Black Panther, and the power of an actually great villain

Black Panther (2018) is the highest-grossing Marvel film that focuses on a single character. That is no accident. It did something truly revolutionary in a mainstream superhero film. I'll let Jamil Smith explain:

"In the midst of a regressive cultural and political moment fueled in part by the white-nativist movement, the very existence of Black Panther feels like resistance. Its themes challenge institutional bias, its characters take unsubtle digs at oppressors, and its narrative includes prismatic perspectives on black life and tradition. The fact that Black Panther is excellent only helps."

"Black Panther is emblematic of the most productive responses to bigotry: rather than going for hearts and minds of racists, it celebrates what those who choose to prohibit equal representation and rights are ignoring, willfully or not... When considering the folks who preemptively hate Black Panther and seek to stop it from influencing American culture, I echo the response that the movie’s hero T’Challa is known to give when warned of those who seek to invade his home country: Let them try." (1)

And besides being an important piece of media that showcases a proud, Black hero to audiences not only in America, but around the world, Black Panther is, well, good. It lifted me out of a period of extreme superhero film ennui and proved the genre has so much more to offer when it embraces diversity of people and story.

What makes Black Panther so interesting for the superhero genre is that the central struggle of the story is not as clear-cut as good vs evil. It's not some baddie of the week who's running around killing people for a fill-in-the-blank ambiguous desire for more power or revenge. It's a struggle of differing ideologies anchored in two bodies who have a lot more in common than you would initially expect. It's a struggle of identity and commitment to ideals that are a by-product of your experiences.

Which leads me to one of my favorite parts of the movie: Killmonger is the best-written villain of any superhero film I have ever seen.

Director Ryan Coogler managed to accomplish what no director before him has been able to do: He got us to empathize with so strongly with Black Panther's (played by the late Chadwick Boseman) foil that I even think the categorization of Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) as a villain is too reductive and doesn't capture the full arc of his character.

Killmonger is a tragic hero.

Aristotle defines a tragic hero as thus: "There remains, then, the character between these two extremes,—that of a man who is not eminently good and just,-yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty." (2)

Defining Killmonger, or Erik, as a hero might be problematic given the ruthlessness by which he pursues his ambitions. We see him poison a museum curator, shoot (and kill) his girlfriend when she is used as a hostage, and flagrantly fly in the face of Wakandan tradition by burning the flowers that crown the new kings. He is far from perfect in the methods he uses to achieve his goals, but we are made to understand the driving force behind his actions.

He sees a utopian African kingdom with the technology and firepower to take over the world sit on their haunches and watch their brothers and sisters in America struggle to live under their oppressors. He sees an opportunity to lift a community that has been marginalized, shut out of any chance to gain wealth and power, and persecuted simply for the color of their skin. He knows he is the only person who can make this happen. In his eyes, becoming king of Wakanda and using their resources to bring prosperity to Black America is his destiny. This is what he was born to do. It's the cause his father died for.

And truly, you can't help but feel for him.

When Erik drinks the nectar from the purple flower as part of the coronation ceremony, we see where he draws his strength and purpose. Everything rests on his unfulfilled relationship with his father. He may be an able-bodied, war-torn man, but at the end of the day, he's a lost boy trying to find his home—trying to understand where he belongs. He neither fully belongs to America nor does he fully belong to Wakanda. But he will go through hell and back to try and marry his two identities.

What's interesting each of the coronation scenes is how different they are. T'Challa speaks with his father about his anxiety over ruling Wakanda without his father. T'Chaka (John Kani) offers comforting words of advice: If he truly trusts in his father, T'Challa should trust that he has been preparing for this moment his whole life.

On the other side, Eric's reunion with his father is colored with much more pain. N'Jobu (Sterling K. Brown) wonders if he hasn't denied his son part of his birthright by bringing him home sooner. He knows that by pursuing his goal of using Wakandan resources to try to help his Black brothers and sisters in America, he has othered his son. Erik replies that the fault lies not with N'Jobu, but with Wakanda itself.

Erik is trying to right the world the only way he knows how—through violent insurrection. In a world filled with death and cruelty, he has pulled through in life by refusing to be victimized. In his world, the way you are heard and the way you accomplish action is not in diplomacy. It's by rooting your feet firmly in what little freedom you have and claiming the rest for yourself, because nobody gives you anything.

Hamartia is a character's tragic flaw that brings about the hero's demise. "[T]he cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part; the man himself being either such as we have described, or better, not worse, than that." (2) The tragic flaw can encompass any number of things, but for Erik it was the trauma that hardened his heart, and his unwillingness—or inability—to let it go to save his life.

I would argue, too, that his driving force is even more heroic than Black Panther's. Killmonger sought to liberate an entire people—his people—from systemic oppression. Black Panther sought only to protect his nation.

I'll say it again: Killmonger is a tragic hero.

He held on to the belief that he could successfully help his suffering brothers and sisters. When he failed, he acknowledged he had reached the end of his rope. His hardened heart—a product of a painful world that has done nothing but take from him—is a fault we cannot blame him for. It is a natural response for a young Black man living in America.

The framing of Killmonger's motivation makes the central conflict in Black Panther so much richer and more complex than any other Marvel film that has come before it. Again, it is not a battle of good vs evil. It is a battle of ideologies.

We, the audience, may not agree with his methods, but I had a hard time doing anything other than agreeing with Erik. Sure, T'Challa has a duty to his country, but what about those of his blood and bone, dying and enslaved on another shore? I couldn't help but feel that... well... Killmonger kind of had a point.

If Coogler had let the film marinate more in the clash of ideologies, I believe it would have made for an even stronger and more interesting film. But who am I to complain? Even the obligatory scenes where Killmonger and Black Panther are physically fighting one another feel raw and human, unlike the usual flashy CGI tornadoes that this genre of film so quickly devolves into. Coogler has dug his teeth into the meatiest conflict between villain and hero and given us a true gift in its wake: A villain that sticks with us long after the credits stop rolling.

He gave us a villain that is a whole person.

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1 “How Marvel's Black Panther Marks a Major Milestone.” Time, Time, time.com/black-panther/.

2 "Poetics." Aristotle.