Story highlights Screenings started Thursday night
Fans sported their African looks
(CNN) Welcome to Wakanda.
"Black Panther" screenings were held across the country Thursday night and fans showed up dressed in their finest African attire or their interpretation of such in tribute to the film.
The Black Panther Screening is finally here - What an exciting afternoon ahead #Blackexellence #blackpanther pic.twitter.com/1n707H7pdX — Gino Silver (@DasilvaReign) February 16, 2018
#WakandaForever #BlackPanther A post shared by Kevin Ntoi (@kevinntoibeauty) on Feb 15, 2018 at 7:26pm PST
The eagerly awaited Marvel film stars Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, a.k.a. The Black Panther, who returns to the fictitious African nation of Wakanda to take reign as king after his father was killed in "Captain America: Civil War."
The lead up has been tremendous, with fans buying out tickets across the country and buzzing on social media abut everything from what to wear to what the film means to them as a person of color.
A secretive East African nation that was never colonized, it is the fictional homeland of T'Challa, or Black Panther, the superhero of the titular Marvel movie that has fans buzzing with excitement.
The nation has supreme wealth and medicine. Citizens travel by super-speed magnetic monorails and flying cars. Wakandans wear Afrofuturistic garments emblazoned with traditional patterns and jewels.
This is all made possible by their discovery of vibranium, an element with superpower qualities.
The Black Panther, played by Chadwick Boseman, is the King of the various tribes that constitute the kingdom. The thrust of the film follows Boseman as he tries to protect the nation from outside influences, not least a bootleg arms dealer who's after the coveted power source.
The force of Wakanda, though, is female. Wakanda's secret services -- known as the Dora Milaje -- royal advisors and the nation's number one technologist are all women.
While the world is warring, Wakanda hides in plain sight deep in the tropical forest.
Behind the scenes
Director Ryan Coogler.
The production of Marvel's "Black Panther" (US release February 16) is a remarkable feat. It's a thrilling and refreshing spectacle on the big screen, capturing traditional African influences in a hypermodern context.
It is a huge technical and creative undertaking for those working behind the scenes. The production, costume, jewelry and other designers and stylists are creating a whole new world -- one where nature and technology are intertwined.
The Black Panther in comic book-form, first featured in 1961 and later rehashed in books by Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates, was the movie's template.
The film also bears with it an important responsibility on the designers and director that the images and representations of an African nation -- in a continent often lazily portrayed in the West -- are inspired by African groups.
It's been a long time coming for Marvel's first black superhero film, but the world of Wakanda awaits.
A whole new world
Wakanda is a futuristic world of flying cars.
Hannah Beachler, the production designer of Oscar winning film "Moonlight," is the dreamweaver of Wakanda.
The challenge for Beachler was the lack of historical precedent for such a place.
"It was such a challenge because knowing that this is a nation that had never been colonized and never experienced slavery. There's not a lot of representation for that anywhere in the world," Beachler said.
"There were many nights and days where I kept myself awake for work. It was a large responsibility to be the one defining the narrative," She admits.
Dreaming of Wakanda
The Golden City is the center of Wakanda.
Under the guidance of director Ryan Coogler (previous works Fruitvale Station and Creed), Beachler created the roadmap for this secret society.
"Ryan and I started talking and he was walking me through the different tribes that lived in Wakanda and that was one of the first places we started," Beachler told CNN.
"And then we started with the population, how big is the country, the square miles, how big might the powers be, what's the topography, and how did they get there, and how did it affect the topography, and what do the mountains look like?"
A large part of the research process was traveling to Africa.
The team traveled up the coast of South Africa in KwaZulu-Natal, into the countryside and via urban districts.
Production designer Hannah Beachler.
"When I came back we reworked everything. There was a lot achieved because of my experience of being able to able to touch and feel and be there and see. I had a better perspective," Beachler says.
"It's a lot about taking the ideas that people have about what it is to live in Africa and what it is to be African and retelling that story, reclaiming it I guess, and having this clarification," Beachler said.
That being said, the movie has particular saliency in the current political climate.
Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has previously warned about "The danger of a single story." When Africa, an unimaginably complex continent, is reduced to an image of poor people.
A movie can never paint a perfect picture. And while much of the movie was shot in Atlanta , not Africa, Wakanda, at the very least -- and from the reactions on the continent, offers something different, a powerful place and story.
What Wakandans wear
The Wakandan people.
This story is also seen in what Wakandans wear, a mesh of traditional and hi-tech Afropunk influences.
