And because I’m a white guy, my opinion is largely irrelevant! Instead of spending a post offering my thoughts on the movie (they can all be summed up in “It’s really, really good.”), I figured I’d link to some articles by Black writers about the movie.
Promotional poster for Black Panther. (Image credit: Comic Vine)
Thinkpieces
- Can’t We All Just Get Along? Black Panther is Revisionist History
- Black Panther‘s Killmonger Is Everyone Who Loves Wakanda Even Though It Didn’t Love Us
- Killmonger Was Wrong, And Ya’ll Know It
- The Trouble With Hero Worship: Is #TeamKillmonger Also #TeamToxicMasculinity?
- The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger
- Everyone loves Shuri: The history and importance of Marvel’s teenage tech genius
Cultural Responses to the Movie
- You Have to See Black Panther in a Black Movie Theater to Really Understand It
- Yet Another Reason Why Shuri From Black Panther Is the Greatest Disney Princess Ever
- Audiences Across Africa Hail Black Panther for Humanizing Black Characters
- We Need to Start Barking at White People Who Speak Out of Turn
- What We Loved About Black Panther – A roundtable discussion from three writers at Kotaku
- Comic: Does Black Panther Pass the ‘Black Bechdel Test?’
- The Internet’s Favorite Black Panther Fans Talk About Finally Going to Wakanda
- Wanna Fly to Wakanda? The Atlanta Airport Is Offering Nonstop Flights – Good on you, Hartsfield-Jackson.
- Are White Film Critics Grading Black Panther on a Curve?
- The Wakanda Curriculum – A Black teacher put this curriculum together as a resource for teachers who want to use Black Panther as a focal point for studying African cultures and issues of colonialism with their students.
Folks Behind the Movie
- Why Fashion Is Key to Understanding the World of Black Panther
- Black Panther Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter on Three Decades of Dressing Superheroes
- The Mind Behind The Visuals in Lemonade & Moonlight Now Brings You Black Panther
- Whose World Is This? Black Panther Production Designer Hannah Beachler Walks Us Through Wakanda
- ‘Black Panther’ Has The Coolest Tech In The Marvel Universe – An interview with Brian Stelfreeze, the main artist on the 2016 Black Panther series written by Ta-Nehisi Coates that serves as a major inspiration for the technology seen in the movie.
- Black Panther‘s Dialect Coach on Wakanda’s Regional Accents and Prepping Actors – The dialect coach that worked on the movie, Beth McGuire, is a white woman, but I’m including this interview with her on this list because she discusses in it the fact that she wants to introduce more people of color to her line of work so that she doesn’t have to be the resident expert on how to respectfully imitate various African accents.
- Read Ryan Coogler’s Touching Thank You Letter to Black Panther Audiences
Further Reading
I hesitate to include this review by Film Crit Hulk, but it was the only review I read before I saw the movie, and it was enough to get me truly excited about what I was going to see. Hulk is a smart, empathetic writer on film, but he’s also white. This is worth your time, but leave it alone until you’ve exhausted everything above.
