Politics and Powerful Female Characters Take Center Stage at Marvel's BLACK PANTHER Press Junket

This week Marvel hosted a special press gathering in Beverly Hills for the upcoming film Black Panther where filmmakers and the cast spent an hour talking all about the next installment in Marvel's Cinematic Universe. As you can see in the photo above, every key cast member was on hand as well as executive producer Kevin Feige and writer/director Ryan Coogler.

Most of the conversation at this event was focused on the barrier-breaking roles of the women in this film and how the overall message and tone of Black Panther is much different than any other film we've seen in the MCU so far. Here are some of the conversations that I thought were most interesting and add more insight into how Black Panther ended up being the film that it is.

A MORE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL TAKE:

There is no denying that there are real-world political issues at the center of Black Panther's story. Marvel told Coogler to not hold back and make the film a more personal. Coogler had this to say about the process:

“You think of Marvel like this big studio, like the biggest studio in the world right now, but it’s really just Kevin and his two friends. It’s these two really smart people, Louis D’Esposito and Victoria Alonso, and on this film, there was Nate [Moore]. And they’re all very different people, and Kevin is kind of at the head of this. I told him, ‘I want to make a film that works on every level that you guys normally work on, and I want to make it with these themes. I kind of had these themes in mind.’ And he was like, ‘Great. Let’s go.’ I didn’t expect that. But as I got to know these guys, specifically Kevin, it’s what he’s all about. He’s all about making something that works as a piece of entertainment, but leaves you with something to think about. He was very encouraging. I was getting notes when we were working on this like, ‘Make it more specific. Make it more personal.'”  

Kevin Feige chimed in:

“Ryan wrote this, for the most part, a year and a half ago or two years ago. So things have happened in the world which makes the film seem more relevant. There are other things in the film that have been relevant for centuries. But the truth of the matter is, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the whole Marvel bullpen created Wakanda and created T’Challa and created Black Panther and made him a smarter, more accomplished character than any of the other white characters in the mid-1960s. So if they had the guts to do that in the mid-1960s, the least we can do is live up to that and allow this story to be told in the way it needs to be told and not shy away from things that the Marvel founders didn’t shy away from in the height of the Civil Rights era.”

Danai Gurira, who plays General Okoye in the royal Wakanda guard, spoke about how personal her experience was being a part of the film:

 “I think what was really fascinating and almost very emotional for me, being that I’m Zimbabwean and American, that’s something you always want. You see the power and potential of where you’re from, but you see how skewed it’s viewed by the world, and how misrepresented it is, and how distorted it’s received by the world so often. So it’s kind of the salve to those wounds to see this world brought to life this way, and to see all the potential and power of all the different African culturalisms and aspects of our being that were celebrated. It’s so different – it subverts things we’ve been seeing forever around the continent. We see, when we’re there, we see beauty, power, potential, ability, resources – but they’re never exhibited. And to put that on a Marvel epic scale of exhibition it really salves wounds in a really deep way.”

NO SHORTAGE OF POWERFUL FEMALES IN WAKANDA 

Just about every Marvel film, so far, has had female characters in key roles, some more powerful than others, but there is no doubt that the women of Wakanda are on a whole different level. The Black Panther himself and ruler of Wakanda Chadwick Boseman spoke about the role of women in Wakanda and how the fit into the culture:

 “I want to speak to that for a minute. I think when you talk about what Wakanda is and what it would have to be in order to progress to the place [it is in the movie], even though we’re talking about a fantasy, the idea of an unconquered nation that has not been tampered with by the various means that it would have been tampered with. The idea of the next generation being smarter, being better than you is a concept that they would have evolved to. Even though we’re in the same generation – she’s my younger sister – she benefits from what I have reached. So you want your sons and daughters to be better than you were. That concept is a Wakandan concept. My older siblings, they raised me…you see the genius that is inside the people that come after you, and if you have an ancestral ground, they’re looking at you like, ‘I know you’re looking up to me, but we’re looking up to you.’ That’s an African concept.”

Letitia Wright, who plays T'Challa's little sister and technological whiz Shuri further explained how Wakandan women are able to reach such high level of success:

“How it was written is that the men are always behind the women as well, so no one is undermining them. They’re not like, ‘You shouldn’t be in technology, and you shouldn’t be in math.’ They’re like, ‘No, go ahead.’ T’Challa’s like, ‘Go ahead, sis. This is your department, this is your domain. Kill it. I’m going to work with you to finalize it.’ Because he’s dope…that’s the mentality of the king, and that’s brilliant.”

Lupita Nyong’o who plays Nakia, T'Challa's love interest, added that the film doesn't use women as the stereotypical damsel in distress, instead they are on an equal plane with the men:

“What I love about the way this film represents women is that each and every one of us is an individual, unique, and we all have our own sets of power and our own agency. We hold our own space without being pitted against each other. I think that’s a very, very powerful message to send to children, both male and female. I think oftentimes in movies, we fall into that trap where women – there’s very few of us, and then we are against each other. There’s a competitive spirit. This film freezes all that. We see women going about their business, and supporting each other and even arguing with each other. Having different points of view, but still not being against each other. I think that’s extremely important. In so doing, the fact that in this film there’s so many of us, we really get a sense of the fabric of Wakanda as a nation. We see women alongside men and we see how much more effective a society can be if they allow women to explore their full potential.”

Writer/director Coogler wrapped up the topic by reminding everyone that powerful women weren't just a part of the fictional story of Black Panther, there were brilliant and powerful women working hard behind the scenes:

“Just to add to that, speaking for some of the folks who were involved with the film that aren’t here. This film evolved from brilliant women all over, from start to finish. As I said, Kevin runs the studio, but he does it with his right and left hand. His right hand is Louis D’Esposito, and his left hand is Victoria Alonso, who is amazing. She was there from day one. Our crew was just [full] of women who were hired because they were the best person for the job. They weren’t hired because they were women, they were hired because they were the best for the job. That was our cinematographer Rachel Morrison, our costume designer Ruth Carter, our production designer Hannah Beachler, and our first assistant director, who was responsible for getting everything going, Lisa Satriano. In post-production, this film was edited by Michael Shawver and Debbie Berman, who’s from South Africa, and finished by Victoria Alonso. Throughout that process, it was a constant thing – we’d be in a script meeting and Victoria would raise her hand sometimes and be like, ‘Yo, I don’t think that should happen.’ And we were like, ‘OK!’ (laughs) You maybe zig where you should have zagged, and working with these amazing women, I was incredibly blessed to have these people, to have that perspective, to have their fingerprints all over it. That presence is – what is it, over half of the population? It was there constantly, and there in full effect.”

Black Panther is the 18th film in Marvel Studio's Cinematic Universe and the final film of phase three, it pounces into theaters on February 16, 2018.