RYAN COOGLER

The Smith Rafael Film Center in Marin County, Calif., doesn’t look anything like the places where Ryan Coogler saw movies as a child. A 1930s movie palace adorned with an art-nouveau mural of two goddesses emerging from the sea and sapphire-hued lamps illuminating the lobby, it typically plays indies and foreign films. But as Coogler makes his way inside on a rainy November day, he hears something familiar: the pounding drums from the decidedly mainstream movie he directed, Black Panther. He bobs his head to the beat, pulling off his raincoat to reveal a Jaws T-shirt.

Jaws is the kind of movie Coogler, 32, was raised on: blockbusters that play to big crowds. In many ways that’s exactly the movie he made. And with Black Panther, he made an exceptionally good one—not just hugely entertaining, but smart, funny and political. Audiences ate it up. Since premiering in February, Black Panther has become the highest-grossing film of 2018 in the U.S. and smashed a handful of other records (among them: highest-grossing solo superhero launch of all time, highest-grossing film by a black director and highest-grossing film starring a primarily black cast). And it won over