BLACK PANTHER: A Review

By Annette Gordon

If you are the only person left who hasn’t seen the movie, Black Panther, here is why you should go see it. The storyline is about a fictional country in Africa named Wakanda, which is so technologically advanced(due to the country having a payload of Vibranium), that MIT colleges here and around the world would need to go there for lessons, taught by a very young black girl who is the sister of the new king due to the assassination of their father.

I am not one of those persons given to hyperbole but, the beauty and the majesty of the setting was awe-inspiring, it took my breath away. Niagara Falls will have to take a back seat to the falls of Wakanda. If there is a place where I could go to just to experience the sunrise and sunsets of Wakanda l would be on the first flight I could get.

Having not seen any other Marvel movie, I may seem a bit naïve about what a superhero movie ought to look like but, I was thoroughly impressed with the fact that King T’Challa’s army was made up of mostly female warriors. So excited was I, that I quietly yelled GIRL POWER! These women were fierce and handled themselves as well as, and better than most of the men who fought with them.

So how fictional do you think the plot of this blockbuster Marvel movie is? Consider this: the mineral reserves in Africa are second to none and have been sought after by every colonizer in written history. So it is not too farfetched to imagine a unique metal comparable to Vibranium being of special interest to the rest of the world. Maybe we are over thinking this but, Vibranium might be the metaphor for Bauxite, Cobalt, Industrial Diamond, Platinum Group Metals, Zirconium, and Gold. There is no question that this plot to relieve an African nation of its most precious resource is far from fiction, that plot has been played out for hundreds of years and the warriors of Black Panther represents metaphorically the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of lives of African warriors, that fought to retain their birthright.

Sure it is only a movie but, if you have been a moviegoer like me, you know that movies are prophetic. Those amazingly gifted writers, storytellers, actors, and directors possess a creative and mental freedom that others of us can only dream about. Movies are in reality our unfettered and predictive imaginations. They are presented as fiction then manifested as fact, sometime in the future. So, watch out America, as our Africans might unleash their Vibranium, giving rise to a new generation of Black Panthers.

Black Panther is not really a ‘Black Movie’; it is in fact, a huge, cultural phenomenon that has begun to shape the future of people of color. Go see the movie and create your own Wakanda’s.