Film Review: Black Panther

To say that the Black Panther was a success would be putting it lightly. Marvel’s first African superhero film, was categorized by many polls as the best film produced by Marvel Cinematic Universe, surpassing The Iron Man, Spider-Man and Captain America. The critic's consensus on Rotten Tomatoes Websites, a review aggregation website gave the film a score of 97%. In the year it was released, Black Panther was qualified as the highest-grossing film in the US and it also received numerous other accolades. Now the question which may easily be answered is, what made the film incredulously successful? The answer to this question is simple and straight forward, Black Panther is the first film with an African American cast, which celebrates indigenous African culture. Beyond this, it is evident that the producers and creators of the film did an excellent job of researching the indigenous African culture. The futuristic film predominantly relies on African history and culture for its content but imagines a future where Africa does not exist in dystopia. As a matter of fact, I argue in this review that about 60% percent (if not more) of the film’s content is rooted in Yoruba cosmology and history.

In recent times, numerous contemporary Nigerian fiction novels have increasingly employed a transnational outlook, consequently forgoing previous themes that bordered on national or societal issues. It reaffirms the simple fact that literature is indeed influenced by a reality that continually evolves. The apparent reason for the thematic shift in Nigerian Literature is simple. Globalization, a term closely related to transnationalism, has inadvertently resulted in a mobile world where there is not just a removal of barriers for closer interaction of national economies, but also a free flow of people across borders. In addition to this, both developing and third world countries, which are plagued with economic difficulties, have engendered a high rate of migrants seeking "greener pastures" in the west. As a result, contemporary Nigerian writers (also known as third Generation Nigerian writers) are the products of the current reality. Novelists such as Teju Cole, author of Open City, Chimamanda Adichie, Chris Abani, Helon Habila, and Adaobi Nwaubani, whose works are transnational pieces, were either born in the west or migrated to the west for educational/occupational purposes. Therefore, it is inevitable that the works of these authors highlight transnational issues.