Black Panther: All Hail the King

For many years, Marvel has been trying to shake things up and give us a movie that seems new, fresh, special. Black Panther, which was already following in the steps of Wonder Woman by creating a superhero for a very specific demographic – black viewers, who have yet to see a superhero who looks like them take the role of the main hero – has also become the shake-up that Marvel needed, a new type of superhero movie that we all needed. Instead of focusing on just the hero and his commitment to fighting his specific bad guy, Black Panther tells the story of a country, a history, a people who are vibrant and breathing and alive, bringing a new life to superhero films that does not just focus on one character or one team. Black Panther focuses on a whole new world, and its characters both inhabit it and bring it to life in a way that we haven’t seen from Marvel yet.

Mystical in Marvel: The Lord of the Rings Crossover

As the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and its spin-off television shows) grows, the number of actors being cast also increases exponentially. Not only do we start to see more cross-over between actors who’ve worked together before (Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, for example, have worked together almost a dozen times now), we’re starting to see a great deal of influence from other large bodies of work. Heading in Marvel Phase 4, we’re noticing a recurring trend – there are quite a few cast members from Peter Jackson’s imaginings of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies making an appearance in this world of superheroes! Some are fairly obvious, but digging through the two extended universes, it’s actually pretty interesting just how much crossover there is.