The Marvel films are always stereotypical, highlighting superheroes with the same structure of the films and even the set of events. However, American famous director created something new and special, breaking the stereotypes in the picture Black Panther. “Black” is a key word exemplifying direct and symbolic content of the film. The purpose of the paper is to define the reasons why Rayan Coogler is an excellent creator analyzing the content of the picture, its main heroes and identifying important social and political implications. Further, the paper will present deep investigations concerning personal attitudes and values of the filmmaker Rayan Coogler concerning the movie. The last part of the work will regard the both positive and negative responses of the film. Thus, Rayan Coogler is an exceptional creator because he presented a unique picture revealing African American identity, highlights racial and gender issues, as main social problems for contemporary America with the help of skillfully developed content of the picture and the main characters.
Analysis of the Film
Black Panther by Ryan Coogler is an important picture in the history of cinematography since it represents essential patterns of blackness and femininity, as the creator breaks the stereotypes and limitations in highlighting these patterns within the movie. For the first time in history Marvel represents really deep and meaningful movie, which contains the revolutionary new components of the content, character representation and social importance. The film describes fantastic and highly developed land with unique high-tech technologies – Wakanda, which is isolated but quite powerful. It is a symbolic representation of African continent before the colonist invasion, imperialistic exploitation and tyranny. Ryan Coogler created real masterpiece since he approached Africa form a different perspective, which has never been presented before. It was described as a poor land with primitively developed infrastructure and society. However, Coogler shows Africa as rich and powerful, as if he tries to evaluate possible success of Africa and its people without colonialism. The director of the picture creates the first a black superhero movie in the history of the cinematography, and its release coincides with racial tension in the USA when the President Trump made reprehensible remarks about immigrants from nonwhite countries (Setoodeh). In other words, the film highlights importance of the racial issues in America, representing blackness as an advantage in context of power, freedom and level of its development. Additionally, the movie is an important source for the black culture investigation. Black Panther depicts colorful land and culture within Wakanda, which is a direct description of African cultural patterns. The clothes, some traditions, the cult of the animals, some religious issues are the description of true African life. The film is a cultural investigation of rich and powerful civilization, which had been destroyed and humiliated. Coogler tends to identify African Americans national identity and racial disparities, existed in America (Eells). Clothes, their colors, the neck rigs, and talismans are the reflection of ancient tribe cultures and the present system of life in Africa. Aside from historic and the racial patterns importance the picture highlights the issue of gender.
The social importance of the film is related to the presentation of gender disparities and importance of woman in the futuristic Wakanda. The role of women for Rayan Coogker is really special in the context of the movie (Buchanan). That is why he made female characters bright and strong. He underlines women role significance in the fantastic world and in the system of the state authority. The women of Wakanda are strong, independent and empowered. Rayan Coogler succeed in creation the best women characters and the best supporting female characters, as they diminish all the male roles (Lee). The director formed strong feministic personages. For instance, the mother of a main hero T’Challa, Ramonda is a stoic strong woman, a quin mother, a head of a matriarchal world. Ramonda endures all the challenges of her son’s and never gives up. The characters Okoye and Ayo serves in the army as officers assigned to safeguard T’Challa. They are all bold with ethnic tutus on her bodies. The sister of a main hero, Shuri seems the most interesting personage in entire the movie, she is charismatic, strong and coordinates high tech industry of Wakanda. Furthermore, the character is as interesting, so that she steals attention of the audience in any scene she plays. Actually, the film presents so many special, beautiful and strong female characters protecting and supporting T’Challa, so he has nothing to do in the film, unless keeping his image of a hero. The movie illustrates strong post gender politics, it is a feministic movie and it claims social, political and even military role of women (Lee). It represents the cult of women as a mother of African land in context of traditions and religious views. Furthermore, girls are equal with men, as they are strong strategic opponents in the battle and in political life. Coogler omits, intentionally, any shades of sexism, showing how women save Black Panther several times and protecting the security of the state. Aside important social, political and cultural patterns, Rayan Coggler succeeded in creation exceptional men characters.
The male characters of the Black Panther are strong and brave as in the best traditions of Marvel, but the balance of antagonist and protagonists are not stereotypical. The development of the film characters makes the picture exceptional, as the contribution of Rayan Coogler in the cinematography and Marvel in particular (Gray). T’Challa is quite traditional, as he is brave, strong and handsome in his costume of a super powerful hero. He is a major protagonist. Nevertheless, alike the other Marvel products, this hero is really super powerful only within his community (Wood). The director of the film underlines several time during the film that the hero is not absolute. He was saved by army, supported by the women warriors and advised by his family. The issue of family, community and nation seems the most important in this context. The African American people should be close to their community and only after that they will have their power, cherishing and respecting their national identity. From a different perspective, the main antagonist, Erik Killmongeris as strong and attractive as T’Chala. He is really charismatic, so that it seems that he is more important than the character of T’Challa itself. It is quite an innovational approach of Coogler to represent a villain slowly transforming into anti villain, an antagonist – into a protagonist. It is a well-known technic, but rather for drama pictures, not for action film of Marvel, which are based on comics and where bad boys are bad till the end of the movie. However, the audience feels some sympathy toward Erik and like him. This aspect of the picture and the character development with deep psychological and social consideration makes Rayan Coogler a skillful creator of a famous and unique movies.
