Marvel Battles Grief

When Black Panther came out in 2018, it became a cultural watershed moment. The character was introduced in Captain America: Civil War, with Chadwick Boseman as the noble African superhero, and the stand-alone picture was needed to fill in the Marvel Universe in preparation for the Infinity War/Endgame conclusion of Phase Three. No one was expecting much from the movie. Ryan Coogler had made the strong independent film Fruitvale Station, followed by the Rocky reboot Creed, with Michael B. Jordan starring in both films. While Jordan was recognized as one of the up-and-coming actors in Hollywood, his previous foray into the superhero genre was the universally reviled version of The Fantastic Four. Black actors would take all the main roles, with the exception of Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman reprising roles they’d already played in Marvel movies.

The movie became a phenomenon, grossing $700 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide, ranking behind only the first two Avengers movies at that time. Yet its influence went far beyond money, as for the first time a large portion of the population could look at the characters in a super-hero movie and see their own faces. It became an incredibly empowering moment. A sequel was obviously needed. Then tragedy struck with Boseman losing his battle against cancer. Coogler wisely decided to not to recast the character of T’Challa. Instead, just as the family of lovers of cinema had to deal with Boseman’s death, so too the characters in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever must face that loss.

The movie starts with T’Challa’s genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) desperately trying to artificially recreate the heart-shaped plant that gave T’Challa his superstrength to save her brother from an unspecified disease. (Killmonger had destroyed the plants in the first movie.) As she feverishly struggles, she hears her mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) telling her to come to her brother’s room. T’Challa is dead. At the funeral, the country mourns him, dressed in white, the color of mourning in many cultures around the world with its message of purity and rebirth.

T’Challa’s death also marks the end of Wakanda’s hopeful participation in the world. A team of mercenaries hired by another country try to take over a Wakandan scientific outpost to steal its vibranium. While they’re stopped by General Okoye (Danai Guria) and the Dora Milaje, Queen Ramonda denounces the incident to the United Nations and withdraws Wakanda from its role in the body.

Unknown to the Wakandans, an American expedition has been using a sensor they developed to search for another source of vibranium. The sensor led them to a deep portion of the ocean, but in short order the search machine is destroyed on the seabed, then the ship tending the sensor is overrun by people coming out of the ocean. The head of the CIA (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) thinks the Wakandans engineered the destruction of the ship.

Ramonda and Shuri go to the side of a river to burn T’Challa’s garments, which signifies the end of their period of mourning. However, they’re interrupted by a man walking out of the water. It is Namor (Tenoch Huerta), the King of the Talokan civilization, a people native to the Yucatan peninsula who’d entered the sea centuries earlier. Namor is a mutant, centuries old, who has the power to fly and can exist outside of the water for long periods, while most Talokanils need a breathing apparatus when they’re out of the water. They have developed a strong, secret culture because they have their own supply of vibranium that they don’t plan to share with the surface world. Namor reveals that the vibranium sensor was developed by Riri (Dominique Thorne), a Wakandan graduate student attending school in Boston, and Namor intends to eliminate her so the search machine can not be recreated. Everett Ross (Freeman) helps Shuri and Okoye locate Riri, while warning them that the Americans are also wanting Riri under their control. Shuri and Okoye head for Boston and manage to reach Riri just before the Americans. They manage to escape with Riri but are then ambushed by Namor and the Talokanils. Namor takes Riri, while Shuri volunteers to accompany them to learn about the Talokan culture. Ramonda removes Okoye from command of the Dora Milaje for her failure in Boston, then heads to Haiti to get help saving Shuri and Riri from Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), who’s been living there ever since the Snap in Avengers: Infinity War.

It is interesting that Wakanda Forever finally introduces Namor to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since he is actually one of the oldest of the Marvel super-heroes. He usually went by the moniker Sub-Mariner since his introduction in the 1930s. He has been both hero and villain because he adheres to his own moral code. In the comic books, he’s interacted with the whole pantheon of characters, including fighting along side Captain America during WWII.

Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole, who’d collaborated on the original Black Panther, have created a much more emotionally complex movie, with the focus on Shuri. The brilliant and bright teen from the first film, who served in many ways as delightful comedic relief, has gone through the lost five years of the Snap, and along with the grief of losing T’Challa, she also bears guilt that she was unable to save him. It’s not the only loss she suffers in the film, leading her to be corrupted by anger and revenge. The story is very much about whether Shuri’s soul can be saved, or if it will be consumed by grief. Wright rises to the challenge of carrying this movie.

