I love films. Love hearing about them, love talking about them, love watching them. One aspect of film-making I couldn't care less about though is the money side. How much actors make, how much a film costs or how much a film earns at the box office. The last one especially you hear people shouting from the rooftops about how good a film is because it's making money hand over fist. They seem to equate the quality of a film with the money it earns. Utter tosh.
This week though I listened after seeing an article that mentioned Marvel's Black Panther had just broke through the $1 billion barrier at the box office. A billion seems to be the magic number that all blockbusters strive for and few rarely get there. In fact (without adjusting for inflation) only 33 films have ever made over 1 billion dollars. Black Panther is the latest with, at time of writing, $1.079 billion dollars.
Why does this matter? Who cares? Is this significant?
It's massively significant.
30 of the 33 films that have hit that magic mark are filled with white actors or have a white leading character and Black Panther is the first film* to ever do it with a black lead character. This is a massive boost for diversity in film. This is concrete proof to the big film studios that not all films have to have white leading actors. Back in 1998 Marvel had a big success with Wesley Snipes in Blades but instead of building on that success they let it tail off. I can't understand why. People want to see different faces leading films. We get sick of the same old heads in every franchise. We want to see fresh takes on old stories. To see a movie from a perspective that's new to us. To see a story in a culture that we know nothing about. We just like seeing new stuff!! There's a huge audience for films with leads who don't have blonde hair and blue eyes. Well normal well adjusted people do anyway. Racists will disagree. But fuck them.
*(yes yes John Boyega in the Force Awakens but that was a far more ensemble piece than this)
How many films do we see set in Africa? Not many and the majority of the ones we do see are seen through the eyes of white protagonists. Out Of Africa, Tears Of The Sun, Black Hawk Down, Blood Diamond, Tarzan (dreadful, do not watch), Gorillas In The Mist, District 9, The Ghost And The Darkness, The African Queen etc etc. Then we get ones like The Last King Of Scotland, or Cry Freedom or A Dry White Season that tell black stories but still feel the need to give us a white lead to identify with. Rare films like Hotel Rwanda and Beast Of No Nation slip through thankfully. Black Panther is the latest and it's definitely the biggest. No matter what your opinion on comic book movies you have to admit it's a hugely importantly cultural moment. Finally black kids are getting to see superheroes that look like them on screen.
And BTW its not just black representation making a huge impact at international box offices.
Look at the three films below from the last year.
The Fate Of The Furious - $1.236 billion. People scoff at this franchise but it's light years ahead of other bigger franchises in terms of racial diversity. This one was part 8 and look at the money it made. Part 7 BTW is the 6th biggest grossing film of all time. This one is 12th.
Wolf Warrior 2 - $870 million. A Chinese film that barely got a sniff of a release over here and look at the money it made. It even beat Titanic and Avatar in China. Asian cinema was huge in the west in the 70's with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan introducing western audiences to the wonders of martial arts cinema but has since tailed off with the odd success (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) rearing its head. If Hollywood was willing to embrace all the Asian talent around god only knows the kind of success they could have.
Coco - $740 million. Pixar's wonderful celebration of all things Mexico made a mint. It was great to see a film set in there that for once wasn't about drugs and war and one that was aimed at a young audience and one that introduced them to a culture all but ignored in Hollywood.
In less than 12 months 4 films were released that made shockwaves at the box office. Black Panther is still going strong and it's looking likely that by the end of it's run the combined total of all 4 films with be over $4 billion dollars. If that's not a stamp of audience approval for diversity onscreen I don't know what is.
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