After the royal premiere of Black Panther on Monday night, the cast came together once again for the global press conference on Tuesday in LA. Have you read any of the reactions from the screening? So far, according to early reaction, Black Panther has lived up to the hype. People are BIG on the movie. They want to see it over and over again. Kathleen is seeing it tomorrow. She’s seeing it again on opening night. And again 48 hours after that. That’s three scheduled viewings already. If there are more Kathleens out there, and there should be, this box office could be pretty special.
Black Panther, obviously, is about Black Panther and T’Challa and Chadwick Boseman. But in many of the reactions I’ve read, the entire cast is doing great work here, and several critics singled out Michael B Jordan. He’s the villain. As Sarah has written many times before, it’s hard to get the villain right in these films. It would seem then that Ryan Coogler has given us a Black Panther villain who is dimensional and complicated and perhaps even sympathetic. Which makes total sense, not only because we’ve seen how gifted Ryan is but also because MBJ is his muse. He’s not asking his muse to be in this movie to give him material that isn’t worthy of his talent. And also, that’s how you service a proper hero. What’s the point of Black Panther if his adversary isn’t someone who truly must be reckoned with? The best rivalries are as evenly matched as possible. When that happens, the story wins, we all win.
And we are definitely all winning right now seeing Chadwick and MBJ together, side by side. It’s almost too much. Like, are they matching on purpose?
How is this fair? How do you even answer the “him or him” question?
Right now, even though MBJ is FINE forever, I might have to give it to Chadwick, if only because I’m obsessed with this thing he does in the trailer. That move that T’Challa makes when he’s greeting someone, you know when he crosses his arms over his chest? He does this at the 45 second mark below. And, Jesus, every time I see it, it’s like the sexiest f-cking dance move. I need someone to make this a GIF for me. Go ahead. That 45 second mark – if he came at you doing that, how would you be able to stand upright?
