While Feige has been nothing short of brilliant so far, I can't say it will stay the same or that he can keep the same track record of success. He seems to be moving more in a 'woke' direction, and the success of Captain Marvel as well as Black Panther so far augur that his decision making is still on the money. Of the new projects there are more women and other actors from other diverse communities and if they are not heading these projects I can see them playing in larger roles than they have before in them.
That said, I think sometimes there are more important things than money per se, and the social engineering the MCU apparently will be going more deeply into in the next round of films and television series can withstand a disappointment or loss at the box office or with television ratings, one or two of them. We got Black Widow, Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel 2, She-Hulk, Ironheart, and Wandavision, with female leads or co-leads. We know Jane Foster will be Thor and Valkyrie was made King of Asgard (I guess 'queen' was too limiting a term), I also imagine that Kate Spencer will be the not so stealth star of the Hawkeye series, and that might be the case with America Chavez in Dr. Strange 2 as well. It does make sense to spend time to establish those new characters. Also, for the new movies, I see female characters being even more prominent than they've been in the past.
So, I see Feige putting Shuri, or a woman, in the BP suit for the sequel as part of this trend. Definitely recasting T'Challa would garner headlines, excitement, and speculation, but putting Shuri or a woman in the suit garners all those things plus will be celebrated by the media ad nausea for its 'representation' and 'BlackGirlMagic', etc.
Recasting T'Challa will bring out feminists to complain about why Shuri or another female wasn't chosen, and we'll get more 'thought pieces' about misogynoir and how black women are invisible and perhaps the new T'Challa or I could see Ryan Coogler getting blamed, and painted as another black man who hates black women. Though I don't think if that would happen it would sink the film but it would leave BP 2 without the massive goodwill the first film had before it debuted. I think part of the excitement about Black Panther as a pop cultural phenomenon was also driven by a reaction to Black Lives Matter and the Trump years. Without Trump in the White House, but Kamala Harris as VP, I can see the cultural conversation shifting more to focusing on black women and women of color, and Shuri as BP could become the preeminent woman of color hero for the Kamala Harris years.
Instead of spending the money and time to make a film franchise out of Monica Rambeau or Ironheart for example, so you can have that black female superhero franchise, or multiple female superhero franchises, and I could see them doing something with Rambeau, Ironheart, Storm, Mercedes Knight (more Daughters of the Dragon than her solo though) in movies or heading television series, they are going to cannibalize the one existing megasuccessful black film franchise they got. Because Disney IMO still is adhering to the old way of seeing the success of a black film as being an exception and not a new rule or the start of a new trend. It's doubtful too that they would care as much about getting rid of a black male superhero in favor of a black female because 'black women empowerment' is very much in vogue in the media and pop culture-I see it more lip service than reality-but still, black women are far more fake praised.
So I don't see the erasure of T'Challa from the BP movie franchise necessarily meaning we'll get another black male starring MCU superhero film. There is Falcon & Winter Soldier and a War Machine-led Plus series (it would be great if Terrence Howard played the villain for that), but let's be honest, neither Falcon or War Machine have been that great in the MCU, and both don't stand on their own-they are more like do boys for more powerful, cooler, and in Stark's case, richer white men. Who knows if Luke Cage will come back, but even there, Cage's world isn't as large as T'Challa's. I wouldn't mind seeing a Deathlok series, more like the Henry Hayes version than what we saw on Agents of Shield, but even Deathlok's world isn't as large.
I saw that Vita Ayala had been mentioned as a future writer for BP and I could definitely see Marvel doing that. She's the "It" woke black comic writer of the moment. I don't think Ayala would take BP comics on a black feminist slant because Coates, along with Roxanne Gay, have already done that. It's just that Ayala might complete the job, or eliminate T'Challa all together. If that happens, I don't think black feminists fans should rejoice (I wonder how many black feminists even read or buy comics) because I've read some of Ayala's Livewire, a book about another black female superhero, and she often wrote that character too weak. She was getting owned too much with the power she possesses. The same might happen with Shuri, or we could see a book with more talking and 'virtue signaling' than traditional (and would it now be considered 'toxic'?) comic book action.
I read the above twice. Every sentence hits home. It's well thought out, and I thank you, Brother Emperorjones, for droppin this on us.
Maybe it's me? But I don't see this toxic masculinity, Black Femininity thing as a major issue. Most of the examples of "toxic masculinity" [ if there really IS such a thing ] that I have seen thus far have been laughably stupid and untrue accusations. I haven't read any well thought out "thought pieces" on this matter. Would our HEFfa sistahs help a brutha out [ this is where Jenn should just jump out of the woodwork and be like: "Logical argument clarification plus clownification? That's my thing" ]?
Vita Ayala better not come near 616 BP. That? Better be given to Redjack. Or given to Priest again. Or...this makes too much sense to do, but I must throw it out there...our own R to the H. Who would utterly dog walk the competition with the new, better placed BP.
