Feeling more confident as it rolled on towards the end of the third phase of the MCU with not one single bad film to its name (critically or commercially) the studio was looking at increasingly diversifying the characters that would be represented on screen, Greg D. Smith notes. With his cameo in 2016’s Civil War having been a great success, now the studio released a full movie about Black Panther. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, whose previous big studio experience consisted of one release (2015’s Creed) this was perhaps the most anticipated MCU movie to date. DC might have beaten the studio to the punch with the first female-lead superhero movie of the current era with 2017’s Wonder Woman, but Black Panther would represent another first – a mainstream blockbuster with an almost entirely black cast, set mainly in Africa itself. Could it speak to both the marginalised people who related to its cast and the rest of the MCU audience at the same time? As King T’Challa takes the throne of Wakanda in the wake of his father’s death, dark forces are rising from the shadows. A challenger will arise who not only threatens the peace of Wakanda itself, but also the rest of the world, as well as T’Challa’s own certainties of his place within it.

Ryan Coogler had a monumental task going into this film. Contrary to some assertions in the media, black-led superhero movies had existed before this one – indeed Blade himself was a Marvel character, though his movies had been in the years before the MCU was even a twinkle in Kevin Feige’s eye. But never before had a movie been released featuring an almost entirely black cast, set in an African (albeit fictional) country and with Afro-Futurism front and centre. The release of a movie like this was always going to be a big deal. The release of a movie like this into a multi-billion dollar globally dominant mainstream blockbuster franchise? Well that meant that the opportunity to reach the biggest audience possible went hand in hand with the potential for an even bigger disaster should the movie not be successful. For any director, this would have been an intimidating task. For one as young as Coogler, with only one previous big budget studio movie to his name, it should have been terrifying.

2016’s Civil War had introduced us to T’Challa, as a vengeful young man with a decent line in middle-distance staring monologues, a snazzy suit and some cool moves. The question was, how to flesh all of that out into a movie that both satisfied the hunger for better representation and appealed to a wider audience?

Coogler’s answer digs deep into the opportunity afforded by the origins of the character, crafting a tale of an Afro-Futurist paradise in which a nation of people have lived apart from the suffering, strife and injustice that have befallen their neighbouring countries, while cleverly avoiding a simple ‘power fantasy’ in favour of a powerful, resonant story that not only has universal appeal but approaches its subject matter in a clear-eyed, honest fashion which is as unexpected as it is beautifully honest.

Opening with a gorgeous animated sequence describing the history of Wakanda, its five major tribes, and how vibranium has proven to be the country’s greatest asset, the movie then segues into a flashback. We see a young T’Chaka confronting his brother in an apartment in Oakland, there to ask why his brother has betrayed his own nation and assisted Ulysses Klaue in stealing vibranium from them. His accusation confirmed by his brother’s partner (an undercover Wakandan agent), the resulting confrontation escalates with predictable results, the very impact of which will only become clear later in the film.

From there, we get our first glimpse of Wakanda itself, a beautiful, colourful and distinctly Afro-Futurist styled nation, full of advanced technology. Our introduction to T’Challa in this movie is everything we need – we get to see him in action as Black Panther (which we had seen before) but more importantly we get to see him interacting with those closest to him, who away from the spotlight of Western cameras and diplomats, behave more like affectionate family than deferential subjects. Okoye’s introduction as his head of the Royal Guard is particularly effective, establishing early on that she is both a phenomenal warrior and a superb wit with no time to coddle her king’s ego. In short order we then get to meet his ex-lover, Nakia, an undercover agent of Wakanda out rescuing those in need, Ramonda, his quietly proud mother and Shuri, his genius younger sister who can’t help but make fun of him. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the common thread uniting all these characters – Black Panther makes no bones from the start that Wakanda is not just a society run by and for the benefit of its native people, but that those native people have equal worth regardless of their gender. Strong female characters are greatly in evidence throughout, which helps serve to highlight one of the failings of our villain later on.

But before we get to him, there’s the small matter of the formal investiture of T’Challa as the new king and Black Panther, by way of an elaborate trial by combat. This is expected very much to be a formality, and the movie uses it cleverly to do several things. Firstly, it introduces us physically to the various tribes of Wakanda, whom we saw briefly in the introductory animation, but see more closely here. Secondly, it introduces us to M’Baku, king of the Jabari, the mountain tribe of Wakanda. These tough, no nonsense warriors stand somewhat apart from the other tribes, and this scene helps emphasise that when M’Baku challenges T’Challa for the throne. There’s a seriousness and vehemence to his assertion that new leadership is required, and the fight is an intense one. It also serves to show us why T’Challa is the appropriate leader for his nation – not just because he is able to physically best M’Baku (in itself no mean feat) but because he has the charisma to persuade M’Baku to yield rather than die, and the nobility not to hold this over M’Baku’s head, rather recognising him as a worthy challenger. There’s a whole essay’s worth of observation around this one scene and how it illustrates at once the regressive nature of succession based on trial by combat, and how the new king treads a fine line, allowing M’Baku to retain face among his own, more patriarchal tribe and appeal to the more refined nature of the others. Regardless of his own doubts, in this one act, T’Challa illustrates why he is the perfect man for the throne.

