Marvel’s Black Panther: reviews, news, and analysis of the game-changing superhero movie

Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman has died at age 43 of colon cancer, according to his family, in a announcement made Friday night.

“Chadwick was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016, and battled with it these last four years as it progressed to stage IV,” Boseman’s family said in a statement posted to his Twitter account. “From Marshall to Da 5 Bloods, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and several more, all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy.”

Each year, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences nominates between five and 10 movies to compete for the Oscars’ Best Picture trophy — its most prestigious award, and the one given out at the very end of the ceremony. There’s no strict definition for what makes a “best” picture; it’s easiest to think about it as an honor given to the film that Hollywood thinks best represents the year in movies.

So whatever film wins Best Picture essentially represents the American movie industry’s view of its role in driving culture, as well as its capabilities and aspirations, at a specific point in time.

One of the weirdest Oscar seasons in recent history continues thanks to a weird list of Oscar nominations, one filled with great movies but also shocking snubs and heartening surprises.

Roma and The Favourite are at the top of the heap, with 10 nominations each; Vice and A Star Is Born are in second place with eight apiece. Black Panther, the first superhero movie ever nominated for Best Picture, is in third with seven.

At last, the nominees for the 2019 Oscars have been announced, and eight films earned the lucky Best Picture berth. They’re an eclectic bunch, ranging from a quiet family drama set in Mexico (Roma) to a kooky, dark arthouse comedy (The Favourite) to obvious crowd pleasers (Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book) to the first superhero film ever nominated (Black Panther).

While some of the films are still playing only in theaters — or returning to theaters for limited runs, thanks to their new status as Best Picture nominees — others are available to stream, to rent digitally, or to buy to watch at home. So if you want to catch up with all of the Best Picture nominees before the 91st Academy Awards on February 24, here’s how to do it.

Black Panther is now the first superhero movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

The movie scored seven total nominations for the 91st Academy Awards. In addition to its milestone Best Picture nod, Black Panther is nominated for Original Score, Original Song (“All the Stars”), Costume Design, Production Design, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing. Whether or not it wins Best Picture or any of those other categories, the film’s nominations cap off what has been one of the most successful runs for a superhero movie in history.

In 2018, Marvel produced one of the biggest success stories — if not the biggest success story — in its cinematic history: Black Panther.

Headed into the film’s February release, Marvel had made 17 superhero movies, but never a solo superhero movie with a black star or a predominantly black cast. Black Panther ended up making $1.3 billion worldwide, and its $700 million domestic gross was bigger than that of Avengers: Infinity War, which made $678 million domestically. (Infinity War did make a killing at the foreign box office, however, and netted a bigger worldwide gross, raking in $2 billion overall.)

Almost halfway through 2018, Marvel’s Black Panther remains one of the biggest successes of the year, both critically and commercially.

It’s under $250,000 away from becoming just the third movie to cross the $700 million mark at the box office in the US and Canada, which it should manage sometime in early July. (Yes, it’s still playing in some theaters, even though it’s out on home video.) While it will only be the No. 2 movie of the year internationally, it’s all but certain to be the top movie of the year domestically, having held off Avengers: Infinity War.

Black Panther isn’t just a terrific movie — it’s also proved to be a record-crushing machine. Here’s a quick roundup of its success thus far:

And now it’s en route to another huge milestone. On Thursday, the movie topped $676 million in the US, a number that surpasses the total theatrical grosses of Iron Man ($318 million), Thor ($181 million), and the first Captain America ($177 million) film — combined.

Black Panther will play in a Saudi Arabian movie theater on Wednesday. It’s the first film shown in a Saudi Arabian movie theater in 35 years. Yes, you read that right.

Saudi men and women will attend the screening at a swanky new theater in Riyadh featuring 500 leather seats and marble bathrooms. Choosing Black Panther was perhaps a no-brainer: It’s already raked in $1 billion worldwide to become the 10th-highest-grossing film of all time. It’s also a deeply enjoyable movie.

With Avengers: Infinity War ushering in the Age of Thanos and a whole universe of unprecedented mass chaos, it’s a good thing that Black Panther has introduced at least one incomparable secret weapon that just might save the day.

Black Panther revealed a whole world beyond what superhero movies had ever dared to dream of. The truth of its fictional African nation of Wakanda, which has been hidden under a layer of deceptively barren plains for generations, is that it’s a secret utopia overflowing with precious vibranium and technological marvels the likes of which not even the alien gods of Asgard could imagine.

There are two credits scenes at the end of Marvel’s Black Panther. Both scenes, but especially the second one, relate to the studio’s forthcoming team-up film Avengers: Infinity War, which is slated to hit theaters in May.

Over the last several years, mid- and post-credits scenes have become a Marvel tradition, something fans look forward to every time the studio puts out a new release. Sometimes they contain huge reveals that hint at future movies (see: Thanos intercepting Thor’s Asgardian spaceship at the end of Thor: Ragnarok).

The 2018 Oscars are done with, consigned to the history books for the rest of time. And a ton of great people won their first awards there, from Guillermo Del Toro to Jordan Peele, from 89-year-old James Ivory (the oldest winner ever) to Allison Janney.

But there’s one thing the 2018 Oscars lacked: ratings. They were the least-watched Oscars ever, with just 26.5 million viewers. Yes, that beat out the other awards shows (like the Golden Globes and Grammys) this year, but it’s also over 5 million lower than the previous low (32 million in 2008) and 20 percent lower viewership than the Oscars saw in 2017.

