In 2013, Ryan Coogler made Fruitvale Station, a drama based on the shooting of a young black man in Oakland, California, where the first-time director grew up. In 2015, he brought Rocky Balboa out of retirement for Creed, his breakout film, which he made for his father, a life-long Rocky fan. But Coogler describes Black Panther, Marvel’s first superhero movie with a majority black cast, as his most personal film to date – a chance not only to do justice to one of his favourite superheroes, but to portray Wakanda, a fictional Afrofuturist nation isolated from the rest of the world.
“I wanted to explore what it means to be African,” he says. “What it means to be African-American and what that means in the larger context of colonisation. These are things I have been grappling with my whole life, and this was an opportunity to explore them through a film that could be different to anything else I’ve done.” Ahead of the film’s release, Coogler spoke to WIRED about its unique aesthetic, and the weight of expectations.
WIRED: As a relatively new director, how have you found your experience of working with Marvel in terms of creative freedom and compromise?
Ryan Coogler: It’s been interesting. Film-making is a collaborative medium but, in this case, I was excited to collaborate with the studio once I got to know them. What Marvel was interested in was me bringing my own personal tastes and perspectives to the story; they were very encouraging of me to make the film my own. With all collaborations come challenges from both sides, that’s how relationships work, but it’s been a very rewarding process for me so far.
Could you talk us through how you approached the portrayal of Wakanda, an isolationist, futurist African nation?
The idea of Wakanda is that it’s got two things going for it: it is incredibly technologically advanced, but at the same time its African culture has remained isolated and intact. So that was a constant battle we found ourselves facing. We wanted to feel contemporary but at the same time we wanted to feel ancient. The big question was, what does it mean to be African? Because through that, we thought the film would find its own unique aesthetic that sets it apart from all other films.
We looked at everything. Both myself and Hannah Beachler, our production designer, researched the continent, its history and Afro-futurist renderings and tried to extrapolate our ideas from that. And you’ve got a lot of cool stuff in the comic books themselves as well – the early Jack Kirby stuff up until Brian Stelfreeze and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ run now.
You once said that you see your film-making process as a kind of journalism.
Absolutely. When I first met the folks at Marvel, I had never been to the continent of Africa, even though it’s a place where I know I have heritage. I realised that my ideas about the place were formed by second- and third-hand experience [via] the media. And because I’d never been, I didn’t feel qualified to even start writing without having set foot there physically.
That was where the journalism aspect began – going out there and seeing how it made me feel, talking with folks and trying to find African nations that stood up to colonialism. Also, studying styles of rituals and rights of passages that remain intact for many years, and trying to find the consistent things no matter where you go on the continent. For example, there’s a reverence for your ancestors no matter where you go [in Africa]. Another is the idea of where someone is buried. The idea of home. Of your attachment, of your tribe’s attachment to a certain place.
How did you feel about the historic nature and cultural relevance of making a movie like this? Did you feel, “I have to get this right”?
Absolutely! That idea is there but at the same time I had to try to get it out of my head as much as I could so I could just do the work. Making a movie is hard, man. And with this, it was an incredibly complex thing we were trying to do, culture aside. We frankly couldn’t allow ourselves to think about the uniqueness of it, the historical context of the film. The pressure would be paralysing the more you think about it.
Now you’ve got some distance from the project, what are your feelings on its significance?
I think it’s exciting, man. I came up in the 90s, when we were consuming pop culture like crazy. We had Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and all of the comic books they’re making movies of now. It was the age where pop culture was everywhere and influenced everything. And for me as a kid, I found myself as a young black kid constantly looking for the black toy, or for the black character. You were lucky if, in a movie or a video game, there was one, you know what I’m saying? It’s incredibly exciting, the idea of adding something to pop culture that’s got characters that look like me and my friends and my family, you know?
That’s how you discovered Black Panther, right? When you were a kid trying to find a comic book character who looked like you?
That’s exactly how I found him. I went to Dr Comics & Mr Games, a comic-book store next to my elementary school and asked exactly that. They pointed me towards Black Panther.
Did you ever go back that store to thank them for what they did?
I went back there [the day I signed on for Black Panther]. My wife took me back there. It was all a little… overwhelming.
Black Panther is out on February 9.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
