Equality, and culture in a polarized nation. To have a movie that is about morality at a time when morality is under attack all over our country, the audience said thank you. As far as stakes for a movie that youre making, its pretty much as high as it can go. What makes black panther resonate . Its beautiful. It was something deeper than a movie for i think just about every single one of us. Inclusion is happening. These were all issues that we saw in the world around us. Able to address all those questions in a way that was both thought provoking and entertaining at the same time. A power struggle that feels universal. When we start to show perspectives that are forgotten, invisible, ignored, people respond. A fantastic kingdom that speaks to the real world. Its broken so many walls thats been up for years that people may have thought could never be taken down. The black panther. When black panther arrived in theaters last february, its impact was immediate and revolutionary. And today, the films influence continues to grow. I dont know everything thats been sparked because it has a life of its own. Black panther is a Long Time Coming and people were hungry for it and they created a phenomenon out of it. Now ranked in the exclusive club of billiondollar blockbusters, the success of black panther sparks a larger question. How did a superhero movie help to shatter longheld myths about race and culture in america . It didnt feel revolutionary when we were making it and its only the audience that is telling us its revolutionary. People all around the world are responding to it. The fact that you can have black people at the center of a narrative, people of color, and that they can be relatable to everybody, thats a shift. Nobody could guess that it would do exactly what its been doing. Ive never seen hype for a movie to that level before. When you overhype things, it almost never lives up to the hype, but this time it did. The phenomenon that becomes black panther gets under way in january 2016. When Marvel Studios announces ryan Kugler Wilhelm their latest superhero ethic. At the time hes just 29 years old with 2 feature films under his belt but nothing on the scale of a 200 million movie. Mote va motivating, terrifyie same time. You dont want to mess that up. When i first got the call from nate moore, i was excited but complicated. I knew it was a title that would come with a lot of pressure. From the start, he tells the studio he has a specific vision for black panther. He wants it to reflect realworld experiences of what it means to be african in america. His own journey of selfawareness began as a child in oakland, california. I walked into my local comic book shop when i was in middle school. I asked them if they had any comic books about black people. They pointed me to black panth panther. Raised with Strong Family roots, he was young when his parents first told him about the treatment he might face based on the color of his skin. That conversation is a tough one. My parents told me, youre black, youre africanamerican. For a kid, you kind of like, say, what does that mean . Why are we here . Conversation about slavery. Its a concept once you had that conversation, its not really going back from that. Balance a subject matter thats as heavy as human bondage, transport, you kind of have to answer the question of what was life like before that happened . As i got older, conversation kind of geared me toward this film. I didnt know it at the time. I definitely know now. This film offers an opportunity for us to look at the wealth of our heritage without the assault that colonialism was. Queen mother, princess. The very idea of this film came from ryan wanting to face his relationship with the word, african, in his identity. While growing up in kenya, actor Lupita Nyongo said she never saw anyone who looked like her an the screen. I was starved of my own stoir story, my own image. When you are met with images that do not reflect your very self, you undervalue yourself, albeit subconsciously. So i recognized then that there was an insecurity that was growing inside me because i was not actually reflecting on my own experience or the experience of my people. Actor Chadwick Boseman grow up in anderson, south carolina, with the same sense of feeling unrepresented. I remember those moments as a child when it was like, oh, that athlete is black. You definitely have this thing when you see someone that looks like you doing amazing things, where you gravitate toward that. Thats a feeling that i wish i had when i was a kid. The filmmakers take their Life Experiences and translate them into an authentic and relatable story of a black superhero. Greetings. The balack panther. There is this ambivalent and complicated relationship between black identity and american citizenship. One thats mediated by, you know, two centuries of slavery, a century of jim crow. All the various life, health, political, monetary, economic, disparities that we see between black and white in this country to this day. Hollywood has never made an authentically african movie with a majority black cast on this scale, leaving some to wonder is it too risky . You know, theres so many ways to fail. Theres so many pitfalls that you can fall into in making this movie. I think there are a lot of suppositions when you have a film thats precome feidominant cast. Those suppositions were proven wrong quickly. To fulfill his passion of black Panther Coogler has a request for Marvel Studios. Ryan said constantly, i want to make films about things im curious about and i as an africanamerican man have never been to africa, im really curious about the continent. Can i go . Of course, you can go. I think that the biggest question i wanted to solve was what does it mean to be african . Coming up, a directors revolutionary vision starts to take shape. It was literally like, am i dreaming . I dont believe this is happening. And it could save you up to fifteen percent on your auto insurance. Simply sign up, drive and save. We are farmers. Bumpadum, bumbumbumbum wow. Jim could you ipop the hood for us . . There she is. Turbocharged, right . Yes it is. Jim, could you uh kick the tires . Oh yes. Can you change the color inside the car . Oh sure. How about blue . Thats more cyan but. Jump in the back seat, jim. Act like my kids. How much longer . Exactly how they sound. Its got massaging seats too, right . Oh yeahhhhh. Oh yeahhhhh. Visit the mercedesbenz summer event or shop online at participating dealers. Get 0 apr financing up to 36 months on select new and certified preowned models. Gillette proglide and proglide gel. Five blades and a pivoting flexball designed to get virtually every hair on the first stroke, while washing away dirt and oil. So youre ready for the day with a clean shave and a clean face. And still going for my best. Even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib. Not caused by a heart valve problem. So if theres a better treatment than warfarin, i