I have much deeper thoughts on this when I post a review of the film next week, but essentially this petition wants to punish Marvel-Disney for being good at marketing.
They have a movie that has a primarily black cast, director and artists doing the soundtrack. Disney has marketed the movie to BLACK PEOPLE, which is what any normal business would do.
The asinine part of the petition is this. If “Black Panther’ had a white director, more of a mixed cast and white artists on the soundtrack, people would be up in arms over that.
So with some black people, there is no winning, no matter what you do. Here is a small part of the petition.
While many would see the release of a major studio film with a majority black cast, black director and art direction helmed by black artists (the SZA & Kendrick Lamar song “All The Stars” will be part of the Black Panther soundtrack) as a win – what exactly will the black community gain, aside from another symbolic victory? Surely, more than just black people will be heading to the movies on February 16th to indulge in another piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, however, Marvel Studios hasn’t pulled out all the stops to get everyone else to come to the theaters – they’ve blatantly targeted the black community, because they want the one thing the black community has to offer in abundance – black dollars.
Black Panther has a bigger budget than THOR Ragnarok, and just a little less than the first Avengers movie to think it is just marketed to black people or could be successful with just black people going to theatres is stupid beyond belief.
I have said this before, and I will say this again, Black Panther is a Superhero movie, and the representation of black actors and specifically a black director doing a big budget movie is great for black people, but things like this aren’t helping the movie or future movies, only hurting them.