Black Panther

Apparently there is a new film made based on this character.

Well, we knew it was coming.

I'll just say it again, though. Marvel needs to be very careful. This is an easy character to totally screw up.

Explain.

On the one hand, there's the problem with Positive Discrimination. Under the hand of a poor writer, Black Panther gets handed a lot... which tends to cheapen the character and doesn't allow him to grow in a very well developed way. When applied to Wakanda, there's the problem of making them disconnected from the rest of the universe, straining the suspension of disbelief. There's making Wakanda a technologically advanced nation with a strong presence and then there's making it practically "Asgard On Earth," both of which have happened.

This is particularly important due to the point that the MCU is at this time, both story-line and development wise.

On the other hand, there's all sorts of African stereotypes that have also found their way into Wakanda's portrayal that probably need to be treated with care. Not only that, but there's a lot of things people default to when making black heroes that should probably be watched out for: there's a trend of making black characters with the mindset of "we need more X black characters" first and not "we need to make strong, well written characters and plots." This leads to a bit of "hey, look! This black hero is just as cool as the white ones!" with characters written more in a sense of "showing up" and not really being well made.

If we want Panther to do well, we want him to be well made. We want his story to be well constructed We want Wakanda to be a well established setting that fits in well with the rest of the world and is connected enough to have us want to be brought back to it.

We don't want Black Panther to be introduced as "hey, this is the black hero!" A problem with a good chunk of black superheros is they're established as a symbol first and a character second, which hurts their longetivity. A lot of the failures are so because there's little to them beyond "this is a black hero!"

No, we want Black Panther to have substance. We don't want him to feel like he's introduced because they want to introduce a token, or introduce some diversity, or simply because they felt they had to get his introduction out of the way. I don't want to leave the theatre thinking they presented him in such a way that people watched it and went back to the other heroes without connecting to him.

I want Panther to be the kind of character where we want to see more movies of him because he, as a character, is made that well and that interesting. I want his world to be made in such a way that we want to see more of it, just like we want to see what happens next on Asgard and where the future of Stark Industries will take it. I don't want him to be seen as "Black Batman," or "Black X" or simply "the black guy they made that one movie about." No, I want Panther to have a presence as Panther, and for people to connect to him.

All of that that I've pointed out is a lot easier to fall into than it seems, particularly as a lot of the pitfalls are most easily fallen into when someone wants to make a movie look progressive, but goes about it the wrong way. The key is, again, to write Panther as a character first.

Also, this may be my Aaron Mc Gruder fan talking, but they ought to keep BET far, far away from this movie. And y'know, they might want to keep Aaron Mc Gruder away from this movie too, actually.

edited 6th Jun '12 4:26:33 PM by KnownUnknown

You know, it really doesn't matter if this is one of the most measured, intelligent, and entertaining superhero movies of all time; people are still going to joke about the black superhero named "Black Panther." And honestly, can you blame them?

They could use a different name like Panther or just T'Challa: The Black Panther or something. Captain America was marketed as The First Avenger in some parts of the world and seeing as this is a less well-known character in the main stream they would get away with it.
I'm actually going to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt since they ensured that all their movies avoided the offensive possibilities in the concepts. They have handled their movie franchise with an surprising amount of care (unlike DC) and while they may not represent intellectual mile stones they're all enjoyable at a basic level if you're not allergic to fun.

Well there's nothing I can say here that's already been said so I'll say I can't wait to see it.

^^ Oh, I have no worry about them being offensive. Rather, I'm worried that they'll try so hard to be progressive that they'll accidentally cheapen the end result.

But you're right. They've done well so far, and to be honest my main desire is that Black Panther be treated the same way the rest of the characters - I want him to have the same kind of lasting presence Iron Man or Thor had. Movies tend to go a long way towards giving characters lasting exposure, so I want this to succeed in that regard.

edited 6th Jun '12 8:42:29 PM by KnownUnknown

I think if the MCU wants to make a movie with a black hero, they should do Luke Cage first.

I did a fair bit of reading up on Black Panther and he sounds like a pretty cool hero so I'm all for this film.

I would've put Idris Elba as the first option for the guy since he's a great actor judging by the stuff he did on The Wire but I guess already playing Heimdall doesn't really setup that opportunity.