Winston Duke returns as M’Baku, though he is no longer the outsider he was in the first film. One familiar face missing this time around is Daniel Kaluuya, who doesn’t return as the tribal leader (and Okoye’s husband) W’Kabi. It is understandable since his career has taken off with his Oscar-winning performance in Judas and the Black Messiah as well as Jordan Peele’s newest sci-fi horror flick, Nope. There is one completely unexpected cameo that fits in perfectly with the themes of Wakanda Forever.

The movie runs almost two and three-quarter hours, but it doesn’t drag. Do stay for the tag mid-way through the end credits. While many of the tags in other films and series of Phase Four have underwhelmed, this one is important to the full arc of Wakanda Forever.

A Not So Distant Mirror

In the last few years, it has happened too often that a minor offense has led to a deadly encounter with police because of a person’s skin color. The appearance of a bifurcated justice system, with one branch for Whites and another for Blacks, rears its ugly head over and over again. While long ingrained in the United States, there are times when this racism becomes unmistakable, usually when aggravated by sharp divisions in society. Two recent films, set in the late 1960s, look back at just such a tumultuous period of history.

A little background: On April 4^th, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, sparking riots of rage across the country. Two months and two days later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles – a gut punch to the Anti-Vietnam War movement that was at its height. Then, in August, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago led to massive, violent demonstrations as police cracked down on the protesters, usually with billy clubs. After Nixon won the presidency, his Attorney General, John Mitchell, ordered the Federal Prosecutor for Illinois to bring charges against those seen as leaders of the Chicago protests. One charged was the national leader of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale, even though he had no relationship with the other protestors and had made only a brief stop in Chicago around that time to substitute for Eldridge Cleever at a rally. On December 4^th, 1969, during the trial, the leader of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, a charismatic young man named Fred Hampton, was assassinated by Chicago cops with the assistance of the J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

Normally I will deal with one major new movie at a time, but these two films could be viewed as companion pieces, expanding the understanding of both movies. I’ll deal first with the story of Fred Hampton as related in Judas and the Black Messiah. (Black Messiah was actually Hoover’s term for someone who could unite the poor and powerless, which he saw as a great threat to the status quo.) Some of the story is told from the perspective of Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield), a habitual thief who was recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the Panthers and inform on their activities. His duplicity is contrasted with Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), who’s dedicated to the cause of racial and economic justice. An element of the story is Hampton’s tender romance with Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback) who became Hampton’s common-law wife and mother of his son. (Both Johnson and Hampton’s son cooperated with the filmmakers in the portrayal of Fred.)

The simplistic view of white America cast the Panthers as revolutionaries in black berets and leather jackets who carried rifles openly. The reality was much more complex, and Judas/Black Messiah shows the community focus of the movement. Under Hampton, the Panthers established a free breakfast program in their neighborhood, building on something Fred himself had started doing on his own for neighborhood children when he was 10 years old.  Inspired by King, Hampton reached out to poor Whites and Hispanics and formed the Rainbow Coalition of community groups to seek economic justice for all poor people. (Jesse Jackson later co-opted the name and used it for his more moderate organization.)

Racial violence, though, was always present. In an interesting historical twist of fate, Fred’s mother had babysat for Emmitt Till, whose 1954 lynching while visiting Mississippi became a seminal moment in the movement toward civil rights. As a young teenager, Fred himself saw the violence that greeted Martin Luther King Jr. when he came to Chicago. The city police had a history of violence towards other races, and when the BPP resisted, the confrontations came close to open warfare. Hampton had been sent to jail on a trumped-up charge he’d stollen $71.00 worth of ice cream, but the conviction was overturned. During this time, the FBI had an illegal secret division set up by Hoover that was actively engaged in counter-intelligence work against civil rights activists. Along with using snitches like O’Neal, they had agents working undercover in the organizations, and there were documented instances of them creating forged documents and fake stories to sow discord between cooperating groups, like those in Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition.

