IGN was among the media outlets invited to an open house Monday night at Marvel Studios' office on the Disney lot in Burbank for a preview of what's in store in Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ... as well as to screen Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 in its entirety! (Our film review cannot be posted until the studio-mandated embargo lifts so that's all we can really say about that until then.)
Black Panther was one of the upcoming Phase 3 movies that Marvel was most excited to tout. At one point, we were invited to screen both a behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of the Ryan Coogler-directed film as well as some dailies of scenes featuring stars Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Florence Kasumba, and Andy Serkis.
We were also informed that the first Black Panther trailer will drop this summer and that Marvel Studios will be at both Disney's D23 Expo and San Diego Comic-Con.
Obviously, there are some minor SPOILERS ahead for what we were shown.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in the featurette we were shown that Black Panther is going to be “a big part” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward. He also praised the film's cast and crew, led by Coogler, as being “among the best we’ve ever assembled."
The story of Black Panther will chronicle T’Challa finding the balance between being a man and a monarch, a soldier and a politician, and the responsibility of becoming the king of Wakanda. The movie takes place pretty close to the events of the character's big screen debut in Captain America: Civil War.
The Walking Dead's Danai Gurira, who plays Okoye, a leading member of the Dora Milaje (the all-female royal guard), said she sees the film as "Wakanda’s origin story.” She also called the film a "powerful universal story that feels really on the pulse of where we are right now as a whole society."
In the featurette, the Black Panther film was described as "very honest" and "gritty," and that it will explore the idea of tradition versus progress and the issue of secrets as T'Challa is faced with how to step out of the secrecy of the world of Wakanda.
Bassett, who plays T'Challa's mother Ramonda, said the Black Panther movie pays respect to past traditions even as it offers viewers an advanced world they've never seen before onscreen. Wakanda, as the most technologically advanced country on Earth in the MCU, provides the Black Panther movie with plenty of sci-fi opportunities and that blending of the past and the future was evident in the footage we saw.
The first dailies we watched showed a hooded Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) using martial arts to sneak up on and take out some soldiers as another large group of troops are engaged in a firefight. We then saw the Dora Milaje sailing to Warriors Falls for the king’s coronation. There was drums, music, singing and dancing on the boat. There was the following playful exchange between Gurira's Okoye and Kasumba's Ayo: "You look good.” “You look better.” “I know.”
The next shot was of a dancing Nakia, who is part of a border tribe, and her party also on their way to the king's coronation. (It should be noted that both boat scenes were shot on a set in Atlanta against a green screen. The magic of cinema will make the viewer think they're sailing down a river in Africa!)
We then saw T’Challa (Boseman) making his entrance to the Warrior Falls, two different angles of the same sequence following T'Challa as he steps out from a ship and into the water. He's shirtless with his chest and shoulders painted, and he carries a ceremonial weapon. Traditionally garbed Wakandans cheer for their new leader in the stands above him. We then saw Forest Whitaker’s character Zuri approach T'Challa in the water and declare, “The prince will now have the power of the Black Panther!”
We also saw a shot of a SUV being flipped on a street at night during a chase scene, followed by a scene of T’Challa, flanked by the Dora Milaje, visiting his sister at the Wakandan Design Center.
The next dailies we were shown were from a sequence set in South Korea. The whole thing had a very James Bond vibe to it as we saw T'Challa at a casino shadowing arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, reprising his role from Avengers: Age of Ultron). Martin Freeman's Civil War character, government agent Everett K. Ross, is also there and has a scene with Klaue.
Ross teases Klaue for arriving with such a large group. “You’ve got quite the entourage. You got a mixed tape coming out?” Klaue doesn't seem to get the joke and appears to take it literally. We then saw a fight break out with T'Challa, not in his Panther suit, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with some goons as gunfire makes casino patrons flee.
It should be noted that Klaue lost his hand in Age of Ultron when the titular villain blasted it off. In the Black Panther footage we saw, though, Serkis' character appeared to have both hands. One hand, however, had a bracelet of some kind around the wrist so it's possible that it was supposed to be a prosthetic hand. In any case, said hand did not look like the weapon-hand "Klaw" sports in the comics or cartoons.
Overall, the Black Panther footage was very engrossing and offered a view into an exciting new area of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one where futurism and a distinct culture's rich past intersect to create a vibrant, exciting new world to explore onscreen.
Black Panther leaps into theaters February 2018.
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