Black Panther, Marvel’s newest movie, is chiefly a metaphor.

Director Ryan Coogler uses an imaginary African country — Wakanda — that secretly possesses highly advanced technology as a vehicle for exploring issues surrounding racism, the ethical response to oppression, and the global African diaspora.

In the fictional African nation of Wakanda, beads made of “vibranium” heal bullet wounds, and a bulletproof suit absorbs and stores the energy of hostile blows. Levitating trains cruise past vaulting skyscrapers with thatched roofs, as saucer-shaped aircraft carve arcs in the sky.

Wakanda, a fantasy nation that serves as the setting for much of Black Panther, is a vision of an African nation that’s not only unencumbered with a history of colonialism but by a great margin the most technologically advanced country in the world.

Black Panther was the king of the box office in its second weekend in theaters, hauling in an estimated $108 million and hitting the $700 million mark worldwide. This achievement follows an opening weekend that was the fifth biggest of all time domestically and the second biggest opening weekend for any Marvel movie, behind The Avengers in 2012.

To put Black Panther’s success in perspective, its $400 million domestic tally in its first two weeks already puts it ahead of the complete US theatrical runs of several other Marvel films, including Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Iron Man, and Captain America: Winter Soldier.

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s most famous short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” the city of Omelas is perfect for 99.99999999999999 percent of its citizens. There is ample leisure time and an abundance of everything anyone could need. Life is comfortable and good for everyone, not just a privileged few.

But there is one citizen for whom Omelas is a hell: a small child, kept in a basement and endlessly tortured. Le Guin never explains how this arrangement came to be, because her story is intended not as a world-building exercise but as a mirror. Even in the best, most just societies in human history, whole swaths of human beings have been treated horribly in order to create a better society. Every utopia is also a dystopia if you look at it from the right angle, and vice versa.

Ryan Coogler’s rise through Hollywood is best described as “meteoric.” Before being selected to direct Black Panther, the director, now 31 years old, had only made two feature films: Fruitvale Station, which won accolades at Sundance in 2013, and Creed, the seventh installment in the Rocky series, which garnered rave reviews in 2015.

Disney’s tentpole properties have been selecting young directors who cut their teeth in independent film to helm major blockbusters (like Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok and Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi), but even by those standards Coogler is a newbie.

Marvel’s Black Panther is a cultural phenomenon, a historic box office success that’s brought in rave reviews and sparked conversation all over social media and traditional media alike. There are no signs of the excitement abating, either, as the conversation about the film has evolved from discussions about the importance of representation into something grander: a rather groundbreaking celebration of black culture.

With an all-star collection of majority black talent both in front of and behind the camera, Black Panther, under the direction of Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed), is about more than the latest superhero’s journey; it’s also about black culture’s journey, and it points toward a future where it could be the culture. It acknowledges and celebrates everything from traditional African society to African-American political debates, from the power and beauty of black women to the preservation of identity, all within the lush confines of the fictional African nation of Wakanda.

Whenever a superhero movie comes out, part of the cultural reaction is to find the politics in its bones. Last year’s Thor: Ragnarok wasn’t just about the god of thunder and lightning fighting with the goddess of death — it was also about refugees, immigrants, the pitfalls of imperialism, and Donald Trump’s vision for America. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman was, depending on whom you ask, either propaganda about American exceptionalism or a subversive piece of feminism designed to sabotage tired Hollywood conventions.

There’s a strong desire to find what these stories about super soldiers, iron men, and guardians of the galaxy say about American life and politics — perhaps because of the way studios tend to blur out those details when translating the stories from comic book form.

Once it became clear Marvel’s Black Panther would be a huge draw to movie theaters, a trio of black women had an idea: If black communities would turn out in large numbers to see the film, why not seize the opportunity to get people registered to vote?

The result was the #WakandaTheVote campaign, an initiative that allows people to set up voter registration events at local theaters or register to vote via text message. The initiative is headed by Kayla Reed, Jessica Byrd, and Rukia Lumumba, who also created the Movement for Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project. The EJP aims to “continue a long legacy of social movements fighting for the advancement of the rights of Black folks through electoral strategy.”

Nakia and Okoye walk side by side, confident and stoic, next to their king, T’Challa. They’re inside a secret underground casino in Busan, South Korea, in pursuit of the vibranium-obsessed arms dealer Ulysses Klaue.

Nakia, expert in all things espionage, and Okoye, whose iron-fisted hand-to-hand combat skills and use of a spear are unparalleled, are in disguise — dressed to the nines and truly a sight to behold. During an incredibly intense, action-packed scene, they battle with guards, embark on a car chase, and eventually capture Klaue.

At this point in the story of the internet, it’s essentially routine for trolls on social media to capitalize on news events to spread fake, racially motivated, or anti-progressive rumors. This fake trolling has the effect of distorting reality, catering to middle America’s worst fears about people of other races and political beliefs, and making progressive political movements seem more extreme than they actually are.

And now, it could have an effect on the opening-weekend box office for Marvel’s long-awaited Black Panther.

Black Panther has been an Avenger for the past 50 years, created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1966. What Kirby and Lee created, and what subsequent writers and artists have since refined, is one of the smartest and most powerful members of the superhero supergroup, demanding equal parts respect and fear.

But Black Panther also offers the kind of story that so many of his fellow superheroes can’t: a legend that empowers those with brown skin, cherishes Africa, and rewrites history to create a black monarchy that rules the most intelligent and powerful country in the world.