After months of speculation and hope, the inevitable has happened: Marvel has officially announced Ryan Coogler as the director of 2018’s Black Panther movie starring Chadwick Boseman as the titular superhero.
Let’s get this out of the way now: Coogler is a young, black filmmaker. In a perfect world this would be irrelevant but we all know that’s not the case. Marvel has consistently, regardless of whether intentionally or not, chosen white directors for films within the MCU. So for their first black superhero movie, Coogler was a no-brainer. In fact, Marvel had been looking at black directors from the get-go (Ava DuVernay and F. Gary Gray).
Sure, it’s obvious what Marvel was doing in their hunt for candidates—some may argue too obvious—but they would’ve faced backlash for going a different route than a black director for a black superhero movie. DuVernay and Gray didn’t work out, Coogler’s Creed was released Thanksgiving Day, and all eyes turned to him as Marvel’s new candidate. They eschew that backlash, keep the diversity train chugging, and snag one helluva young director for their talent pool, even if their path to him was a little deliberate.
Coogler has been chosen hot on the heels of his wild and well-earned success with Creed, which is still throwing punches as hard as it did on its release Thanksgiving Day. Critics and audiences love it and it’s done over $100 million at the box office. Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan are in fine form but it’s Coogler’s confidence and skill as a filmmaker and storyteller that make Creed as good as it is. Coogler, at just 29 and with only one other feature under his belt, made a great “legacyquel” and gave a comeback to a franchise nobody really thought could make a comeback. Let that sink in for a moment. And yes, only one other movie under his belt. Creed is the follow-up to his debut feature, 2013’s widely acclaimed Fruitvale Station that went on to nab over a dozen awards and make a ton of critic’s top ten lists of that year.
While Creed showcases how adept Coogler is at directing powerful action (which is great for Black Panther), both films showcase something just as difficult for filmmakers to accomplish: the ability to bring the world characters inhabit to life, something Coogler achieved in both Fruitvale Station and Creed. The nuances and atmosphere of Oakland, California and Philadelphia are seen, heard, and felt throughout both film and his ability to pull that off means great things for Black Panther’s world of Wakanda, the fictional African nation our superhero is from.
Marvel’s choice to diversify also means we (hopefully) get Coogler’s diverse crew choices, particularly his use of female cinematographers. Fruitvale Station was shot by Rachel Morrison while Creed was shot by Maryse Alberti. Coogler said in a recent interview with Variety that “women are better filmmakers than men” and that “in film school, life, whatever, they’re equipped to do this job, in many ways, better than us. They’re infinitely more complex than we are. Stronger and sharper. So, you know, we’re going to get better movies [if we have more female filmmakers]. The industry would improve. That’s the best thing I could say about that. They’ve got to be given the opportunity.”
Coogler can now advocate this while standing on the shoulders of Marvel, the biggest platform he could ask for. A talented and able filmmaker is getting a huge opportunity and will deliver a likely hugely successful entry into the MCU, Marvel is diversifying, and an effort to change the status-quo is taking shape. There’s a big untapped and under-exposed talent pool out there and kudos to Marvel and Coogler both for doing their part in dipping beneath that surface.
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