Black, The Colour Of My Heart

Ok so I’ve hand an additional less than full on 2112 blog post worthy thought re this quickie Black Panther blog post of Alyssa Rosenberg’s I’m feeling compelled to share with you crazy kids. It goes something like this: Though I disagreed with one of her stated reasons, (see post comments) I share Alyssa’s general reluctance to have to sit through a T’Challa: The Black Panther film imagined crafted and offered up by a bunch of underprivileged in no way brownish gentleman, as I’ve explained elsewhere, I do think one could be done well. More importantly and more to the point of this addendum mini post. It occurs to me that we (comic nerd-film geeks o’ the world) have a limited window during which we’ll be able. You see, something Ridley Scott said once hopped into my head just now, that any given moment Hollywood has a dearth of certain types of actors, that sometimes when you have an idea, a project that requires say Tom Cruise circa 1985 you either have to make it right then or wait for the movie gods to produce multiple Tom types right when your schedule has another film sized hole in it.

Now you might think that’s silly, but I’d argue that even if the gentlemen over at Warner Brothers weren’t inexcusably sexist wankers who’ve insisted for no particular reason that they can’t make a Wonder Woman film (but that they should make a  sequel for a Green Lantern film that completely fucking tanked) you’d have a hard time making a Wonder Woman film right now because there isn’t a single 100% perfect choice for the part. A decade ago there was Catherine Zeta Jones, today there’s maybe (just maybe) John Carter’s Lynn Collins and that dearth doesn’t really improve the odds of a film not sucking. So how does that rule relate to The Black Panther’s on screen chances. Well, we just happen to have been blessed with not one but two perfect choices for the titular character (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Idris Elba) but not too long ago at all we’d likely have had to suffer through Wesley Snipes take on the character and there’s literally no guarantee that a few years from now we won’t be back in that sorry position, so why not throw caution to the wind and strike while there are actors and directors roaming around Hollywood who wouldn’t be walking insults to the endeavor?

I mean, it’s possible we could wait a long, long, long, time for the stars to align again.