By now, marvel fans have gathered that Angela Bassett has won both the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award for her awe-inspiring performance as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. With all that being said, it makes for obvious sense that she will most likely win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. 

I bring this up to remind people that director Martin Scorsese was very verbal and said that these movies were not cinema and condescendingly compares them to theme park rides. As someone who enjoys Marvel movies, this did not sit well with me. I am not dissing gangster films, westerns or the silent cinema that dominated years before superhero films took over. However, dissing a company that produces beloved films that fans and audiences enjoy is very condescending and disingenuous. 

Anyway, I am here to talk about why Wakanda Forever proves Scorsese wrong about this genre of film. The MCU’s latest venture saw Shuri take on the mantle of the Black Panther, but more than anything, what seems to be overshadowing most of the Black Panther sequel is Angela Bassett’s performance in the film. Bassett’s passionate work has led her to make history in superhero films as she became the first person to win a Golden Globe and Critics Choice award in a comic-book film. 

A genre that has been labeled by directors as loud, and noisy, as theme park rides, birthed a fine performance and great work that will inevitably last a multitude of generations. 

Moreover Scorsese dissed Marvel movies, but I wonder if he is aware that Marvel is a company and not a genre of film. If he says that “superhero” movies are not cinema, then does that include 1978’s Superman, Tim Burton’s Batman movies or 2008’s Iron Man?

That’s like if I told someone that gangster films aren’t cinema and I later told them that I had never directed a gangster film and I “tried to watch” one of them. I would have no idea what I was talking about. I would have no merit or reason to criticize them and be forced to stay neutral about them. 

What the director doesn’t understand is that superhero films are cinema. The same as westerns and gangsters films are. There are great gangster films, as well as bad gangster films, just like there are great superhero films and bad superhero movies. Wakanda Forever proves that these films deserve a place at the table because it was not an amusement park ride. The film proves to be strongest in its silence as Shuri ponders her late brother T’Challa and the actor who played him Chadwick Boseman who died of colon cancer in 2020. 

Seeing the flashbacks of T’Challa with his sister brings a sense of silence and teary-eyed tranquility that never comes from an explosion or a CGI spectacle. The film honors Boseman with all of its grandeur and does justice to his character. 

Cinema is telling différent stories and using différent and sometimes unconventional methods of filmmaking that traditionalist filmmakers like Scorsese may not comprehend, but that does not make it a lesser film and it does not make it beneath cinema.