The one thing I know they need to do: Don't hire any of the guys who worked on the modern Avengers cartoon. They're pretty great with some characters like Hulk and Wasp, but their rendition of T'challa bores me to sleep.

Any speculation on who the villain will be?

Since Ulysses Klaw is directly tied into his backstory, he's probably going to be the main villain. There might be a secondary villain, though.

<fingers crossed> Moses Magnum, Moses Magnum, Moses Magnum Moses Magnum... </fingers crossed>

Especially if it leads to him making recurring appearances in the films.

I'm under the impression that they're focusing on possible Avengers before they'll look at other characters which is why they're looking at Black Panther first.

The avengers need more donuts and less sausages. No, Black Widow doesn't count until she gets some High Technology or injected with Super Soldier Serum.

Why don't they just make new characters? It's not like Blade wasn't liberally sprinkle with them while twisting existing ones until they were unrecognizable. Everyone still loved the first two to the point they revived the comic and made it more like the films. The writers had no problem dumping a bunch never heard of mooks less threatening than 1940s Hydra from Parts Unknown to get slaughtered in mass by our "Avenging Heroes".

They're not going to make new character because the Executives will kill them off to show it's more adult. You essentially need characters that cannot be killed for fear of market or you're going to have that shit happen.

Ms Marvel is probably the other big name female character.

Also, you can't just make up new characters for the Avengers because it's completely counter-intuitive to Marvel Studios' plan, which is to faithfully bring the Marvel Universe to life. You see a "new" character, it's either a minor villan/mook that the writers will have no problems killing off (ex: the Chitauri) or a secondary character (ex: Agent Caulson)

Fair enough, but what has that got to do with this specific movie?

That I hope they aren't making this for Panther to be a part of the Avengers roster in future films. Besides the already stated reason, him on that team always seemed off to me. He's a monarch, appoint someone else to serve on the foreign government's hero team.

When Namor was in the Invaders it was by proxy since he wanted to smash the Axis. He was on the defenders, but not entirely by choice, since the point of that team was that the muggles were the only members who didn't hate each other◊. How many Panther runs did people really gravitate to anyway? Kirby and Priest? They made him more of a Guile Hero, the Good Counterpart to Doom, Magneto and Namor on a bad day. If they aren't in the Movie verse, I'm not seeing much reason for Panther to be.

They're content to leave Ghost Rider out of it(which makes sense, since he's usually an enemy to the team if anything but he'd still make more sense than Panther. Incidentally Ghost Rider's been female as of Fear Itself and the modern era's first Rider, Blaze's mom, was also female)

Since when has Ghost Rider had *anything* to do with the Avengers?

No, Johnny's been Ghost Rider again ever since Venom 13.4 where he got it back after Red Hulk used it and the Venom Symbiote to beat Blackheart.

And I think that Black Panther could be done right, as long as you focus the first movie on him becoming King and struggling to keep the Kingdom.

. . .my head hurts. . .

Well, uh, The Avengers have fought Ghost Rider at least once, Captain America and Tigra were getting in the way of his "justice" so he was going to punish them for it but Thor chased him off(kind of).

The point being, Ghost Rider is kind of an ill fit for an avengers team, but then again they also have the Hulk, who has pretty much all the same problems so he'd still make more sense as an Avenger than Black Panther.

Except Hulk was actually a founding member of the Avengers. As opposed to Ghost Rider, who apparently fought them once.

edited 7th Jun '12 4:10:27 PM by CorrTerek

I know, but I never got the idea of Hulk on a government team either. But Avengers founding Hulk was not quite the dumb as rocks no self control Hulk we're all used to(and the movie emulated).

I guess I've never really liked the team but I really didn't like when Marvel got the idea to make them the literal Alternate Company Equivalent of the Justice League. I'm not against the idea of a Panther movie but I am against Panther as an Avenger, the same way I'm against Spider-man as an Avenger, even though that has happened in comics too.

I wouldn't say the Hulk was dumb as rocks in The Avengers. He clearly knew what he was doing in the invasion scene. The problem is he's just a dick about it as that awesome scene with Thor shows.