Black Pan­ther

Every so often at a film screen­ing, you get a pow­er­ful sense that you’re watch­ing great­ness unfold before your eyes. Whether it’s the dis­cov­ery of break­through tal­ent or some­thing as deeply per­son­al as the real­i­sa­tion that this is going to become one of your favourite films, such elec­tric moments serve as a reminder of what makes cin­e­ma so spe­cial. Crit­ics some­times get a rap for being joy­less cyn­ics, but rest assured we live for these fleet­ing moments of unbri­dled awe as much as any­one – and watch­ing Black Pan­ther at the film’s Euro­pean Pre­mière deliv­ered on a promise Mar­vel have been mak­ing for years: You ain’t seen noth­ing yet.

There’s a sense of his­to­ry you can’t escape with this film – after all, it’s been 25 com­ing, stretch­ing all the way back to Wes­ley Snipes’ failed first attempt in 1992. Just shy of 10 years since Jon Favreau rein­vent­ed the super­hero genre with Iron Man, Ryan Coogler has done it again with an ori­gin sto­ry of his own. It’s not a push to say that Coogler has actu­al­ly gone one bet­ter – he’s made Mar­vel rel­e­vant again, bring­ing heart and soul to a block­buster pro­duc­tion line that has seemed more inter­est­ed in shov­ing as many heroes as human­ly pos­si­ble onto an IMAX screen lately.

Although Black Pan­ther is an ori­gin sto­ry, it neat­ly avoids get­ting bogged down in estab­lish­ing back­sto­ry, using an inven­tive open­ing cred­its sequence and just a few flash­backs to set the scene. Although the title char­ac­ter made his big-screen bow in Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War, Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole man­age to estab­lish a whole new cast in record time while mak­ing you care about them too. It func­tions per­fect­ly as a stand­alone movie, one that feels thrilling­ly unshack­led from the con­straints of the MCU.

Chad­wick Boseman’s T’Challa makes for a com­pelling lead, but the film belongs to the incred­i­ble ros­ter of female tal­ent. There’s Nakia (Lupi­ta Nyong’o), T’Challa’s con­fi­dante and most-trust­ed spy, Okoye (Danai Guri­ra), the leader of his pri­vate team of all-female body­guards, the Dora Mila­je, Shuri (Leti­tia Wright), T’Challa’s 16-year-old tech whiz sis­ter, and Ramon­da (Angela Bas­sett), his most regal moth­er. It might be called Black Pan­ther, but make no mis­take – the film belongs to these com­pe­tent, intel­li­gent, brave women.

On vil­lain duties are Coogler reg­u­lar Michael B Jor­dan, who plays Eric Kill­mon­ger, a Wakan­dan exile who seeks to over­throw T’Challa, and Andy Serkis, return­ing as unhinged South African arms deal­er Ulysses Klaue. This is the only area where the film real­ly stum­bles; while there can be no doubt­ing Jordan’s act­ing abil­i­ty, his part is under­writ­ten and rather one-note. And although Serkis is clear­ly hav­ing a blast chew­ing the scenery, as is so often the case with Mar­vel films, the threat pre­sent­ed by Kill­mon­ger and Klaue is mod­er­ate. There’s also Mar­tin Freeman’s ran­dom reap­pear­ance as CIA agent Everett K Ross, who spends the major­i­ty of his time on screen look­ing like a mid­dle-aged-man on a gap year, and Daniel Kaluuya’s W’Kabi, who is posit­ed as a close friend of T’Challa but whose sud­den shift in alle­giance goes unaddressed.

There’s some­thing ques­tion­able, too, about the film revolv­ing around a hered­i­tary monar­chy quash­ing a well-mean­ing (although poor­ly exe­cut­ed) rebel­lion. Even so, these gripes seem triv­ial when you stack them up against the film’s many virtues. Coogler has built a world from the ground up that sings with colour and pride – Wakan­da looks like noth­ing we’ve seen before from Mar­vel – and his film fea­tures eas­i­ly the best Mar­vel sound­track to date, curat­ed and record­ed by Kendrick Lamar. It’s fun­ny too, but nev­er sil­ly and nev­er cheap. Coogler draws from both African and African-Amer­i­can his­to­ry and cul­ture but also takes cues from Afro­fu­tur­ism, Shake­speare, James Bond and even The Lion King.

While Black Pan­ther has Mar­vel in its DNA, to label it sole­ly as a super­hero movie feels like a dis­ser­vice. In Thor Rag­norok and now Black Pan­ther, Mar­vel has demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to take risks with the way they tell sto­ries. And it’s paid div­i­dends, pro­duc­ing two of the studio’s best films to date. Let’s hope they can keep this momen­tum going. As for Ryan Coogler? What­ev­er he does next, we can’t wait to see it.