Tributes are still flooding in from around the world following the shocking and unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman, with many of the actor’s fans and previous collaborators struggling to process the news that he’d succumbed to a privately-fought four-year battle with colon cancer.
The movie industry has banded together to celebrate his life and career, with Marvel Studios leading the charge after he headlined one of their biggest box office hits, one with a cultural impact that goes far beyond the limitations of the superhero genre. Black Panther will endure as a monument to the leading man’s legacy, one that tore down many barriers in terms of representation in $200 million blockbusters and inspired a generation.
Not only is it the highest-grossing installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that isn’t an Avengers movie that went on to become the first superhero story to land a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards, but Boseman’s T’Challa was poised to become one of the figureheads of the entire franchise after throwing down the gauntlet and definitively proving that major event films from a primarily black cast and crew can yield massive critical and commercial success.
Interestingly, though, in a recent interview where he discussed Boseman’s passing, Black Panther co-star John Kani revealed that his onscreen son still harbored doubts about the movie’s chances of being a hit, and urged everyone to give it their all when the cameras were rolling.
“It was an incredible presence of a young man who is incredibly tense, urgent, and absolutely focused. He knew most, more than us, that this was a moment of time, and it was Africa’s time. He felt quite seriously with Ryan Coogler, ‘Guys, we’ve got one chance to do an all-black movie, in Hollywood, funded by Marvel, and to make it the biggest success we can. Because this opportunity might not come again’. He was that kind of actor.”
$1.3 billion dollars later and Boseman’s concerns seem trivial in hindsight, but when Black Panther was shooting, there were no guarantees that it would even come close to approaching those sort of numbers, and one of the biggest tragedies of the 43 year-old’s passing is that he won’t be there to take center stage as T’Challa to lead the franchise into the future.
