'Black Panther': 5 lessons we learned from the Marvel phenom's amazing run

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption African influence in 'Black Panther' inspires teachers, students Marvel’s "Black Panther" is inspiring teachers and students at Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta. Teachers are creating lessons to show that African ancestry doesn't only reflect poverty and pain.

Vibranium. Killmonger. Wakanda forever. All words and phrases that, up until last month, would have confused most people. Now, with the success of the Marvel superhero phenomenon Black Panther, they’re part of pop culture.

Box-office records have been getting clawed to pieces by Chadwick Boseman’s African warrior. The film’s $202 million opening weekend was the fifth-highest of all time and best ever for a February release. Black Panther is the first movie since 2009’s Avatar to hold the top spot five weekends in a row, and with $631 million and counting, it surpassed 2012’s The Avengers ($623.4 million) as the highest-grossing superhero movie in history and now ranks No. 5 on the all-time box-office list. (Panther fell to second place following the opening of sci-fi sequel Pacific Rim Uprising according to studio estimates Sunday, but its run has been epic to say the least.)

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It's the second time in as many years that a superhero movie has taken pop culture by storm, following the success of Wonder Woman last summer. She taught Hollywood some important lessons, and class is in session again:

Representation matters more than ever.

The conversation started with Wonder Woman, but the fact that a high-profile superhero film with a black lead and a mostly black cast could make this much money eliminates all doubt. Audiences want to see not only multidimensional characters like Boseman’s T’Challa, Danai Gurira’s Okoye and Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia but also wondrous places like Wakanda that feel authentic in their African influence. Society is shifting with the Time’s Up and Me Too movements, as well as the increasing importance of inclusion, and Black Panther is at the forefront of that change.

Diversity is necessary behind the scenes, too.

At a time when the movie business is still struggling to provide opportunities to minority and women filmmakers, having director Ryan Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole deliver something critically and popularly embraced is huge. Would Wakanda’s Afrofuturistic vibe been the same had it not been done by production designer Hannah Beachler? Probably not. And Rachel Morrison was tapped long before she became the first woman to snag an Oscar nomination for cinematography. While we wait for Star Wars to get the hint, other studios are making moves (such as Warner Bros. signing Ava DuVernay to direct New Gods) that seem like a direct result of Black Panther’s cultural takeover.

More complicated human supervillains, please.

Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger, who planned to weaponize the oppressed all over the world, offered up a charismatic antagonist whose bad-guy raison d’être actually made sense (and spawned a #KillmongerWasRight hashtag). Having a world-class superhero is fine and all, but having a flesh-and-blood foe to resonant with movie lovers is just as key: Killmonger and Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight connect much more than computer-generated baddies like Steppenwolf from Justice League and Ares in Wonder Woman.

Teen heroes are just as important as grown-up ones.

Like the Amazons before them, Okoye, Nakia and Black Panther’s female fighting force Dora Milaje continue to do wonders for women on the big screen. T’Challa’s tech-whiz teenage sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) falls in that category, but is also an example of the next generation making an impact. The Parkland, Fla., students and their March for Our Lives rallies are indicative of a real-world youth revolt, and Shuri reflects that as a scene-stealing genius who leads the advancement of an entire nation. While Hollywood works on bringing more teen superheroes to the screen for underserved young-adult audiences, we can see Shuri trade wits with Iron Man and Captain America in Avengers: Infinity War (April 27).

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Blockbusters can happen anytime.

It’s been heading in this direction for a while as superhero movies started staking their claim in March and April, but it’s for sure now: The summer movie season is that in name only. Now that Black Panther passed Avengers and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, only one warm-weather release (Jurassic World) ranks among the five highest-grossing films ever. (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avatar and Titanic all arrived in December.) A good movie that resonates in a real way and offers a broad appeal will make a boatload of cash, no matter when it’s released.