We’ve reached it. The highest grossing solo superhero movie in the MCU – and of all-time! $1.3 billion.
A lot of that is due to how many African-Americans were excited to see this kind of representation and came out in droves to support it. I don’t blame them, although the unfortunate flip side of that is how many racists were triggered by a movie about a black hero and were giving the film the worst possible rating in the audience section of Rotten Tomatoes before it even came out. Saw the exact same thing later with sexists and Captain Marvel. There’s that phrase about how, when you’re used to power, equality feels like oppression and I did see a hilarious thing on social media where essentially a racist asked “What would everyone say if there was a movie about a secret Scandinavian country with all sorts of resources and a blonde hero?” and someone else responded “You just literally described Thor. You might want to watch those movies; they’re good.”
Blonde men definitely don’t have a need to feel underrepresented though, and so Black Panther outgrossed every solo superhero movie including Thor’s. What really impresses me if that it made nearly a HALF BILLION in net profit! People who didn’t spend years working in a studio finance division’s “participations” department like I did won’t appreciate the magnitude of that comment so I’ll explain succinctly. “Net profit”, as defined by studios, includes an astonishing number of deductions. During my three years at Paramount I saw how often even a film that made a profit for the studios will wind up over $100,000,000 in the red as far as the statements issued to net profit sharers. I did work on a few films that paid healthy net profits, but they were the The Bad News Bears, Airplane!, Fatal Attraction, and Ghost. In other words, movies that came out in 1976, 1980, 1987, and 1990, when it wasn’t uncommon for a major studio release to cost $15 million. Black Panther cost $200 million to make and still turned a net profit.
In fact most of the other MCU movies have also – I’ve talked about how much the vast majority have made compared to their cost – but I’m singling out Black Panther because of the way it passed the other solo outings.
Enough about the box office success; is it a good movie? It broke the drought of – well forever – of comic book movies not getting Best Pictures nominations at the Oscars. 97% of the critics at the Tomatometer also liked it, making it the best-reviewed live-action comic book movie of all time, beating The Dark Knight by a strong 3%.
You’re not just here to see me recite facts though. Here’s my opinion – it’s a fantastic film. It asks the sorts of tough questions previously posed by Captain America: The Winter Solider and Captain America: Civil War: Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Do the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many if the few are the ones connected to you? How do your personal needs fit into that? Can you objectively decide what is a need versus a want for yourself?
Chadwick Boseman shines as the main character seeking to answer those questions as best as his moral compass allows. Of course you can’t have a great hero without a great villain and Michael B. Jordan gives an amazing performance as a tragic figure. Although Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight, as long as this movie was proving a comic book film can get nominated for Best Picture I wish Jordan had proven a comic book film actor can at least get a nomination without dying first. I should mention that this is another case of perfect talent being behind the camera: Ryan Coogler was the same director who got riveting performances out of Jordan in Jordan’s breakout film Fruitvale Station and his most notable leading role as Adonis Creed.
He’s hardly alone in providing this movie’s lead actor great support though. The movie is like a who’s who of talented black actors – appropriate given that many probably wanted to participate in such a milestone movie for their race. On that note, it’s that time now.
Game: Two Oscar winners (Lupita Nyong’o, Forest Whitaker), one nominee (Angela Bassett)
Up next: The big one! (part one)
Bottom line: Believe the hype and watch it.
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