Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is destined to be remembered as the final screen appearance of the immensely talented, gone-way-too-soon Chadwick Boseman. The actor, who died in August of 2020 at the age of 43, from colon cancer, is absolutely electric in the roll of Levee Green, a trumpet player in the titular character’s band. Boseman’s performance is a testament to his formidable acting abilities and a stinging reminder of what we’ve all lost.
Aside from Boseman’s performance, there are numerous other pieces of the puzzle that make Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a superb, taut, devastating film. The formidable presence of Viola Davis, as Ma Rainey, is one. The assured direction of George C. Wolfe is another. The powerful words and ideas of playwright August Wilson is one more.
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“Green is more important than black.” So says one of the villains of Da 5 Bloods in an exchange that leads to the movie’s action-spectacle climax. The green that the character is referring to is money – in the form of hundreds of gold bars. Da 5 Bloods is a Spike Lee joint, so it’s easy to guess what the character means when he says black. Black skin, black pride, black power, black anger. Like almost all of his work, Lee’s film is brimming with unique observations and perspectives about the black experience. This time he’s focusing on the Vietnam War, the conflict in which a disproportionate number of black men were sent to fight and die even as the struggle for black civil rights was raging at home.
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Those of us who didn’t grow up reading the source material, who can’t recite chapter and verse the labyrinthine backstory for the dozens of characters integrated into the MCU, can sometimes feel like outsiders. As one of those outsiders, my first instinct is to focus on these films’ over-reliance on Earth-in-Peril (and more increasingly, Universe-in-peril) scenarios, the deadening effects of pixelpalooza CGI battles, and the constant hype machine always building towards the next movie.
While the criticisms are valid – especially in the weaker MCU entries like Avengers: Age of Ultron – they cause me too often to overlook the moments of emotional resonance that these movies contain, and the connection that their most loyal fans have to the characters. With Avengers: Endgame, the grand finale and culmination of over 20 Marvel movies spanning more than a decade, it’s impossible to overlook the emotional resonance. Screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely and sibling directing team Anthony & Joe Russo made a film rich with human drama.
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Ten years ago, Marvel Studios launched its “cinematic universe,” using crossovers and tie-ins to connect every property under its umbrella. The strategy has shaken the entire entertainment industry. Any extended universe of characters – from rival DC’s effort at playing catch-up, to Universal Studios’ so far disastrous “Dark Universe” – is a naked attempt at copying Marvel’s lucrative success. To celebrate their decade of dominance, Marvel changed the “i” and “o” in the word “studios” to the number 10 in the Marvel logo at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, the 19th feature film release in the MCU.
It’s become harder and harder to think about each of these movies on its own merits, because Marvel’s apparent plan is to work its audiences into a constant frenzy of anticipation for what’s coming next.
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If you suffer from the condition known as Superhero Fatigue Syndrome, as I often do, you might be hesitant to see the latest Marvel movie, Black Panther. There’s no reason to be hesitant. In fact, Black Panther works as an antidote to the feeling that you’ve grown tired of just about anything based on a comic book or that is incorporated into Marvel’s sprawling, at times unwieldy, Cinematic Universe. Black Panther might just be the best Marvel movie yet.
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