While Marvel’s big summer blockbusters are all set up and ready for their debut, we are finally starting to see some of their fall and winter fair for next year. During the NBA Finals, we got the teaser for Black Panther, the Marvel film dealing with Wakanda’s king and protector.
T’Challa, played by Chadwick Boseman, is the leader of a fictional African nation with, it seems, a secret city of expansive technology, and of course, the strongest metal on Earth – vibranium. Directed by Ryan Cooler of Creed fame, Black Panther will be about T’Challa protecting his country and his people. Andy Serkis plays Ulysses Klaue, who made an appearance back in Avengers: Age of Ultron, as a black-market dealer who knows the truth about the seemingly impoverished nation of Wakanda. How he will come into play as a villain in the story is yet uncertain, but the teaser makes it clear that this is going to be as much about the action as all of T’Challa’s scene were in Captain America: Civil War.
The film has a mainly Black cast, something which has been yet to be done by the superhero film wave we’ve been having since the mid-2000s. Besides Boseman, there’s Michael B. Jordan as T’Challa nemesis Erik Killmonger, Lupita Nyong’o as his love interest and bodyguard Nakia, and Angela Bassett as Ramonda, T’Challa’s mother. As we see in the trailer, there is also Martin Freeman as CIA agent Everett K. Ross, who played a minor role in Civil War.
Perhaps what is most interesting about the trailer itself is the choice in music. Mid trailer, we get “Legend Has It” by Run The Jewels, which is very different from most other Marvel trailers that have the cinematically fitting but otherwise bland music that doesn’t make much of a statement. Could Marvel be hoping to cash in further on the success of using rap, R&B, and hip-hop that did so well for them in Luke Cage? One can only hope so.
Black Panther premieres in cinemas on February 16th, 2018.