I vibe with your argument regarding the "social optics" that some of the more extreme members of Wokeness may have that propel Shuri over T'Challa, but...bottom line...these social optics won't result in a billion dollar movie. And Feige? Wants a billion plus dollar movie and a multibillion dollar NETTING franchise. Like I said before, am saying now, and will again: there's no reason to go either/or when you can have BOTH. Shuri rocks BP 2 [ which I don't prefer, but for the purposes of this argument let's go with that ] and at the end she finds the NEW T'Challa. Or. Lays the seends for bringing back the new recast T'Challa for BP 3.
Brethren. Family. Something very like the above will indeed happen in BP 2 or 3.
T'Challa will either be recast before BP 2 or before BP 3. But he's coming back.
For the record? I would hella support and watch multiple times any SPECTRUM, IRONHEART, STORM, DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON, etc movies. And? Idk about a War Machine Disney+ series until now. Thanks for that nugget of information.
Thanks Supreme,
Last week Disney had an investor day where Feige introduced a slate of upcoming MCU films and Disney Plus series including the War Machine one, also one for Ironheart, and the biggest news perhaps was they are doing a Fantastic Four movie.
As I was saying before, I don't think it's always about money. That said, Captain Marvel made a billion for them and Brie Larson was not a beloved person for some segments of the internet at the time, and with all the goodwill and positive media that the first Black Panther got, and the splash that Shuri made as one of the most appealing, stand out characters, it's not unconceivable to imagine that a sequel, with Shuri in the lead role, a character with a lot more personality than Captain Marvel, and as already part of a global pop culture phenomenon would not make another billion for them. Even if it fell short, the built-in excuses about soft support for a female-led film, a black female-led film (we've never had a billion dollar franchise led by a black female so this would be new), or a black-led film, could soften the blow. I do feel that even if it falls short of a billion or doesn't exceed the take of the first Black Panther, that doesn't mean it will be considered a flop, the Hollywood media is behind this franchise, and there would be a sequel, just like Ant-Man is getting a third film.
I think the social engineering aspect is there. And while it might not seem like a big deal, depending on how much social media you imbibe, it's all over social media, but it's been in academia and in pop culture for decades now. We just didn't have a name for it perhaps because it was a slow dripping poison. We got the black feminist professors and literature of the '70s which helped set up the black feminist novels, television series, and movies of the 1980s and 1990s like The Women of Brewster Place, Waiting to Exhale, and the grandmother of them all The Color Purple. And I would be remiss to leave out Oprah, the Granny Goodness of Black Feminism. Our community came to accept black feminist characterizations of black men pretty easily and without much debate. We have a particular lack of discernment when it's sold to us with black faces. And because this stuff has seeped into a lot of black pop culture, and so much of our entertainment is geared toward black women, and has been for years, if not decades now, we don't even think about it for the most part. The people who mention it have easily been labeled as trolls, sexists, etc. and dismissed as outliers because the black feminist definition of gender and gender relations has largely been accepted as the norm or default for our community.
This is why the gender 'conversation' in the mainstream media where blacks are concerned consist mostly of black women being given forums to talk about how deficient black men are, and the black men who participate in any of these panels generally agree with them. Social engineering is an important part of what the MCU is embarking upon, out of what they will claim, and some of them might believe, is encouraging inclusion, understanding, empathy, and equality between sexes and races, but the way it's done all too often where black people are concerned is a zero sum game where it becomes okay for black men to get less or nothing and we are all supposed to be happy with that.
While this might seem like much to do about nothing, black feminist thought is now rewriting black history. There's a book coming out in 2022 from a black woman claiming that it was black women who won the Civil War. We already, and rightly, tout the sacrifice and work Harriet Tubman put in to fight against slavery, but how many of us even know the name of one black soldier (of the close to 200,000) who fought for the Union? I don't want the special history that black women have to be ignored or marginalized, but I am not down for revisionism that erases black men in favor of black women. Because that's doing to us-one half of the black community-what some feminists claim is being done to them. It's more about vengefulness or hogging the spotlight than providing a balanced, useful history that can help our community as a whole. And it's not without notice that these black feminists don't have as much smoke for white men-the same racial gender group that is paying a lot of them-when it comes to getting at who wrote a lot of the history books or made the movies, or documentaries that the argue-and some with merit-has excluded black women.
You can look at how the 2020 election is being described as another example of how black men are ignored in 'favor' of black women. Almost everyone proclaims that black women won the election for Biden, and saved the day. Harris thanked black women only on social media for their support. Even in the leaked NAACP meeting, Biden credited black
and white women for his election, even though overall more white women voted for Trump. What's often ignored is that black men were the second highest voting group for Biden. A couple years back, when black men came in second in support to Doug Jones, in Alabama, that was also ignored. After the 2020 election, more focus still went to the supposed '18%' of black men who voted for Trump instead of the 80% that voted for Biden, whereas the supposed '8%' of black women who voted for Trump, double his numbers in 2016, was mostly ignored. Those actual numbers are debatable, based on the polling used, but still not a lot of soul searching, finger wagging, or browbeating black women for voting in higher numbers for Trump than they did before. Also, no mention at all when black women voted less for Obama (not by much though) but around 20% less (than black men) for Andrew Gillam. This voting behavior was never tied to gender or used as proof of disloyalty to black men or the black race.
