Black Panther (2018)

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Black Panther (2018)

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun Feb 18, 2018 9:51 am

Amazingly, we didn't have an existing thread about Black Panther, the first Marvel film of 2018. I'm still going to write a review in my thread -- probably, maybe, I've got a lot on the backlog, we'll see -- but I might as well start a discussion since FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER I managed to catch one of these blockbusters remotely near the release.

Good Stuff
- My absolute favorite thing in the whole movie is the villain: Eric "Killmonger" Stevens, aka Eric Killmonger, aka Michael B. Jordan knocking yet another role out of the park. He's the real star of the show for me. His plan to use Wakanda for forcible social change is sympathetic, relevant, and has room to argue different perspectives on even though he's clearly just intent on destruction by the end; he's a pretty tragic character who's easy to root for despite the fact that he's heartlessly killing scores of people and will condemn more to death if he wins; and he's just so cocky and charming even at his craziest. He has strong similarities to Loki's characterization in the first Thor, but the things that set him apart are enough for me to overlook that. I really, really wish he'd been in more of the movie, because had he been a more centralized presence he might even dethrone Vulture as my favorite Marvel movie villain.

- Wakanda is a really compelling setting that I would have liked to spend more time on. They do such a good job with the architecture, the costume design, the technological aesthetic, the political structure, etc that I just wanted to see more of it. Trips outside to real-world locales felt lame and dry by comparison, because all of the time spent in Korea and London could have been spent developing the internal conflicts and elaborating on certain aspects of the society that are still a little vague by the end. I would gladly have watched the first hour be nothing but political struggles and moral conflicts from T'Challa on the throne, just to see more of this lush world.

- Not really a weak spot in the supporting cast. Everyone has their personal scene-stealer, but while I liked M'Baku well enough, Otoye and her legion of kickass bald warrior-spy women were a real standout for me. I guess I was a little hazy on Forest Whitaker's character even after his importance was revealed, to the point that his death being the key emotional twist of the second act didn't work for me, but he wasn't bad and served his purpose well.

- Hey, Martin Freeman actually gets a lot of things to do as Everett Ross other than be a dull CIA guy! I hate to see his talents wasted, as they too often are, so this was a great showcase for his character to come into his own. He's one of the few sources of comic relief that works semi-well, and his subtle character arc felt natural. He kind of reminded me of Skurge from Thor: Ragnarok, and had he wound up sacrificing himself like Skurge when that jet was shooting his barrier, it would have felt just as earned. I'm actually looking forward to his return appearances now.

- While I'm not that into Kendrick Lamar's music, and so can't examine it in-depth, the soundtrack he composed was certainly unique compared to a lot of its predecessors.

- I liked the fact that by having to mortally injure Killmonger and being denied the chance to save him from succumbing, T'Challa was forced to repeat his father's mistake. While it wasn't necessarily a satisfying end for Killmonger, it was one of the few points where T'Challa felt like a fluid character and the whole "conflicted king" angle actually paid off.

- The whole Wakandan outreach center resolution and the ultimate message (completed by the mid-credits scene) of the importance of working with each other globally for the sake of a brighter future for everyone. Nothing groundbreaking, but in this political climate, it's a necessary moral that's delivered quite well and ties together the themes of the story beautifully. Build bridges, not barriers, morons.


Not Good Stuff
- Unfortunately, T'Challa is a lukewarm element of his own movie, and after being one of my favorite parts of Civil War to boot. Chadwick Boseman does a good job as always, but he felt pretty static for most of the plot and I'm having a tough time pinning down what his character arc was since he remains at "I have to be a good king" mode the whole time. And while his fake-out death was a necessary character beat, it not only kept him out of the plot for the duration of Killmonger's reign -- once again keeping the hero and the villain from building a relationship on the way to the big punch-up -- but it also meant that he spent the whole time unconscious when he could've been fleshing out his character living amongst the outcasts.

- Ryan Coogler definitely stands out as one of the most workmanlike, uncreative directors the MCU has hosted, and I wholly believe people are only praising his work here because Fruitvale Station and Creed rocked. The direction and cinematography are utterly pedestrian, and the action scenes especially fall victim to the kind of chaotic rapid-cutting and lack of effective stage setting that I'd expect out of a stock Hollywood summer action movie. Any scene that's not outdoors or in an otherwise bright setting also suffers from extremely poor lighting and focus, and with all of this combined I often found it hard to keep track of what was going on even in simple setpieces. You only need to look at the opening jungle battle to see this exemplified.

- I'm no stickler for photorealistic CGI, but the effects really needed some more time in the oven, especially toward the end. Big parts of the army battle alternated between gorgeously realistic and looking like an early PS3 cutscene, and the battle between T'Challa and Killmonger was hilariously rubbery. Time constraints? Budget being shaved off slightly for Infinity War? Simple lack of care? Who knows.

