I was sitting in the movie theater with my dad, waiting for Jurassic Park III to start. On the screen a bank robbery scene played out; men in suits with their Nokias stuff money into bags and flee to the roof where a getaway helicopter awaits them. They seem to be in the clear, cackling merrily, when they suddenly get pulled backwards by some invisible force. The camera pulls back to reveal the helicopter trapped on a spiderweb spun between the Twin Towers, its rotor twitching like the wings of a stuck housefly.
Spider-Man.
My dad, almost forty-one, was visibly excited. Spider-Man was his favorite superhero, I remember him telling me. He loved the comics as a boy. The web-slinging hero, he told me, was just a kid. He didn't have the money that Bruce Wayne had; he made his own tech. He wasn't an adult with the confidence of Superman. Just a kind of nerdy kid from New York, an orphan, with a good brain, a good heart, & powers inherited from the bite of right-place-right-time radioactive arachnid.
Hollywood had already given us some silver screen adaptations of superheroes with mixed success. Christopher Reeve had brought awkward-cute Clark Kent to life. Tim Burton put his signature twist on Gotham and gave Michael Keaton his batwings. Less memorable (or memorable for the wrong reasons), there had also been Billy Zane's Phantom and two more actors had donned the Caped Crusader's immovable cowl. But this coming feature, Spider-Man, was part of a new era.
Only a couple months later that teaser would be pulled because of the 9/11 attacks. Several months after that Spider-Man finally hit the screen and became a massive hit. The Chad Kroeger/Josey Scott single "Hero" became an anthem for a changed America, one still reeling from the terrorist attacks that had brought down two of the tallest buildings in Peter Parker's hometown.
And, if you have had your finger pressed even the tiniest bit to the pulse of pop culture over the last twenty years, you know what happened next: superhero bonanza.
It's what we needed, to be sure. This wasn't WWII or even the Cold War; our enemies were not so easily caricatured. Our nation's ever-evolving feelings towards terrorism - at home and abroad - were reflected in the hit movies and their super protagonists and antagonists. Captain America fighting corruption from within government organizations, Iron Man struggling to keep the weapons he helped build out of the wrong hands, Batman battling the chaos-reigns Joker, whose motives are never clear. Each superhero had his own demons and his own causes to champion. That was nothing new. But what about the Peter Parkers of the world? The people who felt helpless in the face of unrest and uncertainty? Where was there place in all this?
I didn't know how badly I had been craving a female superhero until I saw Wonder Woman. I had grown up totally content watching Batman, my all-time favorite, go up against his nemeses, and I was fortunate to live in a time that had given us female heroes as varied as Hermione Granger and Katniss Everdeen. But when I left the theater after seeing Gal Gadot's depiction of Princess Diana I was energized in a way I hadn't been in a long time. I found myself wanting to don a pair of bullet-deflecting bracelets, to rock an evening gown with a sword hidden down my back. I still loved the male superheroes I had grown up with, but Wonder Woman awakened something in me that I hadn't even known was there.
I imagine that that's how it was for the Black community when Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther came on the scene. There had been Black characters in the MCU before that, but none that had taken center stage. When the movie opened I remember seeing pictures taken at movie theaters across the county - Black people dressed in traditional garb, their arms crossed in the now infamous Wakandan salute. And it wasn't just little boys and girls lining up to see the film - grown men and women too, just as enthusiastically, maybe even more so, packed into the theaters to see T'Challa on the big screen.
Here, finally, was a true Black superhero. Not a sidekick or a minor character, not someone there ready for a quick quip to add comic relief. A king, a son, a brother, a serious-minded individual with more responsibility on his shoulders than what usually comes with superhero strength. And not only that, T'Challa was surrounded by female (!) warriors, a genius little sister responsible for his state-of-the-art suit, a regal mother, and a so-called love interest that held her own. Again, that dormant something awakened in me to see Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong'o, and Letitia Wright kick ass on screen. I can only imagine what it must have felt like for little Black girls all over the world to see those same characters. Nothing short of amazing, I'd wager to guess.
When I saw the shocking news of Chadwick Boseman's passing my heart broke. I hadn't even realized how much his movies and his characters had meant to me, a white woman, until I started reading about how he had filmed all these movies, portrayed all these characters and historical giants, while battling cancer. I didn't realize until then how much we all need Black Panther right now. Spider-Man was there when our country was knocked to its proverbial knees. Iron Man appeared when we grappled with the question of war-profiteering, Captain America fought tyranny right when we began to question the motives of the people tasked with keeping us safe. And those two fought each other when we asked ourselves how much we're willing to sacrifice for safety and comfort.
And now here we are, a country fractured. By politics. By pandemic. By police brutality. We need a leader like Black Panther more than ever, or at least a superhero like him to look to when the real world is just too dark to bear. Critics often dismiss superhero movies as escapist fare, not real art. But if art's purpose is to elicit strong emotions, can't we argue Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and the others do just that? And now, how do we move forward? To replace Chadwick Boseman would not be the same as replacing Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield. It's not just a matter of casting an actor to take on a role; it's finding someone with the same gravitas to bring to life a character that means so much to so many - black or white, male or female, rich or poor, strong or weak.
Thank you, Chadwick, for your tirelessness in the face of serious illness. Thank you for embodying a character that my children can look up to, not just as a superhero but as a king. Thank you for bringing smiles to so many faces in the last four years. Thank you for inspiring all of us to rise up.
Footnote: Might I suggest one of the aforementioned Black Panther actresses to take on the mantel?
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