The new issue of Entertainment Weekly is being teased online, and the issue is dedicated to Captain America: Civil War. Cap, Iron Man, and Black Panther are on the cover—and WTF with putting “meow” next to Black Panther? He’s a f*cking KING, show some respect—and inside there is some officialized information about the movie, including details that back up what I said over the summer: Black Panther is a wildcard, not strictly adhering to one side or the other. “[H]is allegiance is in flux,” according to EW, “though he has serious issues with Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes.” That’s exactly what I said. Black Panther is in it for his own reasons and his primary interest is in the Winter Soldier.
Chadwick Boseman talks up the character, saying, “You never quite know where he stands. There’s always a bit of concealing and mystery.” The way Black Panther is being interpreted for the movies is GREAT—he’s very clever and while he has a great sense of responsibility, byproduct of being royalty, he’s also not above f*cking sh*t up. And given that he comes from the reigning royal family of a powerful sovereign nation—and already has his own supersuit and badass superpowers—there is nothing Iron Man or Captain America can give him he can’t get on his own. He doesn’t NEED the Avengers, except that they can shortcut him to his goal. Black Panther is probably the most powerful person in Civil War, from an agency standpoint.
But why is this cover issue coming out this week and not last week, to coincide with the first Civil War trailer? Well, it was supposed to. This was supposed to be Civil War Week. But there was some Cornflakes-pissing from Warner Brothers, who released a teaser for the next Superhero Face Punch trailer on Monday night, with the full trailer to follow tonight. That threw a wrench in Marvel’s plans, so they pushed their trailer release up (couldn’t do anything about this EW cover, though). It ends up working out for Marvel anyway, because they avoided the car crash of new trailers leading up to Star Wars, but it only shook out this way because of dumbass studio f*ckery.
Sometimes I think Warners thinks they can magically make Marvel stop producing movies, but they can’t—they’re going to have to learn, like Sony and Fox before them, to share the audience with them. This kind of thing only wears on the rank and file employees who have to constantly scramble to meet shifting deadlines, and in the long run, that only hurts the studio. Superhero Face Punch is a BEAST to put together—let’s not drive the people actually making the movie into the loony bin just to score points off Marvel.
