Highly Anticipated Marvel Film Opens Nation Wide Release.
VAUSE: Well, the wait is the over and I didn't know I was waiting. The film Black Panther roars into theaters this week after breaking presale ticket records.</s>SESAY: the latest in the Marvel movie universe could break box office records. So here is this look at the film and why, why is that -- it's so much more than a movie even though John has no idea what's going on.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm the only one to see it, and made it that to life.</s>SESAY: Nearly 52 years after he first appeared on the cover of this Marvel Comic, Black Panther is making a fierce return.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The revolutions will be live.</s>SESAY: Black Panther is project to earn an estimated $165 million or more for the U.S. opening weekend alone, according to Hollywood's major tracking services. But its greatest impact may not be at the box office.</s>CHADWICK BOSEMAN, AMERICAN ACTOR: If anybody believes, you know, that Africa didn't have an empire, didn't have architecture, didn't art, didn't have science, you see it in this movie.</s>SESAY: Critics are calling this film a cultural milestone and radically different, not only because it has the predominantly black cast but because it's breaking ground off the big screen as well. Hundreds of GoFundMe campaign from across the world have raised more than $400,000 to help kids see the movie this month. And to see they're excited is an understatement. The cast is equally excited about the film's scope and significance.</s>MICHAEL B. JORDAN: It's an honor, it's humbling and very surreal. You know this is like kind of a major introduction, almost a reintroduction of like, black fantasy, sci-fi mythology, this generation growing up. I can't wait for -- you know, Halloween to see this little -- like, you never rate your range enough as the demoralizing, and you know, Black Panther and kill mongers and stuff like that. I think it's going to be a super important impactful for their -- you know, for our culture. You know moving forward, I think it's extremely important. So, yes, it means a lot that we're inspiring the youth.</s>LUPITA NYONG'O, ACTRESS: I've never been a doll before. And then, now there's dolls coming out. Nakia dolls and Okoye dolls, and it's such a thrill because, first of all, I remember when I was younger, my mother couldn't even find black dolls for us. And so, the fact that there are going to be plenty, because of the kind of reach that Marvel has and that it's going to be our faces, I mean, it's a humbling and actually a little bit exciting and terrifying at the same time. But how lovely to live at a time when kids can have that.</s>WINSTON DUKE, ACTOR: I'm so excited, profoundly excited that they're going to get to like ingest, consume this kind of content before the world puts their own politics on them, and their bodies, and their experience, and what they could be. They're, going to get to see this and see people who look like them that have agency in story. That's exciting.</s>DANIEL KALUUYA, ACTOR: And in fact, that they're not going to see it as special you can see it's normal. They going to expect stories to represent them. And then, if they don't see it they're going to go "Well, I'm going to make it happen." And they fulfill that it can make it happen.</s>DUKE: Yes.</s>KALUUYA: Because there is world here. And Ryan has done -- remember Ryan has done this at 30 years old. He shot this film.</s>DUKE: Yes.</s>KALUUYA: You know, let's keep on going.</s>DUKE: Let's keep going.</s>SESAY: Our next guest has seen it.</s>VAUSE: And he's black. And I do happen to be black.</s>SESAY: And he calls it fantastic. Segun Oduolowu, our friend of the show, and CNN journalist and host to Rotten Tomatoes, See It Skip It.</s>SEGUN ODUOLOWU, HOST, ROTTEN TOMATOES, SEE IT SKIP IT: Yes.</s>SESAY: Welcome.</s>ODUOLOWU: Thank you, thanks for having me back.</s>SESAY: Let's get straight to it --</s>ODUOLOWU: Yes.</s>SESAY: You've seen it.</s>ODUOLOWU: It's the greatest movie of all time.</s>SESAY: OK. That's what I wanted to hear. But why.</s>ODUOLOWU: Because it's the most significant movie in black history, and that is not hyperbole. Everyone knows about black history on the stud. 12 years has leave, or they will do a civil rights movie like Malcolm</s>X. SESAY: They wouldn't go as pain and suffer.</s>ODUOLOWU: There's always pain and suffering. This is the first time that a movie has shown black excellence in technology, in science, in current day, present day. Forgot the superhero aspect of it. It dispels the Tarzan myth of Africans being backwards. Here is a -- here is a technologically advanced civilization living and hiding from basically colonializers, people trying to take what they had. It is a mirror into what Africa could have been had it never been colonized, had it never been plundered for gold and diamonds. If races like the Egyptians and their science and technology had been allowed to flourish. This is what society needs, it is the money that its breaking is extremely necessary. Look, when 12 years a slave came out, they wouldn't put. They actually put Brad Pit on the poster in Europe because even though he's in it for like six minutes, but they didn't because they said black movies won't sell overseas.</s>SESAY: They do it in the Europe, yes. Yes.</s>VAUSE: Are you seeing what they do in China?