Steve McQueen is a master of artful, searing dramas about fraught masculinity and suffering. Gillian Flynn is known for her twisty page-turners led by complex women carrying the burdens of trauma. Those two many not seem like the most likely of collaborators, but we get a beautiful marriage of their talents with Widows, a crowd-pleasing heist thriller with plenty on its mind.
Following yesterday’s reveal of new images from Black Panther, Marvel has unveiled a series of character portraits that offer a closer look at the main characters featured in T’Challa’s solo superhero film. The photos not only show off the heroes and villains of Wakanda, they also highlight the details of their gorgeous costumes, which reflect director Ryan Coogler’s vibrant and exciting new corner of the MCU.
The conversation started last week about roles for Black actors in Hollywood is still ongoing. It actually started way before last week, but seems to have hit a nerve with Samuel L. Jackson’s comments about how Black people from Britain taking on American roles in film and TV is wrong. Daniel Kaluuya, London-born star of Get Out, fired back against that opinion in a subsequent interview, saying that it’s hard enough getting roles in the U.K., what with all those Downton Abbey-style period dramas, and that he was sick of having to prove his Blackness to people. Westworld star Thandie Newton, another Londoner who now resides in Los Angeles, seems to agree.
Black Panther is one of Marvel’s most exciting upcoming projects — the first film in the MCU to have a majority Black cast, a Black protagonist, and a Black director at the helm, and set in an entirely new, mysterious location we’ve only gotten a 30-second look at in a post-credits stinger. And as if we didn’t have enough of a reason to be excited about Black Panther, here’s a little reminder that Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya is in it! He recently spoke about how excited he was for the movie, and compared its epic scope to that HBO show you might’ve heard of, Game of Thrones.
Samuel L. Jackson has never shied away from controversy. To quote Samuel L. Jackson (as the fitted-cap-sporting, status-obsessed supervillain from Kingsman): “Do I look like I give a f–k?” And in fact he did not, speaking candidly earlier this month about his disappointment in the preponderance of black British actors taking roles Jackson feels should have gone to African-Americans.