Every Chadwick Boseman Movie Ranked

There’s a moment near the climax of 2018’s “Black Panther” when you realize, while watching it for the first time, that a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie is about to stick the landing on one of the greatest superhero stories told in any medium. It isn’t Okoye’s (Danai Gurira) stand-off with her traitorous husband (Daniel Kaluuya), nor is it the heartbreaking death of the lost prince Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan).

It’s Chadwick Boseman, rising with the sun over his subjects on the plains of Wakanda, proclaiming to his would-be usurper, “I never yielded!” It’s arguably the best moment in the entire MCU — and it undeniably cemented Boseman as a performer with an incomparable mixture of dramatic gravitas, genre savvy, and sheer talent.

When Boseman passed away in August 2020, he had already earned a legacy in Hollywood that few could ever dream of, much less achieve. We’ve ranked every Chadwick Boseman movie with regard to their quality, as well as their showcasing of the late and legendary actor.

Though it may be one of the best football movies ever made, there isn’t too much to say here about “The Express: The Ernie Davis Story.” It served as Chadwick Boseman’s feature film debut, and began his path to stardom by embodying various historical figures from American history.

He started with Syracuse football alum and future Denver Broncos halfback Floyd Little, appearing in a cameo at the end of the film. It’s hard to even to call “The Express” a “Chadwick Boseman movie,” but it certainly captures a defining moment in his career.

It’s hard to believe (and was undoubtedly a stroke of fortune for his burgeoning career) that Chadwick Boseman starred in the disastrous “Gods of Egypt” just months before the release of “Captain America: Civil War.” During the waning days of the franchise gold rush, Lionsgate attempted to establish this mythological universe as its own tentpole-producing juggernaut.

With a sleepy script of cliches from the writers of “Morbius” and “Madame Web,” this gold-tinted nightmare was going absolutely nowhere — even if the studio hadn’t made the perplexing decision to cast the Egyptian pantheon of gods almost exclusively using white actors. Boseman, who normally avoided press about his films, had a feeling audiences would be confused when he read the script. He told GQ he was actually “thankful” for the discussion and in agreement with critics of the choice, further lamenting, “People don’t make $140 million movies starring Black and brown people.”

“That’s why I wanted to do it,” he said, “so you would see someone of African descent playing Thoth, the father of mathematics, astronomy, the god of wisdom.” “Gods of Egypt” made just $150 million when it debuted — two years later, thanks to performance in “Civil War,” “Black Panther” commanded a budget of $200 million, and went on to gross over $1.3 billion worldwide.

For all its flaws, “The Kill Hole” is worth a watch to see a young Chadwick Boseman start to step into his role as a bona fide leading man. He stars in the low-budget war thriller as a disillusioned Iraq Veteran hired by mercenaries to kill one of his former squad members.

The twisting plot more than borders on convoluted, but the constraints of the premise at least prevent the story from wading into truly ludicrous territory. And unlike “Gods of Egypt,” there is an ample amount of (albeit raw and unfocused) human passion in the script, giving Boseman enough material to make “The Kill Hole” worthwhile.

Chadwick Boseman’s final appearance in the MCU is only this low because it doesn’t feature all that much of him. Having had an entire act of “Avengers: Infinity War” to play a compelling supporting role, “Avengers: Endgame” only has enough room to use the Black Panther as an admittedly memorable cameo.

That said, seeing T’Challa step through one of Dr. Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) eldritch portals alongside the Wakandan armies is easily one of the movie’s most exhilarating moments. Boseman had but a few minutes to cement his legacy in the record-shattering MCU film, and did so in a way no other actor could.

Perhaps lost in the frenzy of his MCU debut, 2016’s “Message from the King” sees Chadwick Boseman at the center of a dark revenge thriller set in Los Angeles. His character, Jacob King, travels to the city from South Africa in search of his missing sister, uncovering a horrifying underworld of corruption as he gets closer to the truth. The film evokes a certain loneliness and sense of exclusion Boseman felt in L.A., presumably most significantly during his first years there.

“Message from the King” is brutally unforgiving, and certainly not for audiences. In terms of violence and subject matter (especially relative to its uneven execution of both), it may be Boseman’s hardest-to-watch work. But his performance is expectedly riveting, successfully selling the film as an effective, complex thriller.

While Chadwick Boseman regularly played historical figures, Vontae Mack in “Draft Day” is not one of them. The officially-branded dramatization of the NFL draft is grounded but entirely fictional, and will perhaps be a tad unbelievable for hardcore sports fans. At the same time, Boseman gave his character — an Ohio University linebacker hoping to win a spot on the Cleveland Browns lineup — so much depth that one can easily see him amongst the real athletes of the NFL.