</s>ODUOLOWU: Look, I don't even want to talk about China right now and black movies --</s>VAUSE: I got a question, come on, OK, so this is -- this is ultimately great. We will know when progress has been made when a movie likes this comes out, everyone just says, that's a great movie, right?</s>SESAY: No. Actually -- no</s>ODUOLOWU: No, I don't -- I don't think so. No, I think that sometimes statements have to be made. I think sometimes that the line has to be pushed as far as it can be. This is not a great movie just on its own. This is great movie because of what it says and who saying it. And what it means for young black girls, young black boys who are going to dressed up like Black Panther for Halloween.</s>SESAY: And what does it say? What does it say, Segun?</s>ODUOLOWU: It says to them that you can be exceptional, that you are exceptional. That you aren't just 12 years a slave, just Amistad, just fresh off of a boat. No, there is a continent out there that has given birth to black. Isha Sesay is this movie like I'm this movie. You know, because it tell us again like I always do this and my eye be pops out because I get so animated. Kanye has a line where he says, I don't need February. I make black history every month. How many black anchors are there on CNN like Isha? Not many, not many. And the fact that's either that's what boys and girls need to see the world over and America especially. When you have a President saying that, that continent, is the people, he does not want to come here. This movie dispels all that, it says we're great, it says we're fantastic, it says we're amazing.</s>VAUSE: I always thought that you should that -- thanks that cast, Denzel Washington, and Superman. And that would have been a mile one.</s>ODUOLOWU: No, I'll tell you what is better. I want them to cast Idris Elba as James Bond</s>VAUSE: Yes.</s>SESAY: Yes, yes, that's what we owe.</s>ODUOLOWU: Is that what I want to do, then, we start breaking down this barrier. If given a whitewashed movie, how about you really blackface then?</s>SESAY: Can we -- can we talk about the black females in this film? Because again, talk about the departure in the way black women are cast in Hollywood and here we have them in Black Panther, and they're strong and they're powerful. And they are --</s>ODUOLOWU: One word, one word, resplendent. They are resplendent, they are gorgeous and strong, and beautiful with natural hair.</s>SESAY: And dark skin.</s>ODUOLOWU: And dark skin, and they are -- look, they are strong with their men. They are smart, they are smart, they are intelligent, they are scientists, they are doctors, they are fierce, they are warriors, they are everything that anybody who has a black mother like I do know black women to be. I kid you not. This movie --</s>SESAY: I am going to always so happy, what should I say.</s>ODUOLOWU: Listen, I took -- I took my wife to see this. And I took my older brother to see an advance screening, and we left out of the movie theater like feeling a little bit taller, and a little bit better. And movies need to be like that.</s>SESAY: Let me ask you this. For our viewers who are not black, who are the --</s>ODUOLOWU: Are there any out there?</s>SESAY: ODUOLOWU is saying, well, why should we go see this? This is clearly a film just for black people.</s>ODUOLOWU: Right.</s>SESAY: What do you say to them? Why they should see this film?</s>ODUOLOWU: For the same reason I love Batman, for the same reason that I thought Heath Ledger was amazing as the Joker because his acting is incredible. Ryan Coogler, let's understand something about him. Fruitvale Station --</s>SESAY: Creed.</s>ODUOLOWU: -- and then, Creed. When you can redo the Rocky myth with a black guy like you're not just -- you're not -- you're swinging for</s>SESAY: Yes.</s>ODUOLOWU: I mean, he has played every black superhero in real life. He's been Marshall, he's been, Thurgood Marshall. He has been James Brown, he's been Jackie Robinson, and now, he is Black Panther, and he does it well. It has got the -- I mean, just the stunning cast is amazing. The cinematography is great, I saw it in 3D. Go see it because you love films.</s>VAUSE: I'm going to see it because I want to be taller.</s>ODUOLOWU: You see -- you see</s>SESAY: Yes, you see how he took us both, yes, -- Well, let me just say, Segu, thank you for bringing the passion, thank you for bringing the truth. And we now -- we thank Ryan Coogler for sharing Africa as it is.</s>ODUOLOWU: Thank you.</s>VAUSE: Did you bring to do this?</s>ODUOLOWU: Did I bring to do -- you see -- you see what you're doing there. You see -- I'm not --</s>SESAY: This is go --</s>VAUSE: This thick you I can do.</s>ODUOLOWU: This is -- No, you do in stick? That's OK. Well, this will be break every box office record. I'm going to come back and I'm going to start pointing at all of those foreign countries like China that threw us in the washing machine.</s>VAUSE: Right.</s>ODUOLOWU: And you know what you did China. When you can be used.</s>SESAY: All I'm going to say, Segun, they're going to see our glory. Black Panther, it's in the cinema near you. Go see it.</s>VAUSE: Just so hard keeping him quiet. You've been watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.</s>SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay, the news continues with Natalie Allen and George Howell, right after this.</s>VAUSE: God bless them.</s>NATALIE ALLEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: He was deliberate, calm, and have an escape plan.