‘Black Panther’ Was Inspired by Espionage Thrillers and James Bond
Black Panther has been one of our most anticipated of 2018 for quite a while, and every new trailer and set of promo images only has us more hyped. It looks exciting, stylish, and imaginative, and definitely has a different vibe that sets it apart from other Marvel movies. Many have been drawing comparisons between Black Panther and James Bond, and director Ryan Coogler says we’re right on the money.
“I think it’s a bit of an espionage thriller. I think it’s a little bit of a family drama,” Coogler told Fandango while he spoke about his influences. “He’s dealing with the loss of his father, so similar to any film that deals with royalty, you have a family element and you have a political side, too. It works as a political drama as well.” He said the look and tone of the movie is “definitely” inspired by 007.
I think similar to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we’re definitely influenced by the films of the ’70s and influenced by crime fiction. For me, I try to pull from a wide variety of films. I love watching movies, man. I’ve been a fan of watching movies way before I even knew I would ever make them. I’m definitely from the school of studying films. My favorite film is a film called A Prophet, a French film that was released almost a decade ago now... A Prophet deals with secret societies and cultural ties, so that was a big influence [on Black Panther]. I also watched a lot of Coppola’s work from the ’70s. We were looking at all of that stuff and also watched a lot of the James Bond films, but not the new ones. I wanted to watch the ones that were made in the ’60s and ’70s. I watched Goldfinger for the first time, and I just thought it was really interesting in terms of how James Bond was handy.
Now the only thing that could make it more like a Bond film is adding a hot title track to the opening credits. Think Kendrick Lamar has Shirley Bassey’s number?
Black Panther opens February 16.