- The plot, the plot, the plot... predictable at almost every point, sluggishly paced, and cut together so poorly that the Klaue material and the Killmonger material almost feel like the plot outlines for Black Panther and Black Panther 2 were simply melded into one. One needed far less time to be effective, and the other needed far more. The first hour was a nigh-pointless table-setting drag that cut into a lot of the time that could have been spent on character, world, or thematic development, so the good stuff in the second half felt rushed and anticlimactic. I was entertained while watching it, but it's one of the most heavily flawed narratives in Marvel's recent fold.

- Much as I love Andy Serkis and was looking forward to his role here after the setup in Age of Ultron, I wasn't hot on Ulysses Klaue. He was fun enough, but his hokey-jokey characterization and over-the-top performance didn't mesh with the tone often, and his display of pragmatic intelligence in the introductory heist went nowhere. The transition from him to Killmonger is incredibly jarring to the point of feeling like two different scripts stitched together, and he needlessly sucked up the screentime that should've been used to establish Killmonger more readily.


Really Not Good Stuff
- I like that this movie went with a generally more consistently serious tone than most Marvel movies. It fits the story they're trying to tell and the character dynamics being used to tell it. But in the sparse moments they tried to have quippy comedy, it did not land at all. I can count my chuckles throughout on one hand, and for most of the attempts at gags, even the hyperactive little children in the audience were dead silent. And I don't think I've ever physically, instinctively cringed harder than when Shuri made a "WHAT'RE THOOOSE?" reference long after that stupid, stupid meme has vanished into the ether. Why even bother trying, guys?

- People normally bleed when they get stabbed with claws or impaled by spears. Like, am I crazy? Marvel's films aren't usually this tame, are they? Even when there's not a lot of blood, the non-god-based violence still typically feels like it's happening. Howard Stark got his head nearly caved in a few films ago, remember that? When Killmonger cuts Okoye's throat, it feels like a cheap school play where they just drag the prop in front of her neck and she takes the cue to fall. Not even a bit of darkness, like they gave Klaue's bullet wound. I don't necessarily need to see blood for violence to have weight, but at a point it just feels like you're sticking pins in clay dolls.

- Whose idea was it to cut the movie together so it feels like the main villain -- the most compelling, magnetic character in the movie -- has just over half an hour of cumulative screen time? Killmonger does one cool thing near the start, disappears for half the goddamn runtime while they chase Klaue around, and then pops up and has his story arc rushed through. And then they kill him off just to make it so they can't ever use him again! It was hard for me to root my feelings of him being such a great villain anywhere when he was in the wind for so much of the plot. Even if you needed Klaue to take up time so his death would be important, there was no reason you couldn't have cut back to Killmonger setting up his plans every now and then.


This was not "THE SPECIAL MOST IMPORTANT MOVIE EVER A++ ONLY RACISTS DISLIKE IT" masterpiece numerous sites have propped it up as (and I have to guffaw at the ones saying it "finally breaks the mold" and "puts the entire lineup to shame"). It's good. Not amazing, probably not even in my top ten MCU movies no matter how much I admire about it. It's just really good.

But that's just, like, my opinion, man. This is a movie that warrants discussion.
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby Australia » Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:29 pm

Yeesh, not only did Kleiner beat me to it, he stole my format too. Fuck it, here’s my superior GBU review (I say before reading his to compare, lest I steal an observation or joke, I am just that confident that I’ll be able to lie about its superiority with a straight face once I do read it).

The Good
Wakanda was my favourite part of the movie. The technology, the culture, the structure, the location, everything. I never got bored of that setting. It was great to see a culture other than New York patriotism shine in the Marvel universe. That’s why I love the cosmic stuff in this franchise, seeing all the alien philosophy and stuff.

Cool opening exposition. The cool and the exposition cancel each other out so that leaves us with opening. I don’t think that’s a sentence, but it wasn’t when it was three words either.

Klaue (And Disorder) was really enjoying his crime spree. I liked that. Just a carefree nut laughing his way through heists and casual murder. I was disappointed he died and curious why they bothered breaking him out just to kill him but using his corpse as a Get Into Wakanda Free card was a solid plot point.

As long as we’re on villains, Killmonger, who, come on Dad, what did you expect him to do when he grew up with that name?, ended up being a fleshed out person, albeit with a penchant for killing people unrelated to his cause but cray-cray gonna cray. I wasn’t on board to begin with because he felt like a retread of Zemo in “A Panther killed my parent so I’m going to get a Panther killed” sort of way, but once he got the throne and started dictating about, I was like, okay, this is new. Good villain, but not the best of the MCU bunch so far. (Sidenote: I don’t understand people against MCU villains dying – it prevents sequels just being the exact same battle as before. There are still a couple floating around of varying moral codes, but there’s presumably hundreds of unpicked thorns to choose from and if they run out of ideas, it’s comics so resurrections are hardly out of the question.) My point is, this is the best superhero movie Michael B. Jordan has been in. Trust me.

