BLACK PANTHER (2018)

BLACK PANTHER. Ryan Coogler, dir., co-script with Joe Robert Cole (“based on the Marvel Comics by” Stan Lee and Jack Kirby). Hannah Beachler, production design. USA: Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures (production) / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (USA distribution and most of Earth), 2018.

Relevant here for images and premise element of high-technology/appropriate-technology near-mythical city-state and environs of Wakanda set amid a mostly gorgeous natural world of Northeastern Africa. Look for this Afrofuturism[1] variation on The Wonder City of the Future, plus some standard hexagons and pentagons, and the decorous rich suggestiveness of fighting monster rhinoceroses in bright, shiny armor. Note also high-tech upgrades to the Black Panther suit: a tight-fitting superimposition of the technological upon the human, with feline suggestions.

The film was widely and intelligently reviewed at and around its release; see, e.g., the reviews in The New Yorker[2] and Slate,[3] both summarized and linked on Metacritic.[4]

RDE, Initial Compiler, 16/17Feb18