want that too. Eliquis. Eliquis is proven to reduce stroke risk better than warfarin. Plus has significantly less major bleeding than warfarin. Eliquis is fdaapproved and has both. Whats next . Reeling in a nice one. Dont stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke. Eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. Dont take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. While taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily and it may take longer than usual for any bleeding to stop. Seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. Eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. Tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. Ask your doctor about eliquis. And if your ability to afford. Your medication has changed, we want to help. In march 2016 driven by the question of what it means to be african, black panther director ryan coogler embarks on a solo journey to the continent of africa. I felt the instant camarader camaraderie. Like my friends. Kind of moved the same. Talked the same. It was like i was a bit home for a split second though i was from thousands of miles away. Landing in capetown, south africa, coogler falls in love with the language of. The language used when they first meet him in captain america civil war. It sounded so amazing to me. I almost wondered if they made the language up for the movie. I talked to them after, oh, no, thats a real language. Coogler forges on to a remote mountainous nation where hes struck by an idea that will live at the heart of the film. Its a nation that you never hear about. What if aconda was like that, a place people dont hair abouear have interesting mountain ridges and help keep it closed off. On the final stop of his journey thanks to Lupita Nyongos loved ones coogler gets an intimate look at life in kenya. He called me up and said, hey, i want to go to kenya, so i hooked him up with my family and friends. Her family was amazing. Very connected politically there. We spent some time together and talked political structure. What it would be like if it was a real deal. Definitely for ryan, being there and doing that, like, source of work came into our world. He was able to choose from a variety of different cultures all around africa. Waconda is this amalgamation of little specific things from these cultures that signified the beauty. Even this came from, i believe, ancient egyptian. Waconda forever. Waco in,nda forever. Helped guide him to the central conflict of the film, an african character being facetoface with an africanamerican character and tex tension of those two people and pain of being so distanced from where you were from. After three weeks coogler returns home inspired and transformed. It was a trip that truly changed me i think for the better but also awakened passions in me. Cooglers experience helps bring waconda to life as a magnificent kingdom untouched by colonialism and slavery. There was a time where africa was more advanced than the rest of the world. What if that never got lost . Reginald hudland was a black panther comic book writer and creator of the animated television show. What if we didnt have colonial people who came in and put people in changes and destroyed their language, destroyed their culture. What if you just kept going with that cultural head start . The rep den statirepresentat africa we see are from somebody elses perspective. We get someone elses version. Ryan coogler created a version of africa, it was technologically advanced and so on. Black panthers cinematic moment is more than 50 years in the making. Created by Marvel Comics visionary stan lee and his partner, jack kirby. Amid the civil rights unrest of the 1960s. Before coogler, boseman, and others involved with the movie are even born. There were black characters in comics before that, really embarrassing stereotypical things. They did the first black character who wasnt stereotypical. He was noble. He was cool. He was smart. And that attitude that the black panther is the best really resonated with readers and, you know, of all races. In an unusual coincidence, both the black panther comic and the black Panther Party came into being in 1966. The black Panther Party has evolved itself from all the previous puzzles of black people. Its clear that nobody was copying each other. They were each doing their own thing. The comic book, black panther, reflected shifting attitudes toward race in a society grappling with painful truths about the africanamerican experience. Intend to march to montgomery the comic embraced bold and controversial story lines including one in which black panther battled the kkk. The regalia, the beauty, the pomp and circumstance, intrigued me. In the early 1990s actor Wesley Snipes tried bringing black panther to the big screen. The climate, man, that was so tension in the era of that time period. Around the time snipes hoped to make the movie, that tension exploded into riots. After four lapd officers were acquitted in the beateri erinin africanamerican motorist rodney king. So i thought it would be a good thing to take a project like black panther which would be an antithesis of how africa was depicted, how the black community was depicted and how africanamericans in this country were perceived. After some initial interest, the studios passed on the project. When it didnt happen, i was kind of like, okay, you know, i kind of accepted it. Its the name of the game. Instead, snipes moved on, playing a half immortaled Vampire Slayer in blade. Said if i cant be a king of waco in, waconda, ill be a black vampire. Seems like it makes a lot of sense to me. Perfect parallel. In the meantime, 12yearold ryan coogler was in oakland where he dreamed about playing in the nfl. You know, playing football from the time i was 8 to the time i was 21, to my freshman year of college, i met a creditwriting teacher in class i was taking, she kind of recommended i could get into writing movies instead. You know, kind of her advice stuck with me. Guided by his teachers words, coogler set his sights on the prestigious graduate program at uscs film school. By the time he finished in 2011, he had made several awardwinning shorts determined to create movies that dealt honestly with the black experience. His feature directorial debut in 2013 was fruitvale station. Story of a 26yearold man shot and killed by a white transit cop in the directors native oakland. Stay still. Be cool. Coogler recruited michael b. Jordan to star in the film. I read the script twice. You know, cried each time. I was like, man, this is the character that i want to play. Especially because it was kind of the beginning of a string of incidents around police brutality, police shootings, that, you know, unfortunately, escalated over the years. The film was a breakout hit at sundance where the 26yearold director netted both grand jury and audience awards. A bit of a whirlwind, but, i mean, i got into telling this project because i wanted the