Review of Black Panther (2018) by Mahbubali92 — 18 Feb 2018

- The first structural problem with the story is that the first half up until Killmonger (LOL @ that name) shows up is a pointless head fake. We don't care about "Ulysses Klaw" or what he did 30 years before the movie starts, so hunting him and his 5lb slab of MacGuffinite isn't an interesting or constructive motivation. Its only purpose is to set up the Shocking Twist where Killmonger emerges as the real villain with a totally separate villain agenda of his own, at which point the real movie begins. Not an effective use of runtime.

- The second problem is that Chadwick Boseman (LOL at this name too, also I'm 99% sure this guy is just a palette swap of Chiwetel Ejiofor) doesn't really have a character arc or any internal conflict. On this front the movie compares unfavorably to the somewhat similar Thor, which was still pretty meh but at least forced its title character to grow and develop. The decision Boseman makes at the end of the movie to open Wakanda up to the world is arbitrary, and his very sensible initial reasons for refusing to do so are never addressed.

- The thing that jumped out at me most about the aesthetics is the way they deliberately avoided making the Wakandans sophisticated and civilized in any way other than their technology. Other than the sci-fantasy trappings they are 100% face-painted, ritual-scarified, garishly-dressed, bone-in-nose, ancestor-worshiping, ape-hooting (yes, Man-Ape is in the movie, though they never call him by that name) savages straight out of the opening of Zulu. It's very cargo cult, and leads to bizarre moments like the ending battle where some people are fighting with high-tech pulse rifles and fighter drones while others do melee combat with ordinary spears and yet others fight with RHINO CAVALRY. Ultimately though none of the Wakandan technology is any more impressive than the SHIELD helicarrier or the stuff Tony Stark has been building in his garage for the last 10 years.

- There's lots of blurry, weightless, underwhelming CGI, especially in the big final setpiece. Some of the Black Panther stuff didn't look much better than the original Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movie.

- Marvel heroes vary a lot in how powerful they are portrayed, and in this case the guy is just good at gymnastics and kang fu and has a bulletproof suit. Makes for stale fight scenes, especially since for 2 of them he doesn't even have his suit or powers available. Say what you will about Ant-Man and Dr Strange, they at least had visually interesting and creative action.

- "Killmonger" is one of the better villains the MCU has had (a low bar), mostly because he's just about the only guy in the movie with a personality. Still, Michael B. Jordan has yet to top the naturalism of his performance as a low-level drug dealer in season 1 of The Wire. In case you were curious his big villainous plot is to usurp the throne of Wakanda and distribute its technology to black folk around the world so they can use it to kill whitey (after he seizes power the rest of the noble, enlightened Wakandans just shrug and go along with his plan, because the script requires it). I can just about guarantee there are SJW types writing articles right now arguing that he is the true hero of the movie.

- There are snarky little digs at whites sprinkled throughout, but less than I expected. The main thing that sticks in my mind is the smugness that gets directed at whites who ignorantly mistake Wakandans for typical Africans and not SECRET CYBER-KANGZ. They also take a limp little shot at Trump in the final UN speech where a character talks about needing to "build bridges, not barriers".

- Final thought: the metaphysics of the Marvel universe are really screwed up at this point. Advanced galaxy-spanning alien civilizations are real, Norse gods are real (though they're technically just more aliens), ancient African animistic voodoo spirits are real, Eastern hippie stoner magic is real, superhuman AI is real, hyper-powerful reality-warping space gems are real, secret 80-year-old Nazi conspiracies are real, and of course Kangz are real as real can be, bigot. They've long since given up pretending any of this hangs together coherently. Compared to the painstaking way Nolan managed the setting of the Dark Knight movies or Snyder handled the Man of Steel movies, it really makes the unwieldy, spackled-over nature of the MCU stand out.