When Christopher Judge, most famous for his performance as Kratos the “God of War,” was approached to voice Black Panther for the “Marvel’s Avengers” game, he was skeptical.
“When I was first approached about being T’Challa, it was pitched to me that the Avengers go to Wakanda, [or] at least that’s what my agent told me,” Judge tells The Washington Post. “It sounded like the Avengers were going to save Wakanda.”
His initial reaction to that pitch was so visceral, he emphasized it with expletives in our interview. He told Entertainment Weekly in July that he even rejected the role at first, in part because of the late Chadwick Boseman’s magnificent success in portraying the first Black Marvel Comics superhero.
“It’s about them allying with Wakanda,” Judge said. “Once you become a character, you take ownership of that character. So I went into it knowing that, at every instance, I would be argumentative. Because I still thought it was going to be the Avengers coming to save Wakanda. I had a ton of different iterations ready where I’d say, ‘T’Challa would never say that.'”
But then he heard whom developer Crystal Dynamics brought in as narrative consultant for “War for Wakanda,” the long-awaited next chapter for last year’s Avengers game. It was Evan Narcisse, the writer behind the popular and celebrated “Rise of the Black Panther” comic series and a former video game journalist.
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“See, they didn’t tell me Evan was on it!” Judge said, laughing. “So needless to say, I never got an opportunity to say that.”
Indeed, Narcisse tells The Post that he was very conscious of the image of the mostly White Avengers team (plus Kamala Khan a.k.a. Ms. Marvel) storming into an African nation on a rescue mission.
“I always say this, but I think Black Panther is an anti-colonialism superhero,” Narcisse said. “It was subtext back in the ’60s. Now it’s part of the main text. You can’t put that aside, especially in a story like this, where you have AIM [the antagonist mega-conglomerate of the game] coming in to pillage resources. Obviously there’s a history you can’t ignore. So these issues of sovereignty and exploitation, I think they’re ripe for discussion.”
In the game, Narcisse and Judge say we will meet a T’Challa at a different point in his life than the hero to whom mainstream audiences were introduced when he first appeared in the film “Captain America: Civil War.”
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“He’s already been a king. This isn’t a dude coming to grips with what it means to ascend to the throne. He’s already done it, he’s comfortable in it,” Narcisse said. “Especially after the movie, which changed the global consciousness of what this character represents, now you’re working with a different set of challenges. The good thing is you don’t have to be quite as introductory in an adaptation like this, but you do have to find your own space.”
Judge had to find his own space too. He was not going to mimic Boseman’s voice tone or timbre. Judge explored the fictional Wakandan dialect with Beth McGuire, who was also the vocal coach for the “Black Panther” film.
“It’s not in what I would consider my comfort zone vocally,” Judge said. “It’s a much more lyrical, nuanced manner of speaking, and it took me a while to get comfortable even exploring other tenors of my voice. It was eye-opening creatively to find the different sounds in my instrument. It was daunting.”
Judge emphasized that he felt the pressure because millions of fans, including his own children, will be holding him accountable for his performance.
“It’s more flowery than how I talk, but that was part of the journey of the character,” Judge said. “I just wanted to make sure I gave my all, and that it really came from what … I found was the truth of my exploration of the character.”
Narcisse said T’Challa and Wakanda need to build trust with the Avengers. The Avengers aren’t going in for a rescue; they would need to be allowed in. Other Black Panther depictions will usually portray the king as open-minded to global cooperation, whereas this T’Challa is standoffish and remains skeptical of allowing others to enter his nation’s borders.
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“You also have these two characters who are the living embodiments of their nations, Captain America and T’Challa, meeting each other for the first time,” Narcisse said. “What are the sparks, what are the simpatico energy you could find in these characters?”
“Marvel’s Avengers” has struggled to maintain a large playerbase. But since launch, the game has received numerous well-received updates. And with excitement brewing around a new map and new story possibilities — along with the new playable Black Panther character — “Marvel’s Avengers” may yet defeat the pessimism surrounding its future.
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