Long live the king.
Marvel Studios has officially lifted its review embargo for Black Panther, opening the floodgates to a sea of online positivity. Much like last week’s buzzworthy reactions on social media, critics are currently gushing over the Ryan Coogler-directed spinoff, as superlatives like “masterpiece,” “powerful,” and “exhilarating” ricochet off the walls of the Internet.
It’s not like we expected anything less, mind you, as the film has been surrounded by positive buzz for some time now and I think that everyone knew it was going to be another monster hit for Marvel. After all, the studio’s been on one heck of a hot streak lately, knocking it out of the park with all of their 2017 efforts, so it’s not too surprising that they look set to continue dominating cinemas as we head further into 2018.
But what comes next for the titular hero? We know that he’ll be in Avengers: Infinity War and its currently untitled sequel, but will Chadwick Boseman’s beloved character get another solo outing? That remains to be seen, but if Marvel gives the go ahead and Coogler gets the chance to return (which we imagine he will), the director’s already got some ideas for where it could go.
Speaking to Screen Rant ahead of Black Panther‘s release, the filmmaker revealed that with a sequel, he’d like to further explore the differences between the character in the comics and in the MCU.
“Without getting into specifics, what I’ll say is something that I kind of, you know, what I struggled with at first is the difference between T’Challa in the comic books versus T’Challa in the MCU. And I always think that the differences lie in how old he was when he lost his father.”
Explaining further, Coogler said:
“You know, in the comic books he’s very young when [his father] T’Chaka is killed. In the MCU, he’s a man, you know? And those are two different things. So, you know, in the [books] he was kind of a guy who was a child king, you know? He got his throne when he was very young.
So when you meet him you know you dealing with a guy who’s thirty-four years old who’s been king for a long time. So he has a different type of poise and confidence in his position, you know? Whereas, in our film that character is just settling in. So I’d be really interested to see, you know, what kind of king he is with experience and how that affects his performance in the stories.”
Sounds like an interesting angle to us, as seeing what kind of king T’Challa ends up being could make for a pretty compelling film. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. For now, we can all look forward to the character’s first standalone outing which, as mentioned above, is going to be one of the year’s biggest releases.
Said to be heading for a domestic total in the region of $400 million, Black Panther is all set to make its mark on the global box office. If it’s more coverage you’re after, we’ve already run the rule over Ryan Coogler’s African masterpiece to identify all of its many Marvel tropes – namely post-credits scenes and big-name cameos, Stan Lee and otherwise.