Saw Black Panther over the weekend. I liked it a lot. But I didn't love it. Overall, I felt like it was "just another Marvel movie," which is to say that it was entertaining and very good in most respects, but not great. And that's fine. And to hold it to any higher standard is perhaps a bit unfair. But at the same time, I also felt like the movie tried to be more than just the typical Marvel film, so I kind of can't help but hold it to a slightly higher standard. It's hard to take the movie at just face value when it is aspiring to be something more.
**********SPOILERS BELOW************
What didn't work, or didn't work as well as I hoped:
-Killmonger: He was a pretty solid villain. But from some of the things I had heard, I expected more. He was an extremist, a Black nationalist, and the product of his father being killed in what he clearly sees as a murder, and his killer, a flawed hero, wants to see as something more justified. That alone makes for a pretty good character. But for someone supposedly as calculating and longsuffering to achieve the long-term goal as he was supposed to be, he also came across as brash and making poor decisions at times, which didn't seem to fit. I felt like he also knew far too much about the intimate details of the inner workings of Wakanda. This would have been fine if he had had his father with him later in life. But he didn't. And his father wouldn't have told him so much at such a young age. His big plan also seemed a bit too far-fetched in how it was executed. Him taking over the throne was fine. But his grander plot to arm insurgents all over the globe and instantly make Wakanda a super power seemed too over the top and not well-planned.
Some of the other character motivations also seemed lame and unconvincing as well. For example, W'Kabi's flip to the "dark side" was too extreme. His motivations were obviously on display, and were ultimately somewhat noble. But the execution and the extremes he went to just didn't feel convincing.
Another example is M'Baku deciding to send his army. I mean, I think everyone over the age of 10 in that theater knew after the scene at the Jarabi mountain stronghold that M'Baku was going to bring his army in at the 11th hour to turn the tide and help save the day. But, especially for a movie that tried so hard to have such a huge social conscience, that whole sequence seemed like a missed opportunity that needed more. There wasn't enough for me to see any inner conflict in M'Baku sufficient to send his men in. It could have been so much better of T'Challa would have gone just a bit further in that dialog and said something like, "I have been wrong, and the kings before me have been wrong. I do not represent my tribe. I do not represent the four united tribes. I represent all of us. We need your voice and the voice of the Jabari as well. You deserve a place at the table as equals. Come down from your mountain stronghold and assume your rightful place as equals." Or something like that. Instead, it just kinda came across as, "a REALLY bad dude has taken the throne and everything that comes with it, and if you don't help me, he'll come for you next." That's all well and good, but I just wanted, well, more.
The action sequences also looked a bit TOO video-gamish at times. This USUALLY doesn't bother me. But it is distracting when it takes me out of the moment, which happened here a couple of times.
That said, I come back to the fact that I still enjoyed the film. Overall, it was well done. I enjoyed that it had a conscience, more than most of the other Marvel films, and the message it tried to develop. The sets, and just about everything else about the movie, were stunning and just flat out gorgeous. There was such beauty in the way everything was constructed, including the characters themselves. And it felt really authentic. I was feeling early '90s Oakland (which I am intimately familiar with). I was feeling Korea (although it took some serious suspension of belief to go along with the idea of the only three Black people in an exclusively Asian club in Asia being able to maintain anything resembling a low profile). I was feeling Wakanda. And I loved all of that. The story itself was also pretty good (although, again, the execution of Killmonger's bigger plan felt too overblown and Bond supervillain-esque). Overall, good film. I enjoyed it.
Topic: Marvel's Movie/TV Universe v2 (SPOILERS) (Read 251053 times)