Ruth E. Carter is exactly the sort of costume designer you'd want to dress Marvel's first black superhero.
Carter has designed costumes for history's most famous and influential African American figures like Malcolm X (1992) and Martin Luther King. Jr in Selma (2014).
Chadwick Boseman (left) and Michael B. Jordan in 'Black Panther.'
"They were speaking to the political climate of the time. I think that the Black Panther speaks to this political climate," Carter said.
But this was an entirely new challenge. Not least because Carter was producing an entirely original fictional African attire.
Roadmapping African influences
Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong'o star in 'Black Panther.'
"There were at least 10 different tribes that we gathered costume inspiration from, because Wakanda is a fictitious land in the Northern Central part of Africa, and it's imagined as a place that was never colonized.
"We could create something that honored African history, African-American history and also would be a new-found culture that would be unique to Wakanda," Carter said.
Carter instructed a team of over 100 buyers . This was no small undertaking, especially for Carter's first shot at a Marvel movie.
She visited Africa and drew influence from ancient tribes to establish the Wakandan people's unique characteristics.
"They wear things more avant-garde. Their hair is natural. They're sometimes barefoot. I would say the Afrofuturistic model is the one characteristic that goes throughout the Wakandan community," Carter says.
The Dogon dancers wearing Kananga masks in Mali, one of the inspirations for the film.
Carter was particularly inspired by the Dogon people of West Africa.
"They were a big inspiration for me because they were like astronomers and they lived in this mountainous area of Africa," Carter said.
Other tribes of sartorial inspiration were the Turkana people in East Africa, Hemba people in Congo, Suri tribe in Ethiopia and Tuareg people in western and northern Africa, among others.
However, Carter emboldened these costume designers with edgy, high-tech touches.
Carter said it was important to show this royal African family in a futuristic model.
New narratives
Costume designer Ruth E. Carter.
While previous Hollywood attempts at telling African stories haven't always gone down well , the behind the scenes talent in "Black Panther" broke new ground.
As Carter told CNN: "It has bothered me and probably others that we could say that we are African-American and have no knowledge of the truth about Africa in the modern time and still we see poor images that are shown to us in the media."
Fikayo Adeola, founder of African comic book company Kugali, told CNN there's been a mixed reaction to "Black Panther" among African artists, but it importantly could open the door for future films.
And while "Black Panther" is part fantasy, is also feels part real.
"Black Panther gives us this reference to a culture that is more close to reality and a spin on the Afrofuturistic kind of fantasy," Carter said.
Marvel Studios
Black Panther barely feels like a Marvel film, or even a superhero film, at all. That’s very much meant as a compliment, as this film offers a bold, fresh take on the superhero origin story, a narrative that’s been growing stale for years.
Chadwick Boseman plays King T’Challa, of Wakanda, the fictional African nation housing secret sci-fi technology, who must step up and embrace the weighty responsibility of his birthright after the assassination of his father.
Rather than building a new, super-suited identity and experimenting with newfound powers, T’Challa’s task is to become a better ruler than his father and change the direction of Wakanda, a country that has chosen to hide from the world. Wakanda takes isolationism to a whole new level, keeping its magic tech and precious metal a closely guarded secret, its borders firmly closed to foreigners.
But T’Challa recognizes the awkwardly Trumpian attitude of Wakanda and muses over the morality of their ancient traditions. In facing his disruptive challenger to the throne, Killmonger, T’Challa comes to understand that the country's isolation, and rejection of outsiders, is both unsustainable and morally bankrupt.
Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) must be the greatest villain Marvel has ever conceived, by a wide margin, but is criminally underused. Jordan’s charisma shines the moment he appears on screen, and his character’s anger feels entirely justified, even if his plans for violent uprising are easy to condemn. He’s such a good villain, in fact, that he effortlessly steals every scene he appears in, and highlights how fundamentally boring T’Challa actually is.
For the Black Panther is kind of similar to Captain America - straight as an arrow, inhumanely righteous. But T’Challa is humanized by his relationship with little sister Shuri, played by the wonderful Letitia Wright; their familial squabbles are cute and relatable, which helps bring the King of Wakanda down to earth. And Shuri is a very strong and spirited character - she steals the show along with Killmonger.
Killmonger, as his name suggests, is really, really good at killing people, and unfortunately, Wakanda picks their leadership based on combative talent. Interestingly, this is what makes Killmonger such a fascinating villain - his challenge to T’Challa isn’t just physical, it’s philosophical.
