Looking Forward from Black Panther
For those of you who haven’t seen Black Panther yet, maybe back of now. Spoilers included!*
Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It was visually beautiful, great casting, and simple but intriguing plot. An ancient civilization hidden away from preying eyes with a fantastic weapon and high tech with 2 family members that hate each other. Do you see where I’m going with this? It was the first Thor.
Now, I didn’t like the first Thor movie. I thought it was a missed opportunity. There are some classically large characters that come from Thor like the Warriors Three and Lady Sif. Marvel chose not to do anything with those characters. Unlike Thor, Black Panther makes excellent use of its side characters. Letitia Wright as Shuri, Danai Gurira as Okoye, and Lupita Nyong'o as Nakia were amazing. These characters were given proper development and even their own small stories. We felt for these characters. Even Martin Freeman as Everett Ross was better than I was expecting.
Unfortunately, that connection fell a little flat when it came to T’Challa. It wasn’t the acting or lines, but rather the lack of personal connection given to us during the story. It seemed like all of the intimate moments with T’Challa happened in Captain America: Civil War when we first met him. We got see see him lose his father, chase Bucky down, and then end up not killing the real killer for the sake a peace. Yes, we got to see T’Challa have a couple of moments with his father but the scenes seemed surface. Always ask yourself, would the movie would have been the same without that scene. In this case, the scenes T’Challa had with his father had no impact on the story. They were, however, some of the most beautiful scenes with the African savannah and northern lights overhead.
At the end of the movie, I was left with a question: how will this story reach into the overall arc of our Marvel characters? Each movie we are given has an impact on the others. For the most part, it seemed that Black Panther was inclusive and wouldn’t have a major impact. Yes and no. It depends on how big Marvel choses to make one change: Vibranium. Vibranium is now being made more available. The implications could be huge or just a blip on the radar. I’m hoping we will see some large ramifications from making the metal more available. Will Wakanda itself now be open to visitors?
We also cannot ignore the three cities that have warriors waiting for weapons from Wakanda: New York, Hong Kong, and London. Do those cities ring a bell? They happen to be where three of the Sanctums from Dr. Strange are located. I’m now very interested to know why those three cities were so ready to go…I'm willing to bet our questions will be answered in Infinity War.
