Last month, in an announcement that shocked and stunned the world, Chadwick Boseman's family revealed that the beloved actor had been fighting advanced colon cancer for almost four years, and had now passed away as a result at the obscenely young age of 43. Saying goodbye to an icon is never easy, but it's especially bitter and painful when the icon in question is a young, fully-arrived superstar who should still have a whole life of achievements and accomplishments before them, capped by an extensive and hugely emotional tribute montage at an Oscars ceremony several decades from now. It feels particularly harsh right now, to lose such an incredible advocate for Black artists in the midst of **gestures at all the catastrophes currently being inflicted on minority communities by a Fascistic, racist Death Cult**.
Chadwick Boseman had a life and career that has been cut far, far too short, but that makes it all the more astounding to realize just how much he managed to pack into his short time with us. Though the number of roles to his name will now remain criminally truncated, he is already assured a deep and enduring legacy. It wasn't for nothing that The Ringer published an article not too long ago saying, only partially in jest, that Boseman had already played (almost) every Black superhero. Attentive moviegoers were introduced to him when he became the man to finally portray Jackie Robinson in 42 and James Brown on Get On Up, both major, well-received biopics, but the world at large learned his name when he first appeared as T'Challa, the Black Panther, the first major Black superhero to head a major studio franchise. As good as he was in Captain America: Civil War (and as good as that movie was in general), that ended up being just a small taste of what he and the world of Black creators he was part of were about to present to the world.
Black Panther, in the end, went far beyond being just another competently-produced, fun-to-watch comicbook movie. Between Marvel, DC, and their other competitors, the market is thoroughly saturated with those. No, it was something more; it was a genuine cultural moment, forcing everything and everyone else to respond to it going forward. At long last, Ryan Coogler, Chadwick Boseman, and the veritable army of Black artists around them had shown just how amazing and vibrant and beautiful a big-budget film made by Black filmmakers for (primarily) a Black audience could be. It also shattered box office records and remains one of the highest-grossing films of all time, an eternal rebuke to previous, often unspoken assumptions in the film business that "Black movies just don't make money." After Black Panther, there's no going back.
Again, there is plenty of credit to go around as to why the film turned out so good, not the least of which being Coogler's direction and the sheer power present throughout the entire cast list (All hail Angela Bassett), but I've only recently come to appreciate the importance of Boseman's steady presence in the lead role. It's not a flashy performance, nor even the most noticeable within its own film; Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger and Letitia Wright's Shuri remain my personal favorites, as they steal every moment they spend on camera. Boseman doesn't employ the same kind of more traditional leading-man charisma that Chris Evans or Robert Downey Jr. brought to their superhero films, and I think that many, myself included, tended to downplay his part somewhat at first as a result of this. Revisiting the film now, though (and yes, the fact of his death certainly influenced this) I realized just how carefully the narrative is crafted around very small, easily-missed moments that show T'Challa going through a genuine hero's evolution over the course of the film. He begins with a more simplistic view of his father, of Wakandan tradition, and of his role, and is challenged repeatedly through hard choices and revealed truths in ways that force him to develop a previously-unimaginable new path for himself and his people. To deny Boseman's skill in giving us such a finely-crafted performance is to seriously undercut the artistic power of the film in favor of superficial, "Hey, Killmonger was actually right" hot-takes.
I had also been unaware until now of how crucial he'd been behind the scenes in either making or advocating for some of the most important creative decisions behind the film's production, not the least of which was an insistance that none of the Wakandan characters would speak with Western accents. I can't even begin to imagine how that decision going the other way might have impacted the final product, but I am absolutely certain that it would have diminished it in a big way.
I haven't even mentioned the fact that, in the midst of cementing his place within the first generation of the MCU, he also found both the time and the strength to add to his hero-resume by playing Thurgood Marshall in 2017's Marshall, yet another solid biopic film where he finally brought to the big screen a historical Black figure that, all too often, mainstream culture tends to forget about or misremember. It seemed there was no end to his capacity and willingness to push the boundaries of films for and about Black characters and stories.
Sadly, his body and fate were not in agreement, and he has been taken from us in a cruel and arbitrary manner. I won't try to make a grand statement about what his life will mean going forward- as a White American, this is ultimately not my loss to mourn- but I do feel encouraged by remembering that the work he's done has already had a huge impact on American culture, and that isn't about to go anywhere. Plus, he wasn't the only one drawing a line in the sand and demanding that Black artists finally get their due; Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, Dee Rees, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Jordan Peele, and so, so, so many others are still here and still fighting the good fight. So while Boseman may be gone, and his absense does hurt, his flame will live on. Of this, I am sure.
Wakanda forever.
-Noah Franc
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