Then we’re on to the introduction of our villain, Erik Killmonger. I cannot emphasise enough just how perfectly I felt this character was pitched from his very first appearance on screen to his last. Jordan brings the exact mix of charisma and sheer rage to the energy of his role. That initial scene, where he and Klaue steal a Wakandan artefact from a museum, goes from standstill to fast-paced action in the space of an eyeblink, and Jordan’s performance is so good, even Serkis’ scenery chewing turn as Klaue, cackling away as he shoots the place up, cannot overshadow it.

But better is still to come. When T’Challa loses Klaue to Killmonger, it’s bad enough. When Killmonger then turns up with a dead Klaue wrapped in a tarp at the border of Wakanda, showing off his personalised Wakandan lip tattoo, and issues a challenge to the king, things get a whole lot worse.

First of all, we need to address the consistent comment that Killmonger is a ‘sympathetic’ villain. I don’t believe that he is. What he is, is an understandable one, something that takes a very fine balance to get right, and which Coogler and Jordan between them pretty much get dead right. His revelation as the son of T’Challa’s Uncle, and that T’Chaka had murdered him, is a bombshell which undermines everything T’Challa thought he knew about his world. His anger becomes understandable – he, like T’Challa was a child of Wakanda, born into nobility, and yet his own father was stolen away by T’Chaka, and he was left to the none-too tender mercies of a life in the USA. From that life, we learn through Martin Freeman’s Everett Ross that Erik took what he could, rising through the ranks of the armed forces and then joining a black ops unit working for the CIA. The strong implication is that Killmonger has spent a career doing bad things in various parts of the world at the behest of the US intelligence services, destabilising regimes, instigating regime change and so on. For a man as keenly aware of his own heritage, who no doubt grew up being oppressed and facing numerous challenges purely due to the colour of his skin, one can only imagine the sense of hateful irony Killmonger has to have felt carrying out missions to oppress people who looked a lot like him on behalf of a country that largely viewed him as being the same. Between that and his burning sense of injustice at his being orphaned and denied his birthright, the toxic anger which drives him is not just understandable but expected.

But that doesn’t make him sympathetic. Erik comes to Wakanda not merely to take his birthright, nor even to rule over Wakanda in T’Challa’s place. He comes to burn the whole place down to the ground, just as the CIA taught him, and to pillage its assets to start his own crusade for black people around the world to rise up and take over. Again, at face value this seems like a noble sentiment, and certainly more so by contrast to Wakanda’s established policy of non-interference with the rest of the world, an attitude of keeping to themselves while people in countries all around them were exploited for centuries. However, Killmonger’s vision is no better, inciting a genocide in return for a genocide. He doesn’t think about the individual fates of those he will arm with these weapons, he doesn’t consider the painful side of the mass revolution he seeks to start, the lives of those he claims to fight for that will be lost. He doesn’t even show any care for the lives of Wakandans, happy to murder any that stand in his way in any way at all. Killmonger is simply an engine of destructive vengeance, and it is of a kind that will consume not only him, but any around him.

To its credit, the movie does not attempt to dodge the problematic nature of Wakanda’s general refusal to be involved in the world. This is presented as a flaw, both by characters like Killmonger himself as well as by Nakia, and even T’Challa. He understands Killmonger’s rage, even as he cannot stand idly by and allow it to consume everything around them. When he loses the challenge to Killmonger, it’s a shock, and his saving by M’Baku may be considered as an in-kind repayment of the debt incurred by his earlier actions. When he returns, his eyes are opened, not just to the wrongs committed by his father against his uncle, but also to the selfishness of Wakanda over the centuries. There’s a beautiful poetry to the establishment of a centre to help deprived children in the very neighbourhood from which Killmonger hailed, an acknowledgment on a small scale of the debt T’Challa feels he owes to his fallen foe – because although Killmonger was his enemy, and had to be stopped, he also opened the eyes of T’Challa (and by extension the audience) to the wrongs of the past, and gave him a reason to act as an agent of change.

Erik’s last line, that he would rather die than be healed and live a life in chains, is equally poetic, and emblematic of both the greatest strengths and the biggest flaw in the man. Real, lasting change comes not from absolutes, but from compromise. Killmonger is unable to see the world in anything other than black and white terms – either he will be free to visit his rage upon the world, or he will die. To do anything other is alien to him. That said, there’s an element of self-awareness to his last request as well. Having been granted the sight of the sunset that he’d dreamed of all his life by T’Challa at the end of their struggle, there’s a recognition maybe that in a way, his mission has been accomplished. Though he will not rule over Wakanda and watch the world burn, he has a sense that he has reached T’Challa, and that maybe change will come about because of that.

Black Panther had the potential – even the expectation from certain quarters – to be a movie that pushed an overt and one-sided political narrative. Instead, it’s a brutally honest look at what the ideal of an African paradise untouched by Western interference would look like. It doesn’t pretend that the end result would be a perfect utopia, and it populates that aspirational landscape with flawed characters, driven by a misguided sense of isolationism to ultimately be no different from those they despise. It takes our hero on a journey where he is made to understand those failings with frank and clear-eyed honesty, and it gives him a villain who acts not merely to physically attack and destroy him and his home, but to fundamentally alter the order of things, and who succeeds in so doing in a far more resonant way than the conclusion of any standard evil plan would achieve.

It’s easily the most politically and culturally challenging comic book movie that’s ever been made, and it achieves all of that naturally, within the organic framework of a colourful, well-presented, slick action blockbuster. As the last film rounding out a decade of work before the finale of Infinity War, it could not have been more fitting. Hail to the king!