Ryan Coogler, combines the customary blockbuster ingredients – cutting-edge special effects, spectacular chase and combat sequences –with an unusual afrofuturist aesthetic and a complex, serious approach to issues such as racial solidarity, slavery and colonialism. Contemplating mortality, one character asks to be buried “in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships because they knew death was better than bondage”. It’s the sort of line you don’t hear in
Avengers: Endgame (2019). All were products of Marvel Studios and together formed part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), with its interconnecting storylines and characters. The joy of Boseman’s work in the series, and especially in the Black Panther movie, was that it transcended the general corporate nature of the endeavour; the role, and the empowering message of that film, were of immense importance to him. He took research trips to South Africa to prepare for the part, traced his own ancestry and studied African martial arts and Masai warriors. “It’s a sea-change moment,” Boseman
Denzel Washington. After Boseman was cast in Black Panther, Washington
Get On Up (2014), co-produced by Mick Jagger and co-written by the British playwright Jez Butterworth, and the civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall in
Da 5 Bloods (2020), Spike Lee’s film about four Vietnam veterans in their 60s who return to that country decades after the end of the war to collect the remains of their fallen captain. The older cast members, including
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