Black Panther - Review Thread

His father died in the old run of comics, so not a spoiler for me. I knew he was king anyway. There's are bits of social commentary and politics in other Marvel movies as well.
In any case, I'm a fan and I can't wait to see this one

Short review: some powerful statements, some funny moments, and the casting director deserves an Oscar. It wasn't a bad movie, but in the growing list of MCU films, it doesn't stand out as anything special. I blame this mostly on the terrible CGI, stilted action, and lackluster story and character development. It still managed to be entertaining, and the political elements were present but not overwhelming. I don't think I would want to sit through this again, but it was pretty ok.

7/10

Going to be a while before I can write a full review (Golden Stakes are time consuming) but I'll just post the following:










**** out of Five

This Movie is not easy to have an opinion on because if a white person saw it or see it as just ok then they must be racist. But To be honest while the movie has great acting and film looks amazing. And Black Panther is ground breaking in many levels as a film. But Some movies is more fun too watch over and over and then there are good films you can watch once and not need to see again. Avatar was a good movie but I dont need to see it again. Black Panther is good but I dont need too see the film again. Because Black Panther will be seen in Avengers and he was in Civil War. The Movie is good but not amazing to me or Better Then Dr Strange or Logan or Wonder Woman which are still my 3 current fav comic book movies.
And No its not about race.

I'm not racist, I just hate Mexicans.

Black Panther(2/17/2018)

The weird thing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that the critics seem to hate the MCU as an enterprise and yet they seem to like every individual film in the MCU and whenever one comes out they seem to forget that they’ve liked every individual film. Like, when Thor: Ragnarok came out last year the critics were all saying “oh my god, they really let Taika Waititi inject his signature humor into this, it’s so much different than those other Marvel movies.” Of course four months earlier they were saying “oh my god, they really managed to turn Spider-Man: Homecoming into a down to earth high school movie, it’s so much different than those other Marvel movies.” And the year before that the critics were saing “oh my god, they really managed to turn Doctor Strange into a crazy acid trip, it’s so much different than those other Marvel movies.” So on and so forth. Critics also have a history of going overboard with their praise whenever a film seems to be an advance in representation in Hollywood cinema, something which led a lot of critics to really lose their minds when presented with good but not truly extraordinary movies like Wonder Woman, Bridesmaids, and The Big Sick. As such I was pretty cautious when the raves and hype for the newest Marvel film Black Panther started rolling in as I feel a bit like I’ve been cried wolf to before when it comes to movies like this.

The action in Black Panther picks up about a week after the events of Captain America: Civil War, the movie which introduced the character. With his father dead the time is now for young Prince T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) to be officially crowned as the king of Wakanda. Wakanda is a fictional African country built on top of a reserve of a material called vibranium, a metal so useful and powerful that it trumps all the guns, germs, and steel that have allowed colonial powers to dominate other African countries for centuries. They’ve used that technology to build some kind of cloaking device that hides their futuristic capital city and have generally hidden their incredible technology for centuries. Shortly after his coronation T’Challa gets intel that an enemy of the Wakandans named Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) is going to be in South Korea selling a stolen vibranium artifact. T’Challa promises his confidant W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) that he will kill or capture Klaue, retrieves his new suit from his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and heads to Korea with his to top agents Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) and Okoye (Danai Gurira). Once there he finds an undercover CIA agent named Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) also on the hunt for Klaue, but what neither of them know is that Klaue is now in league with a man named Erik Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), who has grand plans that could have grave consequences for Wakanda.

Aside from the fact that the character was introduced in a previous film (a fact that would not be terribly apparent to people just jumping in here) Black Panther feels mostly independent from the wider world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and outside of a couple of technical elements it does feel somewhat distinct from that Marvel house-style. The biggest thing that sets this apart is its setting in Wakanda, which is quite the creation. It takes a few leaps of logic to buy that this civilization could completely hide itself for so many centuries (how long have they had that cloaking device?) and the notion that they spent all these years living in peace and harmony with their neighbors despite having overwhelming advantages over them goes a bit contrary to human nature, especially given that they apparently select their rulers through trial by combat. Still, once you get past that this is a really interesting place to be setting a movie. We’ve seen plenty of science fiction versions of European and Asian cities but we’ve basically never seen a vision of a technologically advanced Africa brought to the screen with anywhere near this kind of budget or scope and it gives a very interesting flavor to the whole movie. We see things that would be neat sci-fi tech in any context like a line of soldiers with force field shields and make them that much more unique by having them be tied to said soldiers’ African garb for example.

