In a rather controversial decision by Marvel Studio head Kevin Feige T’Challa has died in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
T’Challa, the head of Wakanda and the titular Black Panther lost the actor who brought him to live-action for the first time with the passing of Chadwick Boseman. Boseman played the role in that one Captain America movie I won’t watch out of protest for anything related to Marvel’s “Civil War” nonsense, some of the Avengers movies, and finally in his own film, Black Panther. This of course isn’t the first appearance of the character ever as he was a Marvel superhero, appearing in comics and cartoons (including a rather terrible solo series loosely adapting a story from the comics in the 2000s–he totally deserves better than something only slightly more animated that The Marvel Super Heroes).
Not that this matters to Hollywood of course. I’ve been chronicling a lot lately how little Hollyweird cares about the “lesser media” of comics and cartoons along with video games. While Marvel Studios used to care about faithfully representing the comics this seemed to disappear when Disney bought Marvel Comics and Paramount stopped releasing the MCU movies in favor of the House Of Mouse who seems almost embarrassed by their animation roots outside of TV and Pixar. Feige has given his reason for not re-casting and frankly I think he’s full of it. No offense to Boseman, who I’m sure did a good job–I haven’t seen enough of him in the Avengers films and Black Panther is on the Finally Watched list…though now it’s rather tentative given how little interest they seem to have in the character–but that’s my point. Black Panther isn’t Chadwick Boseman, but that’s the current presentation, which is disrespectful to the character, and to the fans…and possibly Boseman’s own wishes.