Black Panther Black Panther film fuels calls for release of jailed political activists Film serves as ‘opportunity to remind people of the real heroes of the Black Panthers’, says former party leader Letitia Wright in a scene from Black Panther. The film is already breaking box office records. Photograph: AP
When he was released from prison in 2014, Sekou Odinga felt like he was falling from the sky into a foreign land. After 33 years behind bars, the former Black Panther party leader was released into a United States he didn’t recognize – with strange technology and grandchildren he had never hugged.
Though he celebrated with family and supporters, Odinga, 73, also remained mindful of the many other civil rights activists who weren’t so lucky: “You always feel like you don’t want to leave nobody behind.”
Black Panther's Chadwick Boseman: 'Everybody’s minds are opening up' Read more
This weekend, his advocacy group is gathering outside movie theaters across New York City to educate crowds at sold-out screenings of Black Panther about the real-life Black Panthers who fought for black liberation in the 1960s and 1970s – some of whom have also been fighting for their own freedom from incarceration for decades.
The Marvel superhero film, which is already breaking records at the box office, takes place in a fictional African country and has been widely praised as a well-timed political commentary.
For some activists, however, Ryan Coogler’s film and mostly black cast is much more than a refreshing comic book story that breaks down stereotypes in an industry dominated by white film-makers.
The Afrofuturist film has sparked renewed calls from attorneys, families and civil rights leaders for the release of more than a dozen incarcerated former members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), the radical group founded in 1966 in Oakland, California.
“Many are in the worst prisons and the worst conditions, and a lot of them are getting older and suffer from health problems,” said Odinga, who was convicted of attempted murder of police officers in the 1980s, a time when the US government was aggressively targeting black power movements with surveillance, violence, arrest and prosecution. “This is an opportunity to remind people of the real heroes of the Black Panthers and the conditions they live in today.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Malkia Cyril. Photograph: Center for Media Justice
The film, which begins in Oakland, was released months after it was revealed that the FBI’s terrorism unit had labeled some people “black identity extremists”, claiming that activists fighting police brutality posed a violent threat. The concept resembled the US government’s highly criticized domestic counterintelligence program known as Cointelpro, which was used to monitor and disrupt the Black Panthers and other leftist groups.
“We have to educate people that this has all happened before, and it will happen again if we’re not careful,” said Malkia Cyril, a California activist whose mother was a Black Panther. Kamau Sadiki, a former Black Panther whom Cyril considers an uncle, was convicted decades after the 1971 killing of an officer and is still in prison, where he has maintained his innocence.
“We need people to understand that these are not simply criminals who committed some heinous crime being punished,” said Cyril. “These are black activists who are largely being punished for their activism.”
Although the Black Panthers made news for criminal trials and clashes with police, the party’s foundational work centered on “survival programs” for black communities neglected by the government – including free breakfasts for children, health clinics and “liberation” schools.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mumia Abu-Jamal. Photograph: Lisa Terry/Getty Images
“They all uplifted people,” said Ericka Huggins, a former Black Panther leader from Oakland.
She said she hoped the film spread that message. She recounted when the former Black Panther Eddie Conway was released in 2014 after he challenged his conviction in the shooting death of an officer, for which he spent 44 years in prison: “He arrived on the outside of these walls with nothing but passion and love.”
Others deserve that opportunity, she said.
In the lead-up to the film, many have mentioned Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther who had his death sentence commuted to life in prison and continues to fight for his release in a controversial police killing case. His lawyers have long argued his innocence, claimed he was denied a fair trial and more recently fought for proper medical treatment behind bars.
“Mumia is always focused on working toward the liberation of black people and all oppressed people,” said his lawyer Bret Grote. “He is quite optimistic and brimming with energy and life, and they’ve never been able to diminish that for a moment despite what they’ve put him through.”
Kietryn Zychal, a Nebraska writer and activist, said she would watch the Black Panther film closely so that she could later try to recount as much of it as possible to Ed Poindexter, another incarcerated former BPP member. He was sentenced to life for a bombing that killed an officer, convicted based on the questionable testimony of a teenager.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ed Poindexter. Photograph: Courtesy of subject
“His case needs some attention from people outside of Nebraska,” said Zychal.
Monifa Akinwole-Bandele, an activist whose father was a Black Panther Party member, said incarcerated BPP members, like Herman Bell, are repeatedly denied parole in the face of pressure from police unions.
She said she hoped the presentation of powerful black characters in the film could inspire audiences in the same way that the BPP inspired her.
“Adults I looked up to had taken such a bold stance against racism in America,” she said. “It had a huge impact on me and what I thought was possible.”