If Black Panther has a real problem it might be that it’s a touch over-crowded with a large cast of supporting characters who almost begin to overshadow the title character in his own film. For instance, the characters of Nakia and Okoye feel a touch redundant, both basically just act as glorified sidekicks and one or the other likely would have been sufficient. Martin Freeman’s Everett K. Ross is also a somewhat interesting presence in the movie but is also largely story irrelevant outside of his role as an outsider who can ask questions on behalf of the audience which probably didn’t need extra explaining. The Forest Whitaker and/or the Angela Bassett character also probably could have cut down as we probably only really needed one tribal elder character to explain some of the backstory. It gets to the point where, in the film’s finale, we get three different action scenes being intercut and the one where our hero is fighting the main villain is plainly the least interesting of the three. Still there are a lot of side characters here who do work quite well. I liked Letitia Wright a lot as T’Challa’s younger sister Shuri who acts as a sort of Q figure giving gadgets to our hero and I particularly liked the film’s villain The Killmonger. Michael B. Jordan isn’t necessarily the most physically intimidating villain Marvel has ever put forward what with his youthful demeanor and wacky Jaden Smith haircut, but he has motivations that generally make sense and you can divine a bit or a Trump allegory in the way he uses holes in the Wakandan succession laws to become a dangerous person in power.

On a pure filmmaking standpoint Black Panter is perhaps a bit of a step backwards for Ryan Coogler. There are a couple of cool action scenes here, especially a car chase around the film’s midpoint but these scenes are a bit over-edited and there are a couple of moments of questionable CGI (the rhinos were a bit much). I found the boxing scenes in Creed to better rendered in their simplicity, but perhaps that’s inherent to making big action scenes in Marvel movies. I’m not exactly sure where I’d rank the movie within the annals of the MCU, especially given that Marvel has been varying things up lately and these comparisons have become a bit harder to make. Visually it’s pretty high up there but maybe not as high up there as Doctor Strange, as a thriller narrative it’s also up there but maybe not as high as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and in terms of action it’s fairly high up there but maybe not as high as The Avengers. Still there is an x-factor here that cannot be ignored; we simply haven’t seen an African science fiction movie like this before and that isn’t something to be ignored. That’s something that sets it apart from last year’s “glass ceiling breaking” superhero movie Wonder Woman, which really didn’t do anywhere near as much in its imagining of a matriarchal society. I’m only really able to ride the hype train on this thing so far, at the end of the day it’s a bit messy, but the things it does right it does very right.

**** out of Five

Dracula

The reason critics have short-term memory is because they compare everything to Iron Man and The Avengers, the true standouts in this franchise. Who remembers Incredible Hulk or Iron Man 2 or Thor or Captain America or Iron Man 3 or Thor 2 or Avengers 2 or Ant-Man? And movies like Guardians feel like their own thing. The Captain America sequels blur in with the Avengers one. So when critics are wowed it's because their mind is traveling back all the way to 2008.

... yeah... that's my point. They're easily impressed by Homecoming, Ragnarok and Panther because that's what they're comparing it too. If they compared everything to The Dark Knight they wouldn't be gushing so much.

That's what separates critics, fanboys and everyone else. We can't get overly excited about Wonder Woman and Black Panther because we know the genre has offered WAY superior movies. But critics and fanboys live in a bubble.

Whoa geez Vader, take it easy with the racism will you?

I liked it, Definitely not the most political Marvel film I have seen. That belongs to Winter Soldier and Civil War. But it had moments where it didn't shy away from the world and Wakanda as a nation of African Americans.

I'm definitely interested to see where they go from here, since there will be a sequel. I really hope they can get Micheal B Jordon back, I really liked him as the villain here. He seemed more interesting than T'challa.

9/10

lol



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