Coogler’s Position Toward the Film Creation
Coogler recognizes that a picture Black Panther is a critical film revealing important social issues and excellence of cinematographic technics. Black Panther becomes the year’s hit and it turned out to be much deeper that it was expected to be (Gray). The people expected to watch the other traditional Marvel picture without any additional material, which was inserted by the director of the movie Raya Coogler. He makes the people to think, not just watching the movie without essential implications. The filmmaker wanted to create a social turning point containing variety of essential element. With this purpose Rayan accepted for the main characters the black cast only. Racial issue is essential for Coogler himself, as he tends to define his personal identity, feeling racial pressure in America. The director had the purpose to remind about the Black Continent heritage, making the back superhero picture (Gray). The role of women in the movie was also special and reasonable for the filmmaker’s point of view. Rayan Coogler worried about several key female characters. As the sources confirm he intentionally selected the most famous African American actresses Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett and Lupita Nyong’o for playing four main parts (Buchanan). Coogler comments the problem that the traditional films of Marvel have one black person in the fil and one woman that fights (Buchanan). The filmmaker also admitted that he was inspired by his absolute opportunity to create something completely different, nontraditional and special (Buchanan). Furthermore, rayan admitted that it was the purpose of the picture to create something meaningful, more important, that it was presented before (Buchanan). Coogler wanted also to extend the role of the women, furthermore he recognized that the scenes where the women are central are his favorite (Buchanan). Rayan Coogler is sure that the picture is a revolution in the Marvel cinema. Aside his personal responses and purposes, the film attained variety of other people’s responses.
Other People Critics
The Film Black Panther attained variety of responses the both positive and negative. While some people believe that the movie is a great success and a wave of change, the others recognize the film a weak in the concept of the Marvel super heroic pictures. The Industry experts believe that the picture is quite successful. Thus, a chairman of Walt Disney Studio, Alan Horn commented that it is a powerful attempt of a filmmaker to make people to see themselves in the movie (Setoodeh). Furthermore, Horn described the picture as a success and a part of great changes in the aspect of gender issues (Setoodeh). Horn also explains that Coogler created a post gender film, where the women are presented as the strong warriors (Setoodeh). At the present filmmaking culture, the aspect of gender is weakly developed since it is oriented on few stereotypes that women are always secondary and less meaningful in the films about superpower heroes. Furthermore, the amount of women is, usually, limited. However, the majority of critics gave positive descriptions and admitted that Rayan Coogler committed certain revolution in the terms of gender diversity. He was one of not many filmmakers who tried to make the role of women and men characters in the picture equal. From a different perspective the other critics admitted that Coogler makes sufficient mistake in the aspect of gender politics. In such a way the main line of the is distorted because the filmmaker illustrates the women performing the most powerful mission in the movie, while the main hero is weakly represented (Lee). The majority of funs liked the film, but reaction of some of them was rather negative. Thus, Carrie Wittmer reported about main bad responses concerning the picture in Business Insider. She states that the majority of the funs believe that the main characters does not beat up enough bad guys, as an essential part of a superhero movie formula (Wittmer). However, from a different perspective, African-American Film Critics Association admitted the movie Black Panther as the best picture of 2018 (Kilkenny). The Association gave a response for the picture and commented that it changed the modern “culture and became a defining moment for Black America” (Kilkenny). The picture got mostly positive response than negative and attained a new status as a Marvel heroic film.
Thus, Rayan Coogler is a famous American filmmaker who presented his new picture Black Panther in 2018 as a revolution in the context of Marvel heroic cinematography. Coogler contribution is sufficient as he created a film with wide social, political and cultural with the help of not traditional character development and content. The film represents the symbol of Africa and it population before colonist’s invasions and presented as rich and happy land with highly developed civilization. The filmmaker applied variety of important cultural patterns related with African society, including traditions, order of life, cult, religion and even the clothes. The filmmaker highlights the gender role with the help of strong female characters. The formation of the male characters is also untraditional and even innovative as the super hero is not always super and main antagonist is not always negative. Furthermore, till the end of the picture his status changes form villain to anti villain. Coogler admits that it was his purpose to create something new and specific, while the picture attained variety of positive and negative responses.