New Black Panther Trailer

Holy Mackerel, this movie looks super cool. I mean it looks so cool that I'm wondering why it took Marvel 3 Iron Man movies, 2 Avengers movies, 3 Captain America movies, 3 Thor movies, 2 freaking Guardians of the Galaxy movies to get here. This movie is going to be huge and Marvel and DC are going to look stupid for not pulling the trigger on a POC Superhero movie sooner.

And no as much as I love Blade it doesn't count, that movie came out well before the golden age of superhero movies we've been living in since 2006.

Neither does Catwoman or Hancock.

I'm a pretty big fan of the Black Panther (I have a pretty cool print of him by Larry Stroman on my wall at work), not so much the current run by Ta-Nehisi Coates, more the Christopher Priest run from the 2000s. Just based off the trailer its hard to say exactly where they're pulling the story from, looks like it might be sort of a Greatest Hits of BP stories, which I'm fine with. Marvel Studios has shown they're very good at distilling complex stories into 2 hour popcorn fare.

If if superhero movies aren't your thing, it'll be fun when Fox News tries to report on how well the movie does at the box office. 2 to 1 odds at least one of their anchors thinks this movie is about the political Black Panthers.

Black Panther Teaser Trailer

I guess there was a big basketball game the other day and during it Marvel premiered the first teaser for Black Panther. I say I guess because the NBA has been dead to me ever since they moved the Sonics to Tulsa or something.

The trailer is super dope, extra super dope. I'm not the biggest Black Panther fan in the world but I have a pretty big soft spot for Christopher Priest's 60 or so issue run on Black Panther from the early 2000s. I'm hoping this hits that same sweet spot for me. I just watched Ant Man again a couple weeks ago and man did it hold up well. Something really refreshing about a movie where the hero doesn't necessarily have to save the planet or plant the seeds for the next Avengers movie.

Now I fully expect the last infinity gem or stone or whatever it is they call it in the MCU to be in Wakanda but outside of that I'm hoping this gives us a sort of contained techno-jungle adventure. Black Panther has a lot going on in his own world. I'm cool if Thor and the gang stay home for this one.

Marvel Phase 3

Hey kids, you like movies? Cause Marvel is going to make some movies. A lot of them. Roughly a thousand.

Earlier today at a big press conference thingy Marvel Studios announced Phase 3 of their much vaunted shared movie universe. Here's the list of films along with their preliminary release dates:

May 6 2016: Captain America: Civil War
November 4 2016: Doctor Strange
May 5 2017: Guardians of the Galaxy 2
July 28 2017: Thor: Ragnarok
Nov 3 2017: Black Panther
May 4 2018: Avengers: Infinity War Part I
July 6 2018: Captain Marvel
Nov 2 2018: Inhumans
May 3 2019: Avengers: Infinity War Part II

Summer 2020: Reboot City

Ok, so that last one was made up.

There's a lot to be excited about here. First thing and probably the most important, would be the added diversity to the Marvel Movie Universe. Once Marvel proved that you can make a billion dollars with a movie staring a Tree and a Racoon it was pretty silly of them to hold off on a film led by a person of color or a woman. We're getting both. Sure there will be 8 movies staring blonde guys named Chris before one Black Panther movie but progress is progress.

The second biggest thing to get excited over is a little thing called the Infinity War. For those unfamiliar the Infinity War was a limited series that spun off from the Infinity Gauntlet, one of the all time classic Marvel stories. The basis behind it was the that mad Titan Thanos stole these gems, each with a tremendous amount of power, slapped them all on this cool looking glove and became god for a day. His first act was to kill half of all living things in the universe as a tribute to his on/off girlfriend Death. Eventually earth's greatest remaining heroes save the day. Like I said classic Marvel.

My guess here is that the powers that be at Marvel will be adapting the Infinity Gauntlet story line and not the Infinity War story line. The Infinity War story meanders a bit and doesn't have the classic confrontation of the original. I'll bet they just balked at the idea of naming their most ambitious film after a type of glove.