Spoilers to follow…
With Black Panther dominating screens near and far, it’s fair to say that Ryan Coogler is now three for three when it comes to carefully crafted feature films.
On the heels of his celebrated work on Fruitvale Station and Creed – two movies that also featured Michael B. Jordan (Erik Killmonger) in prominent roles – Coogler graduated to the MCU in time to helm Marvel’s Black Panther, and we can say with some confidence that the 31-year-old filmmaker has knocked it out of the park.
He’s now doing press for his Afrocentric epic, which is already being held up as a landmark achievement for superhero movies overall. And so, amid chatter of a Black Panther 2, Ryan Coogler spoke to Empire about his approach to the film’s ending, and why he vacillated between one finale and another. These comments come from a spoiler-filled episode of the Empire Podcast, so proceed with caution.
It was [almost the ending]. We played with a lot of different ways to end it. We went back and forth about the U.N., and we had a version where it was the U.N. before the scenes in Oakland at the end. But we really kind of settled on how do we want the movie to end? And it came back to that symmetry, and it came back to the most moving version of it. That’s what we were asking ourselves, ‘Who’s more moved emotionally, that kid or the people sitting in the U.N.?’ Who is that a bigger deal to for T’Challa to walk in, who’s more connected to him?
Coogler added that the segment with the United Nations was more fitting for a credits scene, as it served as something of a springboard for T’Challa’s future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Avengers: Infinity War.
As a kid, growing up, when you see somebody who looks like an older version of you doing something awesome, it’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ That’s kind of what that moment… We kind of went with the less distilled emotion, and the U.N. makes sense afterwards for where Wakanda could be going in the future of this universe.
Marvel’s Black Panther is playing everywhere as of February 16th, and it’s already made a pretty penny at the box office. Current estimates place the film’s global total at $424 million, indicating that the Ryan Coogler-directed feature is well on its way to becoming one of the most profitable releases in the history of Marvel Studios.