The actor saw Vontae as a “tough guy” who an audience member might at first assume is a “Southern gangsta type.” Boseman enjoyed taking on a role that would challenge viewers’ initial perception of someone like his character. “I felt there was [something] you were going to project on him and you would find out that he’s a totally different person,” he told Black Film. “That was fun to me; being able to play something that sort of fooled people or made them look at themselves after watching the film.”

When it was released, “Avengers: Infinity War” was the biggest Marvel movie audiences had ever seen. As such, Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa didn’t receive as much focus as flagship heroes Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Captain America (Chris Evans). Still, the act of the film which features Wakanda is undoubtedly the film’s most exciting.

When /Film interviewed Boseman on the set of the 2018 mega-blockbuster, he shared that despite “Infinity War’s” larger scale, it was in some cases easier to work on because he finally got to be part of an ensemble. “I don’t have time to joke when we are shooting ‘Black Panther,’ it’s serious all the time,” he told us. “But in [‘Infinity War’], you don’t have all the weight on your shoulders, so you have more comfort. We’re sharing the weight. Which is actually what’s happening with the superheroes as well, because they could not deal with Thanos alone. I think there is a lot of comfort in having people who are so good around you.”

Having snapped him away at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War,” the Russo brothers knew Chadwick Boseman had some free time on his hands. They approached him at the premiere with a script for “21 Bridges,” a crime thriller about a New York police detective hunting murders while the island of Manhattan is under lockdown. Boseman starred in and served as a producer on the film, which ultimately became his last to be released in theaters.

“21 Bridges” was neither a critical hit nor a commercial hit — as we wrote at the time, the work of the many talented actors in the film is unfortunately in service of a fundamentally bland, predictable thriller. Still, it’s a rare vehicle for Boseman that tests his movie star credibility outside historical figures and comic book events. As he said himself to Esquire in 2019, “I enjoy doing what I do with Black Panther, but I also enjoy not having to put on a suit or train like a professional athlete. … [T]his is the type of movie that I enjoy watching the actors that I love do.”

After the success of his first major biographical effort “42,” Hollywood rightfully trusted Chadwick Boseman with another massive legacy, this time in the arguably sports-opposite world of music and entertainment. In the 2014 musical biopic “Get On Up,” the then-up-and-comer played prolific funk and soul musician James Brown, backed up by an all-star cast that included Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Dan Aykroyd. Director Tate Taylor, meanwhile, was fresh from helming the Academy Award-nominated drama “The Help.”

Taylor selected Boseman despite prior feedback from executives, who were more interested in stunt-casting a high-profile musician. The director was sure he needed a true craftsman with the skill to embody the Godfather of Soul throughout his storied career — and after seeing Boseman perform a scene as a 60-year-old Brown, Taylor was more than convinced. The actor trained extensively both to maintain Brown’s distinctive voice and to be able to faithfully portray his dancing ability. His work was praised by critics, attributing to him the film’s overall dramatic success.

When /Film interviewed Chadwick Boseman from the set of “Captain America: Civil War” back in 2016, the world knew very little about what his portrayal of the Black Panther would be like. But from our conversation with the actor, we could tell that he was the perfect choice for the role. In addition to helping create an authentic African-inspired Wakandan dialect and bearing the burden of an uncomfortably hot but tear-inducingly comic-accurate costume, Boseman’s understanding of what truly made the character important was obvious.

He wasn’t a superhero like the rest of the film’s ensemble, but a head of state and champion of his people, whose every act represented centuries of hidden mythology and forgotten culture. The end result was a scene-stealing, star-making performance that saw Boseman fearlessly carry the film’s most important emotional beats with gravitas — while also perfectly understanding when and how to lean into comic book camp.

Directed by Spike Lee, “Da 5 Bloods” follows a squad of Vietnam War veterans who return to the country in their elder years to track down a cache of gold they stole from the CIA and secretly buried during the war. Chadwick Boseman features prominently in the film as “Stormin'” Norman Holloway, the squad’s leader who never made it back home. Without spoiling too much, his memory haunts and inspires the survivors.

“Da 5 Bloods” was released in June 2020, the first of two critically acclaimed films starring Boseman to be released that year alone, as well as the last film in his filmography to be released during his lifetime. When Lee found out with the rest of the world that Boseman had been sick while filming much of his work including “Da 5 Bloods,” he almost immediately went to rewatch the film with his wife.

Lee reflected the following year on Boseman’s death, specifically in the context of their work together — as the director understands it, there was a major reason for Boseman choosing not to disclose his diagnosis. “I understand that he didn’t want to be treated differently than any of the actors,” Lee told NPR. “The first battle sequence, he has to run, like, 100 yards, and I was telling him to run like Usain Bolt.” The director also admitted that if he’d been aware of Boseman’s illness, he wouldn’t have directed him the same way.

