Black Panthers and Ape Lords

I had a feeling Black Panther would be my favourite Marvel film for a while now. The first trailer indicated to me that this was going to be a film steeped in the lore, ambiance, and spirit of Africa. I've always loved that continent: the many peoples, the fauna, the landscapes. So much of my favourite pulp adventure - Burroughs, Haggard, Howard - is set in a historical, mythic, or fantastical version of Africa. But so many of these stories are written from the adventurer's perspective - someone going to Africa, where Africa is a faraway land of wonders and mysteries. From the African perspective, Africa is home: it's always been there, they've always been there. Black Panther, being the creation of two North Americans, started life as an outsider's interpretation of an African superhero. Black Panther, the film, seeks to bring him home.

The results are plain to see: an all-star cast and senior crew from all across the world, almost all of whom have a direct or ancestral link to the continent. It isn't an adventure so much as a homecoming.

The depth and richness of Black Panther could easily inspire thousands of words of critique and analysis, from the languages to the clothing; the architecture to the martial arts; the music to the dances. To demonstrate the film's profundity, I'm going to look at one seemingly tiny aspect of the film across three posts, and explore the possibilities and meaning therein - the Gorilla God of the Jabari.

Narrative Rebellion: Dark Universe - The Mummy

You know, I think Universal are doing this whole Universal Monsters Shared Universe Reboot backwards: we're thinking of the classical Universal monsters (Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, Gillman), when there are a wealth of characters in classic Universal films that could be introduced too.

My thinking is that everyone is perfectly familiar with the major characters and the original stories, and we've seen them fighting each other all the time. So, rather than build up to something we've already scene dozens of times, why not start with that, and build up to something else? I keep going back to Kong: Skull Island's wonderfully cosmically-horrific quote:

You heard of the U.S.S. Lautmann? Neither did the public. Out of a thousand young men on that ship I was the only survivor. They told my family she was sunk in battle but I know what I saw. It had no conscience. No reasoning. Just destroy. I spent the last 30 year trying to prove the truth of what I learned that day. This planet doesn't belong to us. Ancient species owned this Earth long before mankind, and if we keep our heads buried in the sand they will take it back.
 - Bill Randa, Kong: Skull Island

Howard fans may find that quote tantalisingly familiar:

A Key! Aye, it is a Key, symbol of a forgotten horror. That horror has faded into the limbo from which it crawled, loathsomely, in the black dawn of the earth. But what of the other fiendish possibilities hinted at by Von Junzt--what of the monstrous hand which strangled out his life? Since reading what Selim Bahadur wrote, I can no longer doubt anything in the Black Book. Man was not always master of the earth - and is he now?

And the thought recurs to me - if such a monstrous entity as the Master of the Monolith somehow survived its own unspeakably distant epoch so long - what nameless shapes may even now lurk in the dark places of the world?
 - The Narrator, "The Black Stone," Robert E. Howard

And on the concept of a Universe of Monsters? Well, there's another Howard quote that comes to mind:

“Through the dim corridors of memory those words lurk... For that phrase has come secretly down the grim and bloody eons, since when, uncounted centuries ago, those words were watch-words for the race of men who battled with the grisly beings of the Elder Universe...”

... for an instant he seemed to gaze back through the vastness that spanned life and life; seeing through the vague and ghostly fogs dim shapes reliving dead centuries — men in combat with hideous monsters, vanquishing a planet of frightful terrors. Against a gray, ever-shifting background moved strange nightmare forms, fantasies of lunacy and fear; and man, the jest of the gods, the blind, wisdom-less striver from dust to dust, following the long bloody trail of his destiny, knowing not why, bestial, blundering, like a great murderous child, yet feeling somewhere a spark of divine fire... 

“They are gone,” said Brule, as if scanning his secret mind; “the bird-women, the harpies, the bat-men, the flying fiends, the wolf-people, the demons, the goblins — all save such as this being that lies at our feet, and a few of the wolf-men. Long and terrible was the war, lasting through the bloody centuries, since first the first men, risen from the mire of apedom, turned upon those who then ruled the world.”

“And at last mankind conquered, so long ago that naught but dim legends come to us through the ages. The snake-people were the last to go, yet at last men conquered even them and drove them forth into the waste lands of the world, there to mate with true snakes until some day, say the sages, the horrid breed shall vanish utterly. Yet the Things returned in crafty guise as men grew soft and degenerate, forgetting ancient wars. Ah, that was a grim and secret war! Among the men of the Younger Earth stole the frightful monsters of the Elder Planet, safeguarded by their horrid wisdom and mysticisms, taking all forms and shapes, doing deeds of horror secretly. No man knew who was true man and who false. No man could trust any man. Yet by means of their own craft they formed ways by which the false might be known from the true... So mankind triumphed. Yet again the fiends came after the years of forgetfulness had gone by — for man is still an ape in that he forgets what is not ever before his eyes...
 - Robert E. Howard, "The Shadow Kingdom"

Now, I am by no means an expert on the Universal Monsters canon: I have watched many of them and enjoyed them a great deal, but I hope folk will forgive me for not having the exhaustive knowledge of this wide subject such a project really deserves. Nonetheless, inspired by my fellow Brad Ellison, I knew I had to write something. So, for the purposes of fun, I had some musings over what I would do were I the creative director of a prospective Dark Universe, taking elements from Robert E. Howard, Arthur Conan Doyle, and other classic adventure authors...

Oh Man, Oh God: Sam Worthington as Allan Quatermain

Yes, Sam Worthington, he who set the world on fire with his magnificent, nuanced, subtle, understated I can't even continue this sentence I'm so outraged.

Sam Worthington (Avatar, Terminator Salvation) has signed on to star and produce DreamWorks' "Quatermain" film, based on the "King's Solomon's Mines" novel by H Rider Haggard.

Allan Quatermain was the hero of the book, in which he leads an expedition into an unexplored region of Africa to find the brother of a friend as well as a fabled treasure of the lost mines. A second book called "Allan Quatermain" soon followed.

DreamWorks' version is set in a time in which humans have left Earth and sees Quatermain return to the planet from a temporary stay in space. Mark Verheiden (Timecop, The Mask) was the writer behind the first script when the project was revealed early last year.

Extra tidbit: Back in 2008, when The Asylum (Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers) was trying to rip off "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the company released "Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls" straight to video. Obviously it was awful.

No!  No.  No, no, no.  No.  No.  Nnno.  Nnnnno.  NNNNNNNN

Seriously, why are Hollywood having such an accursed hard time adapting Allan Quatermain? The man was Indiana Jones before George Lucas & Steven Spielberg were glints in their parents' eyes!  He's a tough, grizzled adventurer who goes on rough-and-tumble quests through ancient lost kingdoms.  This isn't hard, people!

King Solomon's Mines in particular is a great adventure, easily suitable for adaptation to the big screen.  It's the template for such great tales as The Lost World, The Land That Time Forgot, The Man Who Would Be King, The Moon Pool, Lost Horizon, "The Moon of Skulls," and who knows how many other Lost World yarns.  The book's been adapted 6 times, and they still haven't done better than the magnificent 1937 one with Paul Robeson.  And now we have... Sam Worthington as Allan Quatermain.  Jings.  What's next, She with Hayden Panettiere?

Oh, and I simply can't wait for all the inevitable squealing about how this rips off Indiana Jones.  Or the recent Mummy films.  Or Drake's Fortune.