The growth of Marvel’s universe through “Black Panther” is welcome

By O.M.

COSMOLOGISTS, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, have on occasion mooted the possibility of an ekpyrotic universe, one which expands, then contracts into fire, then expands again. Like most big cosmic ideas, this one has almost certainly been purloined, ornamented and abused more than once in the vast works of mythopoeic bricolage which DC and Marvel, America’s main comic-book publishers, have provided to the world over the past decades. (The climax of Alan Moore’s “American Gothic” storyline in DC’s Swamp Thing comes to mind.) But it also applies to those comic-book universes themselves, and to none more so than the cinematic version of Marvel’s. “Black Panther”, the latest—remarkably, the 18th—film from Marvel’s film studios sees this cinematic universe in a phase of significant expansion in the colour dimension. It is the first Marvel film to have a black protagonist and, just as tellingly, an almost entirely black cast. It is the first to be set mostly in Africa, and the first to be directed by an African-American, Ryan Coogler; the screenplay is by Mr Coogler and another African-American, Joe Robert Cole.

The Marvel cinematic universe contained some black characters before, but this is on another level. The racial aspect of “Black Panther” made it eagerly anticipated, by African-American fans, by those who opine on trends in popular culture and by those who want to see popular culture and its production represent the diversity of contemporary life more fully (these are not mutually exclusive categories). It almost certainly also contributed to the film’s hugely successful opening weekend in America, where the film took around $242m at the box office in four days. That is more than any film directed by an African-American has ever taken in America all told, let alone in a weekend. With $400m in receipts worldwide so far the film is firmly on track to make something like $1bn.

The film is a good example of what Marvel does well, and its cast is one of the best the studio has ever assembled, served by uniformly deft characterisation. But its success clearly goes beyond that. The superhero movie is one of today’s commercially dominant forms of narrative. Broadening the range of people represented in such works so emphatically is a big thing.

This breakthrough has been worked towards quite carefully, even cautiously. The protagonist, T’Challa, played by Chadwick Boseman, was introduced to audiences in one of Marvel’s most successful offerings, “Captain America: Civil War” as the superhero Black Panther, one of only two title characters in these movies to have been road tested in this way (the other, Spider-Man, having been in many movies made by other studios, hardly counts). Having a character that a fair bit of the audience has met before—and who has a career in comic books stretching back more than half a century—reduces the burden of exposition needed as the rest of his world is revealed. That world is the hidden high-tech kingdom of Wakanda, with its near limitless supply of wonder-material vibranium, flamboyant pan-African sense of design and impressively empowered—considering that they seem to live in a patriarchal absolute monarchy—women.

The film’s driving conflict (and here we get into plot details some may not wish to be informed of) is between T’Challa and his cousin, Erik, brought up not in the royal household Wakanda but as an orphan in Oakland, California. Understandably, Erik—played by Michael B. Jordan, star of both Mr Coogler’s previous films and remarkably charismatic—is rather more radicalised than T’Challa, and wants to use Wakanda’s hidden power to liberate oppressed racial minorities, notably African-Americans, by giving them large amounts of vibranium-enhanced weaponry along with tactical advice from Wakanda’s undercover special-ops force, the War Dogs.

The film is weakened as a narrative (though undoubtedly strengthened as a commercial proposition) by not being radical enough in this regard. Erik gets some good lines in at the expense of the complacent Wakandans, and Mr Jordan plays him to the hilt. But he is also a psychopathic mass murderer whose political programme of “Burn, baby, burn” seems unlikely to make the most out of what Wakanda might offer to the world. More crucially, while real-world structural racism is the premise of the plot, it is not actually apparent in the film. The audience does not see what has made Erik the way he is; T’Challa is never forced to break free from a police officer’s choke hold. The fact that racism is done by white people is never made obvious (there is a subsidiary white bad-guy, played with glee by Andy Serkis, who throws around epithets such as “savages!”—but he is an Afrikaaner arms dealer, which rather removes the sting of recognition). The result is a film which, through its politics of representation, does a lot to make black audiences happy—but which through its portrayal of history does very little to make white audiences uncomfortable.

Even voicing that criticism, though, may be to miss the point. The responses of white people are hardly the ultimate benchmark. Terrific performances—especially from comparatively little-known actors such as Letitia Wright and Winston Duke—make the film a joy. So does Rachel Morrison's beautiful cinematography, as well as the film's richly imagined syncretic mise-en-scène, though the rag-bag borrowings from across Africa will upset some purists. The third-act action sequences are a bit tedious (and feel over-indebted, in some ways, to the warg attacks in Peter Jackson’s “The Two Towers”)—but if crash-bangy third acts were a fatal flaw for the superhero genre we would not be where we are today. All involved come out well. Mr Coogler is reconfirmed as a remarkably talented director; of those who have so far helmed a film for Marvel, he is the one from whom one can hope for the most in his subsequent career. Mr Jordan looks ever more likely to become that increasingly unusual thing, a movie star of universal appeal.

Audiences will get an opportunity to return to Wakanda in the next Marvel offering, “Avengers: Infinity War”, out in May. They will doubtless be glad to do so—but they will get a very different experience. “Black Panther” provided room for its characters to breathe and its world to be explored, at least a little. With a vast cast featuring almost everyone who has been in any of the previous films, “Infinity War” looks set to mark a collapsing phase in the the universe’s history as plotlines from across the galaxy crash busily into one-another and some, one can imagine and indeed hope, leave the proceedings for good. But there will doubtless be further expansions to come.