In “Marshall,” Chadwick Boseman was given the chance to play another prominent historical figure in civil rights attorney and eventual Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The 2017 film was something of a challenging surprise for Boseman, however, who had expected to be playing his character as the powerful, historical figure he knew him to be. But rather than commanding grand courtrooms, addressing the jury with Shakespearean monologues, the film forces Marshall to take a backseat — to fight for justice even when his voice was silenced by legal procedure and systemic racism.

In an interview with NPR, the outlet asked how Boseman was able to relate to such an experience as an actor when he grew up in a time without having to face the same racial hostility Marshall endured. Boseman questioned that premise. “I don’t know if that’s true,” he replied. “You know, I’m from Anderson, S.C., but I grew up in the South. So I know what it is to ride to school and have Confederate flags flying from trucks in front of me and behind me, to see a parking lot full of people with Confederate flags and know what that means. I’ve been stopped by police for no reason. … So part of my, I guess, ability to face it is because I faced it. I failed at facing it. I get the opportunity in playing the character to relive those things and do things a different way.”

We still remember when, in 2011, “relative newcomer Chadwick Boseman” was tapped to play Jackie Robinson in the sports biopic “42.” The film was a particularly buzzy project, not only because names like Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford were in the mix, but also because Robinson’s wife, Rachel, had been trying to make the film for some time. Boseman shared in interviews that she had been incredibly blunt with him about her expectations — she had originally wanted to make the film when Sidney Poitier could wear the jersey; her second choice when he aged out was Denzel Washington. “‘And now we have you,'” the actor recalled her saying in her challenge to him on her first day visiting the set. “‘Who are you?'”

As he remembers in an interview with Vanity Fair, Boseman didn’t waste time comparing himself to two actors he deeply revered. “But I just told her that I would put my entire life and self into this experience,” he said. “I would learn whatever I needed to learn on the baseball field. And I would research and make it part of my everyday life. And that’s all that I could do.” Boseman’s performance as Robinson in “42” made him one of Hollywood’s rising stars, and has since drawn enduring praise over the years from the likes of co-star Harrison Ford. As the actor said after Boseman’s passing to The Hollywood Reporter, “He is as much a hero as any he played.” As for Denzel Washington, he later saluted Boseman in Variety as “a man among men.”

Produced by Denzel Washington and based on the 1982 August Wilson of the same name, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” starred Chadwick Boseman as the turbulent blues trumpeter Levee Green, who joins the band of the titular singer, played by Viola Davis. The film was met with critical acclaim (including from our editors here at /Film) and earned Boseman his first and only Academy Award nomination for best actor in a leading role.

Tragically, “Ma Rainey” was released just months after Boseman passed away, leaving much about his work on the film unsaid by the performer himself. Of course, his co-stars like Colman Domingo honored him and sang his praises in interviews about their process. The “Sing Sing” star particularly recalled filming the heated confrontation between their characters Levee and Cutler. They pushed each other in ways that Domingo never felt like he had permission to, and the experience was apparently so powerful for them both that they were moved to tears immediately afterward.

“I didn’t know Chad was struggling like he was. No one knew,” Domingo told Collider. “But I look back now, to be honest, and I do know. I can tell that possibly, in that moment, there was a struggle with the words that [he was] about to say, and what [he was] possibly dealing with, and the questions that lie in all of our hearts when difficult things land in your lap that you can’t make sense of.”

There should be little argument as to the status of “Black Panther” as one of the most culturally impactful superhero movies ever made — an achievement due in large part to the talent, care, and championing of Chadwick Boseman. The 2018 film marked Boseman’s first and only solo outing as the titular character, memorably in a deeply political and overwhelmingly moving epic about what it truly means to return home when you’re expected to lead. He starred opposite Michael B. Jordan, who played Wakanda’s lost royal son N’Jadaka — aka Erik “Killmonger” Stevens. T’Challa is forced to reckon with the sins of his father and the failing of his nation as a consequence of Killmonger’s attempt to violently — though in some regards righteously — usurp the throne.

“He’s been Black Panther before, but I would say at the beginning of this movie… he’s still mourning [the death of his father in ‘[Captain America: Civil War’],” Boseman said in an interview with /Film at the time. “There’s unrest in Wakanda. So what he’s dealing with is being the king, is making the transition to filling the footsteps of his father.”

Over two years after his diagnosis, and two years before anyone would know about it, Boseman was overcome by tears during the film’s press tour sharing that he had spent his entire time filming the movie in contact with two young children who were also living with cancer. There’s something so mythically selfless and strong about the clear responsibility he felt as a performer to carry vulnerable people through hard times — even when he was dealing with hardship himself. Then again, what else would we expect from someone who embodied — on screen and off — the grace, honor, and strength of a king who never yielded?