Kaluuya is mesmerizing as Hampton, especially when he reproduces speeches Hampton gave. He well deserves the Golden Globe he recently received for the performance, though one aspect of the story is lost. Kaluuya is 32, while Hampton was 21 when he died. Similarly, Stanfield is 29, while O’Neal was a teenager during the period of the film. Yet Stanfield as well is riveting in his portrayal of O’Neal, a weak man caught in an untenable position.

Bringing Hampton’s story to the screen had been pursued for years, but the earlier projects all fallen through. This time Shaka King, who was mostly known for comedies, was attached as director and co-writer, and the producers included Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed, Fruitvale Station) and Charles D. King (Fences, Just Mercy, Harriet). With the cooperation of Hampton’s family, the production came together. While some elements of the story are fictionalized, much of it is accurate, in particular the climatic raid in which Hampton died. Given the evidence, most historians count it as an assassination.

The second film to watch also had a long gestation period. Ten years ago, Steven Spielberg approached Aaron Sorkin about writing an adaptation of the story of the Trial of the Chicago Seven. Spielberg had originally wanted it produced during Obama’s tenure in the White House, but it didn’t come together. Later, Sorkin decided to direct his own script.

The protests in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention rocked the country with the violence carried live by the television networks. It was a seminal moment that shook the country in a similar way to what happened on January 6^th of this year, though the details of the two events were completely different. As noted, the charges against the defendants weren’t filed until the next year. Along with Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), the major personalities were Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Abbie Hoffman (Sasha Baron-Cohen), and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong). William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), a nationally prominent civil rights attorney, represented the defendants, while Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) prosecuted, with Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) presiding.

It does need to be noted that much of Trial is not historically accurate, with fabricated characters and a very clear slant toward the protestors in the script. If you would like to read more about the actual history versus the film version, please click here. That said, it is an Aaron Sorkin script, whose writing is always music to an audience’s ear. He had taken on a herculean task in compressing the trial – which lasted over 5 months – into a two-hour-and-nine-minute run time. It’s also true that the lens through which we view history does change. In 1968, the country overwhelmingly supported the police and blamed the protestors for the riots. Since then, the image of the police has been tarnished, especially with cellphone cameras now able to record events and be broadcast throughout the country. The protestors on the ground in Chicago in 1968 are now grandparents and great-grandparents. Things change.

Sorkin uses flashbacks throughout the movie to show what is referred to at the trial, giving immediacy to the action. He also creates tension with disagreements over tactics between Hayden and Hoffman. Redmayne is watchable as always and gives a fulsome performance as Hayden. The revelation, though, is Sacha Baron-Cohen. While we’re used to him in outlandish, over-the-top roles, he’s shown in the past ability as a straight actor, such as in Hugo and Les Miserables. As Hoffman, Baron-Cohen is mesmerizing, at times indulging in humor but with the intensity of a tightly coiled spring hiding just below the surface, ready to burst forth at any time. All the cast, including Michael Keaton in a small but important role, have brought their A game to the screen, though likely the hardest performance is Langella at Judge Hoffman, whose biased and arbitrary handling of the trial led to the convictions being overturned on appeal.

During the trial, Sorkin has the Black Panthers as a presence in the courtroom, with Fred Hampton providing support for Bobby Seale. From what is known this is a fiction created by Sorkin, who uses Hampton’s death as the tipping point for Seale, leading to his case being split off from the other seven defendants. Once separated, the charges against Seale were never pursued. But while it’s a fiction, it gives a physical view of Hampton closer to reality. The role’s performed by 26-year-old Kelvin Harrison Jr., who has been very busy recently with major roles in Waves, The Photograph, and The High Note. While he has little dialogue, Harrison projects pride, competency, and dedication as Hampton, even as he appears too young for such maturity. Combining Kaluuya and Harrison, you get a fair understanding of who Hampton was, and why he was so threatening to Hoover and the establishment at that time.

It was the philosopher Santayana who originally said, “Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” An old friend put a sharper edge on the phrase by saying those who don’t learn deserve to repeat it. There are strong echoes of 1968 in what’s taken place in this country in the last few years. Hopefully these two movies will be part of our learning to value and respect all.  