I really liked Shuri. I’m a Bond fan so Q immediately came to mind, with the obvious difference of her getting on very well with T’Challa while Q can’t stand James (except the new ones where he’s a millennial, I prefer the old dynamic). Gadgets were awesome and she was solid comic relief, even if a few jokes didn’t land. I’m a sucker for a Back to the Future reference.

The Vibrhinoums. Okay, the rhinos probably were not equipped with Vibranium but it’s fun to say.

The message of the movie is great. There’s not much more I can say because the movie said it all.

He seems to have an invisible plane, oh, and then he steers and it falls straight into the earth. There just isn’t enough bad Genesis-related Black Panther gags. Well, there wasn’t until this one Philled the gap. In fact, now there’s too many. It’s something you just can’t trust. It’s something mysterious. Why did I get this song stuck in my head on purpose?

This is usually the part where I just leave a series of quotes I loved from the movie with no context to fill this section out to show I really did enjoy myself before jumping into dumping on it but I can’t think of any off the top of my head, except for maybe that one about being a good man doesn’t make you a good king but this place is usually left for one-liners. Maybe the dialogue isn’t memorable in this movie.

"We're vegetarian" and that line about healing white boys. Yes, I knew I could do it!


The Bad
The dialogue isn’t memorable in this movie. Maybe I’m just used to the series being an action-comedy but there weren’t a whole lot of verbal or physical gags. There have been some MCU films that have been flat out comedies so I wouldn’t mind them doing a straight action flick but…

The action. Outside of a few decent combat scenes, the only big stuff was the car chase and the casino shootout. Most Marvel movies have awesome set-pieces, no matter how contrived, as an action scene you’ll remember that movie for. I can’t think of an epic scene I’ll remember this movie for.

I haven’t seen Civil War for a while – probably due for a rewatch, it’s in my top 3 of this franchise – but I seem to recall T’Challa having more personality. But I remember Ross having less of a personality, so maybe I’m just tired. I enjoyed both characters in this so I'm not sure where I was going with this.

Guardians 2 already did space drones piloted by a virtual copy. The Wakanda drone was a different design since it’s Vibranium, can shift into a car or anything, the heroes used it this time and the drone pilot was being shot at so it was different enough to be cool and entertaining but it still felt kind of derivative. Having said that, Iron Man’s suits only have slightly different upgrades each movie and that doesn’t bother me so this negative may be a bit of a reach.

One of the things that bug me about the inconsistent but ultimately fine Arrowverse shows is that all of them are always on comms all the time. One or two shows would be okay but all five have a base where someone’s on a computer feeding the heroes instructions and I just wish there were different formulas for each of the formulaic shows. It would also mean the crossovers would be formulas clashing instead of merging but I’m getting off track so back to the franchise I’m actually invested in. (Not literally, if I owned Disney stock I would not be eating canned leftovers because I spent all my wages on movie tickets and I’m getting off-track again, aren’t I?) They didn’t do it a lot in Black Panther, generally just the spy stuff, where it made sense but I did kind of groan when they brought the communicators out. I know, it wouldn’t make sense in the 21st century to not keep in contact in a high-stakes situation if you have the means to, but it gets old from a viewing experience. Again, I’m sure the Avengers talk on comms but those movies are every three years so I hope this trope doesn’t leak into all of the solo films as well.

I’m not a fan of the off-screen change of mind. The go-to example of this is Captain Boomerang in Suicide Squad where his punchline of leaving the second he gets the chance is undercut by him rocking up no less than ten seconds later when they’re heading for the final showdown. Now to Black Panther’s credit, they did show both Okoye and W’Kabi’s change of mind (one out of honour, the other fear), but what compelled the dude that worshipped the Gorilla to send his army to help? Just boredom? Of course, he could always call upon that favour a few movies down the line that justifies the scene so whatever. Or maybe I blinked and missed a shot of him seeing the battle from his base, though how he could see it from all the way over there, I don’t know.

The romance was an afterthought but it probably took up less than a minute of total screentime so it’s not that distracting.

I was late on the Bucky bandwagon but when he kicked that dude off the bike and rode off in one swift moment a couple years back, I was on board. I wished he'd gotten more than that non-name-drop in Black Panther. He could have helped in that battle. I'm sure he was in the last-credit scene I didn't stick around for because I mean, he's on Wakanda, why wouldn't he at least have a cameo in a movie set there?

I don’t mind standalone movies in the MCU but outside of a few references here and there and the fact that the world changing over the last decade is what prompted a lot of the plot, there’s nothing that pushes the story forward, which was fine in Guardians 2 and Homecoming, in the middle of a phase (Asgard going kaput is probably going to change things a bit so Ragnarok gets a pass) but I would have thought the movie before Infinity War would shake things up. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing, more of a neutral thing, but I don’t do that kind of section.

