Black Panther: A deep look at the trailer

If you aren’t excited for Black Panther, you should be after the first trailer, but what sorts of themes can we pull from it?

Black Panther has one of the best casts in a Marvel movie outside of maybe Avengers: Infinity War. The rundown of names, led by Chadwick Boseman as the title hero, is long. Here are just some of those names: Danai Gurira, Forest Whitaker, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, and Angela Bassett.

By the way? Angela Bassett has the role of T’Challa’s mom. Fortunately, we already know that Boseman is worthy of playing her son after Captain America: Civil War.

In case you missed last night’s trailer, here’s the goods:

After Thor: Ragnarok‘s teaser and this one, it’s a good time to be a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan.

This trailer, especially in the voiceover, picks up a theme I saw in the analysis of the poster, and which you can see in the synopsis as well: the conflict between T’Challa, now king of Wakanda, and T’Challa the Black Panther. A “good man” also makes for a good hero, usually, but, as the voiceover indicates, it’s not great if you want to be a “good king.” Actually, it again puts him in a situation similar to Thor, prince of Asgard and also Avenger. (What a shame they haven’t shared the screen yet.)

But T’Challa’s situation is still unique. Asgard is not on Earth. Wakanda is, even though it has mostly remained hidden. However, “hidden” does not mean impenetrable, and that’s another source of trouble for T’Challa. That’s Andy Serkis playing Ulysses Klaue again.

As many Twitter fans have already noted, the women in this movie also stood out:

How exciting is that, right? (Seriously: I’m more excited to learn about them than anything else. Can the Dora Milaje get their own movie, please?)

What’s interesting is that we don’t hear T’Challa speak. There are indications that he’s about to say things — it looks like he’ll give a speech in his role as king. But for the most part, his actions and facial expressions do the talking for him here.

Next: 20 times Thor was the best

And, I mean, wrecking a car in slow-motion, then flipping over to dig claws into another car says a lot.

Black Panther leads off Marvel’s 2018 movie slate.