A Role Model for Much of the World

After years of establishing a formula, the superhero genre is flexing its muscles. Arguably, The Dark Knight, with its plot twists and its twisted villains – especially Heath Ledger’s Joker – moved the genre to a higher level. For the Marvel Universe, Captain America: The Winter Soldier took a clear-cut hero and threw him into a world filled with shades of gray. Its sequel, Captain America: Civil War – the best Avengers movie so far – hit an even darker tone. On the other side of the scale, Thor: Raganok managed to find a completely fresh voice by looking at the genre with a decidedly cockeyed view. While the DC films following Nolan’s trilogy have been mostly pedestrian, last spring’s Wonder Woman was transcendent, and a healing tonic after the misogyny of both the genre and the previous year’s presidential campaign. Now, Marvel has rocked the genre again with Black Panther, fittingly released during Black History Month.

T’Challa, the king of Wakanda and protector of his people in his guise as Black Panther, was the first Black superhero, appearing with The Fantastic Four in 1966. Two years later he had his own comic book series. From the outset the character was different from others in the Marvel Universe. Rather than accidentally gaining his powers (from gamma radiation or a radio-active spider bite, for example), his power was inherited along with his kingship. Where most superheroes are lone wolfs, Black Panther is firmly planted in a community. His first appearance on screen, in Civil War, was captivating. Where most superheroes blaze hot, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther was a cool blue flame. He spoke softly, but when action was required he sprang into action like, well, like a black panther. But he was, essentially, on his own, except when aligned with Iron Man and others. Now with the stand-alone Black Panther, we see him in his element. The screenplay by director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed) and Jon Robert Cole focuses not just on the hero but on the community that surrounds him, and empowers him.

The movie opens with the story of Wakanda and the Black Panther, related by a father to his son. Five tribes battled over land where a meteorite had deposited vibranium. A warrior ingested a heart-shaped plant that had mutated by exposure to the vibranium. He gained great power, but rather than wiping out the other tribes, he used his strength to unite four of them. One tribe went their own way, but they were allowed to exist peacefully in the land. Powered by the vibranium, the Wakandans developed marvelous technology far beyond the rest of the world. But they hid their advancement from outsiders as European colonizers fought wars against the natives while slavery tore apart the fabric of Africa. Wakanda was an island in a troubled sea. The country became a paradise, guarded from outsiders by an elaborate ruse as well as a far flung network of spies embedded in nations around the world.

Following the death of his father in Civil War, T’Challa is to be formally installed as king, but first he undertakes a mission with Okoye (Danai Gurira), the head of the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s his all-female imperial guard. They retrieve one of Wakanda’s spies, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), from her mission against modern-day slavers. They return to Wakanda where T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and his sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), wait for them. Shuri is like James Bond’s Q played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After the installation – and an unexpected challenge by the leader of the separatist tribe, M’Baku (Winston Duke) – T’Challa learns that a longtime enemy of Wakanda has surfaced. Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) had stolen a supply of vibranium from Wakanda years earlier and killed several Wakandas while making his escape. Now he’s surfaced after stealing an antiquity that was made from the metal, and is about to sell it in South Korea. T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia head there to capture Klaue and recover the vibranium, but they’re unaware Klaue is working with an American mercenary. Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) is a former US Special Forces warrior, but he also has a special connection both to Wakanda and to T’Challa.

You don’t usually get a superhero story that’s about responsibility, both personal and socially, but that’s what Black Panther revolves around. It also posits what might have happened if Africa had been spared the twin scourges of colonialism and the slave trade. Since Wakanda avoided both, the narrative of slavery or prejudice and injustice that underlies so much of the presentation of blacks on screen, is not the central focus. Think of the recent black stories in the cinema: 12 Years A Slave, The Help, Hidden Figures, Selma, or Chadwick Boseman’s first star turn as Jackie Robinson in 42. Instead of dwelling there, Black Panther asks what is require from the Wakandans who have been so favored. Is it enough to maintain their hidden world, or have they a responsibility to act to help those who’ve been oppressed?

An outstanding aspect of Black Panther is the number of strong female characters in the mix. Gurira is a bad ass of the first order, matched by the dozen warriors she leads. Nyong’o is James Bond cool while Wright is a delight, a wisecracking genius who can hold her own in a battle. Bassett is regal in her role, but you also see the steel spine within her.