Both the end of the movie and the mid-credits sting was T’Challa giving the same smug ‘wouldn’t you like to know’ smile to a question. What an odd choice. Is smug wouldn’t you like to know facial expression his catchphrase in the comics?


The Ugly
You set up a magnetic hovertrain and you didn’t have the final fight on top of it? Fuck you, ya tease.


Black Panther is a solid movie and the best I’ve been to so far this year, but to be fair the only other movie I’ve been to this year was the mind-numbing The Commuter. As far as the MCU, it’s definitely the weakest of the last six movies but I really liked Ant Man, even if I do wish Edgar Wright’s vision was allowed to breathe (eyes don’t breathe, lungs do, but I don’t have time to teach anatomy to my sentences), so it’s a credit to this movie that I didn’t say it’s the weakest of the last seven. It probably didn’t help that they showed the Infinity War trailer right before the movie and adrenaline started pumping through me that wasn’t really matched in the following two hours.

Ah, the few weeks of relaxation before I “have to” do this all over again for Jessica Jones. How I will promise to cherish you, only to only remember to cherish you after the time period is over, leaving my promise obsolete.

Oh, and Kleiner, as punishment for pre-stealing my review format, it is my pleasure to inform you that if you thought a Gotham show without Batman was a shit premise, they're making a Metropolis show without Superman. True story.
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun Feb 18, 2018 7:03 pm

Australia wrote:Oh, and Kleiner, as punishment for pre-stealing my review format, it is my pleasure to inform you that if you thought a Gotham show without Batman was a shit premise, they're making a Metropolis show without Superman. True story.


I first processed this as "a Krypton show without Superman" and was about to smugly inform you that I already knew about that.

Then I looked it up.

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I really have to resume my Gotham shit
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sun Feb 18, 2018 8:21 pm

KleinerKiller wrote:"THE SPECIAL MOST IMPORTANT MOVIE EVER A++ ONLY RACISTS DISLIKE IT"


That was Blade my good sir. Huzzah!
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby Marcuse » Sun Feb 18, 2018 11:43 pm

NathanLoiselle wrote:
KleinerKiller wrote:"THE SPECIAL MOST IMPORTANT MOVIE EVER A++ ONLY RACISTS DISLIKE IT"


That was Blade my good sir. Huzzah!


Some motherfuckers always trying to ice skate uphill.
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby BROWNRECLUSE » Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:03 pm

Marcuse wrote:
NathanLoiselle wrote:
KleinerKiller wrote:"THE SPECIAL MOST IMPORTANT MOVIE EVER A++ ONLY RACISTS DISLIKE IT"


That was Blade my good sir. Huzzah!


Some motherfuckers always trying to ice skate uphill.


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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby Aquila89 » Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:28 pm

Black Panther is making insane amounts of money in the US. It already grossed over $500 million, making it the second highest-grossing MCU movie domestically (behind The Avengers). And it actually has a good chance to outgross even The Avengers. I know there was a lot of hype around it but still, who would've predicted this?
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby DoglovingJim » Sun Mar 11, 2018 2:07 pm

Preferred that new Thor film.
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby Rockalbert » Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:29 am

I haven't seen it but heard lot things about this movie.
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Re: Black Panther (2018)

Postby iMURDAu » Mon May 07, 2018 4:13 pm

I get it. This movie wants me to be pro-immigration. After 2.25 hours, I get it. I'm weary from the beating but I understand.

Good grief this movie has all the stereotypes and tropes. Lion King opening, don't freeze up out there, guess what he froze, purple drank, being racially profiled in a literal Korean market, black on black violence galore, a token white boy who performs admirably, 2 people who are obviously in love but just can't until one is presumed dead, EDIT: how could I possibly forget the Lexus commercial, and a speech that should've been "I'm Iron Man" in style but came off preachy and was about as subtle as screaming into a bullhorn at a political rally.

This movie was a twist of the Lion King's plot.
Spoiler: show
Imagine Scar gets killed by Mufasa due to Scar going against the Kingdom and Scar had a son that is banished instead of Simba. Simba gets raised to be king and Scar's kid comes back for the throne. Did I just summarize Black Panther that easily? Throw in a James Bond scene and a Q type character and you can ripple the water but I can see the whole pond yo. Killmonger would've been much more useful in the MCU alive then dead imo. You've got Captain America flanked by Bucky and Falcon who can take his place, you've gotta have room for more than T'Challa as the Black Panther. Especially since he dead now or so we're to assume, I guess, idk it'll all be retconned in future movies anyway.


I too prefer the new Thor film. It was light in tone and wasn't trying to be taken seriously. Black Panther wasn't dark but wanted to be serious.
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