BLACK PANTHER - Make it Reign

Immediately after getting out of Black Panther, my overriding thought was that this must have been what it felt like to see Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie on the big screen in 1978 and watch a filmmaker redefine a genre for an entire generation.

Since then, damn near all I can think about has been when I can next go back.

The longer Hollywood rides the wave of the Golden Age of Superhero Movies, the question has been less "when will this fad end?" (as the MARVEL Cinematic Universe shows no signs of slowing down and cultural breakouts like Wonder Woman have kept even the flickering spark of the DCEU from being extinguished) and more "how is this trend even defined?" What was once a fairly predictable formula refined by Sam Raimi's Spider-Man morphed into its own set of sub-genres including conspiracy thrillers, crime dramas, war films, space operas, and teen comedies.

But for all that Guardians of the Galaxy feels different from Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Wonder Woman is very different from The Dark Knight, it hasn't been until Black Panther that a movie arrived so confidently on the superhero scene while feeling completely unlike a superhero movie at all. From the opulent Afro-futurism design to the music to the fully-rounded characters to the depth of the world-building, this film feels like someone opened a door to a whole new universe ripe to be explored.

Superhero movies - hell, blockbuster movies period - are likely going to be measured in "before Black Panther" and "After."

The filmmakers have taken familiar pieces of the MCU and crafted something that, to attempt to describe it succinctly, feels a bit like if James Bond and Game of Thrones got woke and then got busy. The film opens with a family conflict involving the throne of the secret and incredibly technologically-advanced African nation of Wakanda, and then deftly weaves the title character's costumed antics into a narrative of legacy and heritage, spirituality and science, conflicting dynastic and personal duty, and coming to term with the stories - true and untrue - told to us by our parents. Chadwick Boseman anchors the film as newly-King T'Challa, inheriting a kingdom and the mantle of protector as the Black Panther from his father after the tragic events of Captain America: Civil War, and he's gifted with a marvelous director to work with.

Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, finds a tone that balances Shakespearean family feuds, and high-speed car chases with an elegance that could be mistaken for ease, and proves that the big league chops he showed on Creed were no fluke. There's no such thing as "the next Steven Spielberg," anymore than there's actually been a "the next Orson Welles" or "the next Michael Curtiz" or "the next Alfred Hitchcock," but the only parallel I can think of to Ryan Coogler's eye-popping arrival at such a relatively young age on the Hollywood scene is Spielberg dropping Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind while he was still in his late 20's and early 30's. Coogler has the confidence of a master craftsman but still has the fire of the young, and it's dizzying to watch him work his art.

It could be argued that any one of the supporting cast walks away with T'Challa's movie, which is no mean feat given that T'Challa himself damn near walked away with Captain America's last movie. Those who haven't already sworn fealty to Letitia Wright's delightfully brilliant Princess Shuri or ready to join the Dora Milaje under Danai Gurira's General Okoye will be sitting up to take notice of Winston Duke's surprisingly-layered M'Baku or eager to go undercover with Lupita Nyong'o's compassionate spy, Nakia. Assuming, that is, that they aren't already siding with Michael B. Jordan's Erik Killmonger, who emerges head-and-shoulders as the best "superhero" villain since Heath Ledger's Joker - partly because Jordan is a born movie star, but also because it's really hard to disagree with a lot of what Killmonger is saying.

Black Panther could have been just another solid MCU entry much the same way as Doctor Strange felt to many like "magic Iron Man," but Ryan Coogler showed up with something to say and he picked up the biggest megaphone he could find, and he brought a brilliant cast who was more than game for whatever he threw at them. This movie would feel like a timely parable about heritage and borders and race even if it hadn't come out in the fires of Trump's America, but as it is, this film defiantly kicks the hornet's nest of colonialism and white supremacy in a call to positive and cooperative action.

It's a shame that it took so long for a major tentpole directed by a black filmmaker about a black hero with a mostly-black cast to be realized like this, but this movie proves that representation matters - not just because audiences seeing themselves in their heroes is important, but because the story of our lives only grows richer with the more kinds of stories we choose to tell.

And Black Panther is about as rich as big-budget filmmaking gets. Long live the king, indeed.