The men fare just as well, with Boseman building on his embodiment of the character from Civil War. As with the 007 movies, the quality of the villain often controls the quality of the film, and Jordan’s Killmonger is one of the best ever. His backstory and performance moves Black Panther close to a Shakespearean level; think Henry V on the outside, Richard III inside. A delightful surprise is Duke, a six-foot-six mountain of a man who plays a much more grounded and multi-dimensional character than usually portrayed in the comics. In addition, you have Forest Whittaker, Sterling K. Brown, Martin Freeman, and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), each in important roles. The movie is overflowing with talent, and it uses that talent effectively.

Black Panther has already broken box office records for February and had the fifth biggest opening weekend in movie history. The wonderful aspect of this, though, is the success is more than deserved. The movie not only tells a great story – it gives a large swath of the world a role model for whom to root.

A Day To The Death

Movies have the power to change people’s hearts and minds, because they give you the chance to experience life from another person’s perspective. Among the many examples of this: Paul Muni in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, which led to the elimination of chain gangs; Sidney Poitier’s early films, which changed attitudes about race relations (The Defiant Ones, Raisin in the Sun, Lilies of the Field, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night – take your pick); or Tom Hanks giving a face to the AIDS crisis in Philadelphia. In light of the recent incidents in Ferguson and Staten Island, I watched a movie from 2013 that I’d missed during its theatrical release – Fruitvale Station.

During the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III was shot in the back while being restrained face-down by San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police on the platform at Fruitvale Station in Oakland. He died later that morning. The police had responded to reports of a fight on the train that was crowded with people returning from ringing in the New Year in San Francisco. They held the train in the station, so several passengers recorded what took place on their cell phones. That footage is what starts the film, though the screen goes black just before the fatal shot is heard.

The film then jumps back 24 hours to show Oscar’s last day. Oscar (Michael B. Jordan) is living with his girlfriend Sophina Mesa (Melonie Diaz) and their 4-year-old daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal). The main focus of their day is preparing for the birthday party of Oscar’s mother, Wanda (Octavia Spencer) that will take place that night. While he hides it from others, Oscar is in a rough place. He’s recently lost his job at a market, and the rent is due in a couple of days. Oscar had made bad choices when he was still a teenager, which led to him being sent to jail. The day becomes a personal odyssey for him as he decides to make changes in his life that honor Sophina, who he loves, and Tatiana, whom his adores.

Writer/Director Ryan Coogler had access to the principles involved in the story and crafted an excellent film that presents Oscar as neither saint nor sinner, but as human with whom you can identify in spite of any cultural differences. Coogler took some liberties with the story for the sake of the movie, but they were minor changes or the events happened at another time. For instance, early on in the film Oscar is in the market where he use to work, getting supplies for his mother’s birthday dinner (which did actually take place on that day), when he sees a young woman having trouble at the meat counter. She wants to fry fish since that’s a meal her husband loves, but she’s never done it before and doesn’t know what she’s doing. Oscar calls his grandmother and puts the woman on the phone with her so his grannie can teach her how to fry fish. While it didn’t happen that day, Oscar did do that earlier when he worked at the market. Slate magazine did an article that breaks down the accuracy of the film, though of course that means the article does contain spoilers.

When the film gets to the climactic scene at the Fruitvale Station, Coogler is meticulous in recreating the incident. He obtained permission from BART to film the scene on the platform of the actual station, and he pulled dialogue for the scene from the cellphone footage. The footage has been posted on YouTube along with contemporary news reports about the incident. This was the first feature film made by Coogler, and it is a stunning achievement.

It helps that Michael B. Jordan gives a mesmerizing performance as Oscar. Jordan started acting when he was twelve, with early credits on shows like “The Sopranos” and “The Wire.” After extended roles on “All My Children,” “Friday Night Lights,” and “Parenthood” Jordan had a break-out role in the sci-fi sleeper hit Chronicle. Several scenes in Fruitvale Station have little or no dialogue, but the emotions that play out of Jordan’s eyes speak volumes. He will be an actor to watch in the future, in the mode of Don Cheadle and Terrence Howard. Matching him is Octavia Spencer. She portrays Oscar’s mother Wanda as a clear-eyed realist who gives tough love when necessary. It makes the end of the movie all the more heartwrenching.

It’s become a bit hackneyed to say you can’t judge a man until you have walked in his shoes, but that doesn’t negate the truth of the words. Fruitvale Station slips Oscar Grant’s shoes onto your feet and laces them up tight, and you’ll still feel them there long after the movie is over.