Thread by @BarryJenkins

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

A thread 👇🏿

I don’t know how Ryan did this. Given everything, I’m speechless at how he (and his collaborators) did this.

Thoughtful. Even more thoughtful than one would hope it would be given... EVERYTHING.

Impossible. An impossible task.

Whole.

The absence is acknowledged and the presence created in that acknowledgment is beyond moving.

Seeing this, there is no way that role being recast would have been more thoughtful or honorable than this.

Again, an impossible task.

Namor is a rewarding gambit. Prerelease @geniusbastard wrote here that there was no way Ryan (and JRC) would pit Black & Brown folks against one another without tact and acknowledging the history of said folks and using this MASSIVE ass platform to shed light.

He did indeed.

Working primarily through Tenoch Huerta and Letitia Wright, the film balances the grief of both community's aggrievements and sees neither courting pity& both battling a lust for (just) vengeance. Here the utility of a truce is obvious yet can only be found through violence.

To @Geniusbastard's prescient point, Ryan is carrying a LOT of weight in this film.

It’s there in plain sight.

In interviews I’ve spoken about the brief time I spent in the Yucatan and having the space to engage with the Maya and their legacy.

I never imagined a Marvel film would provide the space to see such engagement spread out before an audience of global MILLIONS; people communally hearing the Mayan language Diego de Landa sought to eradicate by torture and fire in settings he could NEVER imagine.

I’m nearly certain that in THIS film Ryan Coogler frames a Maya child standing over the prone body of Diego de Landa and, in a moment of pure feeling, allows that child the (just) vengeance of repaying de Landa’s scorching with a fire of the child’s own.

Could NEVER imagine.

For me the Mesoamerican film within the film runs hand in hand with the mourning of both man and character as the movie’s beating heart. That they both resonate alongside the requisite thrill-ride of super humans dodging lasers and spears is beyond impressive. I mean BEEEEYOND

MANY years ago I sat across from Ryan at Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe (Uptown). It was a few weeks before FRUITVALE would premiere at Sundance. I don’t think either of us anticipated the ten years that have followed, but… …the same cat I sat across from that night made this film.

...with the same energy, the same thoughtfulness.

His hands and heart are unmistakably ALL over it.

And my goodness it absolutely RIPS