Black Panther, the Marvel comic superhero, has started on the silver screen with the first movie of its own franchise today, in India. Starring Chadwick Boseman (T'Challa - Black Panther), Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia), Michael B Jordan (Erik Killmonger), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Martin Freeman (Agent Ross) and many others, the film boasts of stellar black performers renowned in the international movie arena.

The film goes into the details of the origin and legacy of Black Panther, Wakanda and their prize resource Vibranium, and how they are secretly the richest, most powerful and technologically advanced nation in the world. Though we caught glimpses of this hero in Captain America: Civil War, his much-needed backstory is brilliantly handled, and that too, right from the start.

Wakanda is wonderfully imagined as a meeting point of carefully preserved ancient West African culture, traditions and customs, and futuristic technology and wealth;  add to it spirituality, you get a hero like never seen before in the Marvel universe. Fantastic.

T'Challa is a combination of some of the best qualities of his hero friends and some more - he stands for justice, honour, scientific progress as well as statesmanship and diplomacy. This paves way for the movie to infuse the political aspect to the black movement, and the dichotomy in the ways inside it to reach the very same ideological solution.