also defines an advanced technique that he calls double reversal that he says is powerful
but not common. In this technique, you give the opponent as well as the hero a self-revelation.
It's not common because most writers
don't create opponents who are capable of a self-revelation
But Kugler did. Killmonger is capable of change.
He realizes a second too late what he has lost because of his crusade.
He's lost the chance to truly experience and appreciate the beauty of the land of his father, of the world
he's dreamed of, of an untouched Africa and in that moment his violent exterior that only knows rage
melts away, leaving us only with the little boy who found his father dead,
weeping. It's a beautiful moment of contradictory and complicated emotions that are at once deeply personal and
globally significant.
It's a real testament to the creative team that they were able to find this crucial and defining moment of empathy.
There's been a lot of hype surrounding the release of this film, primarily because of what it means to black
audiences to finally have a movie that not only features a black superhero
– that's been done –
but one that also features a predominantly black cast, has a black writer director, and a story that promised to celebrate
African culture. So, now that it's been released, it's satisfying to say that it also happens to be moving,
meaningful and
masterfully told.
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