Black Panther Is the King of Marvel Movies

Black Panther is out Friday, February 16 in India
It stars Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan
There are two credits sequences, stay till the end
The title character of Black Panther – the first Marvel superhero film with an African-American lead – has a lot of problems, but the most personal and likely the most important one is that he doesn't know how to lead his people. He wants to be a good king, but he doesn't actually know what that entails. Everyone around him has stances of their own – which inform the kind of ruler he becomes over the course of the film – but he's got to be the one to make the decisions at the end of the day.

For superhero films, which usually tend to be light-hearted affairs in order to appeal to as broad a base as possible, the presence of such thoughtful ideas goes against the grain. But it's also what you should expect from director Ryan Coogler, whose previous features – the 2013 real-life-inspired Fruitvale Station about the shooting of an unarmed black man, and the 2015 Rocky spin-off Creed featuring the son of the Rocky's rival – explored social and identity issues on a similar level.

Black Panther does have its comic-book moments for sure, but Coogler isn't happy with just delivering an action-packed romp, visually-stunning landscapes, and sleek costumes, interspersed with moments of laughter. He wants Black Panther to be more, to stand for something more. And that's why he keeps hitting the brakes whenever things start to get too superhero-y, and never in a bad way. It's when the film pauses that it gets the time to talk about what it really wants to talk about.

Coogler wants the hero and the story to feel consequential, and it's also why Black Panther is different in tone from everything Marvel has been giving its fans recently. Where Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Thor: Ragnarok pushed the envelope in coming close to being superhero parodies, Coogler is happy to step back from that trend. That's necessary considering what the film deals with – racism, colonialism, and isolationism among them – but that doesn't keep it from having fun.

Set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther sees T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returning home to Wakanda, where he'll be crowned king in the wake of his father's, T'Chaka (John Kani), death. The fictional East African kingdom is a highly secretive nation, disguising itself as a primarily agrarian economy to the outside world to hide the real truth: it's our planet's only source of vibranium, a fictional metal that has allowed Wakanda to become highly advanced technologically, from Black Panther's terrific suit to magnetically-levitated trains that zip through the capital.

All Wakandan kings have kept up that ruse throughout history, but that façade is threatened by black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, in one of his rare roles that isn't via motion capture), who had a brief appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron. With help from Erik 'Killmonger' Stevens (Michael B. Jordan, who worked with Coogler on both Fruitvale Station, and Creed), a MIT-educated US black-ops soldier who's got a big interest in everything Wakanda, Klaue steals an ancient artefact that's made of vibranium, which attracts the interest of T'Challa.

Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, and Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross in a still from Black Panther
Photo Credit: Marvel Studios

After getting word of Klaue setting up a buyer in Korea, the new king of Wakanda sets out with the leader of his special forces - the Dora Milaje - Okoye (Danai Gurira), and with his former lover and a spy, Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o). T'Challa's younger sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), wonders if it's a good idea to take an ex on a mission, and she continues to be the film's biggest comedic output throughout, apart from her role as the in-house technology expert. Think of her as James Bond's Q, with a more hands-on approach.

In one memorable gimmick, Shuri drives a car across the streets of Busan while sitting in a vibranium chair and augmented-reality cockpit back home in Wakanda, though it's slightly marred by the fact that it's also a car product placement. The action scenes in Korea, especially the one shot in a lavish casino, are also the most high-concept and noticeable work of cinematographer Rachel Morrison – another previous collaborator of Coogler's, on Fruitvale Station – as she moves the camera both horizontally and vertically, all in a single long take.

In other places, the action gets a boost from rampaging rhinos with vibranium armour, or when Black Panther is stripped of his powers, inevitably raising the stakes by making him vulnerable. The film's true strength lies, however, in the efforts of Coogler and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole (American Crime Story) in humanising its super-powered lead, T'Challa, who's filled with doubt and deeply conflicted. The changing times means he must take a more critical look at Wakandan traditions, but he's unsure what the international exposure will mean for his people.