Marvel’s Black Panther isn’t anywhere near as dense with jokes as Thor: Ragnarok or Ant-Man, but the movie’s carefully-placed gags will make you laugh hard. While much of the film’s comedy can be attributed to co-writers Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, Coogler made a point of reaching out to none other than Donald Glover to look over their script and tweak some jokes to make them a little punchier.
Glover recently spoke with Entertainment Tonight about how he and his brother Stephen Glover stepped in rather late into Black Panther’s production to make their important contribution:
“[Director] Ryan [Coogler] was gracious enough to be like, ‘Will you take a look at this script? Which was really cool. Marvel locks things down, so we had not as much time as I would’ve wanted. We had a couple of hours to punch up some jokes and stuff like that. It was already there anyway. They had already done a great job, so it was really cool to just get our fingerprints on there a bit.”
Given his comedic roots, it isn’t exactly surprising to learn that Glover had a hand in crafting some of Black Panther’s jokes. And one might be safe to assume he’s responsible for some of Shuri’s excellent one-liners.
It’s interesting to note how little time Glover spent working on the script, but however small his tweaks may have been, it goes to show that Shuri’s point about the importance of always striving to make good things better is very, very true.