Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) 2018

So I was kind of excited to see this movie despite my growing exhaustion with comic book movies. This movie got stellar reviews and it is always nice to see diversity in Hollywood. And then I saw the movie…

Okay so my biggest problem with the movie is probably with the Black Panther himself. He is far too overpowered. The man has super strength and agility and wears a vibranium suit (the same stuff as Captain America’s shield) essentially making him unstoppable. Seriously, nothing can penetrate or break vibranium. Now I know some people will come back saying other superheroes are overpowered like Superman and Vision. True but comics and films either try to power up the bad guys or put innocents in danger. Here in this movie, Black Panther is simply fighting bad guys with weapons we know can’t affect him so all of his action scenes are completely boring. Also the character of Panther/T’Challa is rather boring himself and the movie struggles to find any real inner conflict for him.

The movie has a lot of world building elements which I usually love but to me didn’t work. Wakanda is obviously about African culture and symbols which would be fine if it didn’t conflict with what we are being told. We are told for example that Wakanda is essentially lightyears more civilized and advanced than any other nation on Earth. And yet to determine their king they have trial by combat to the death. Say what you want about Democracy but I’ll still take it over any form which allows a man called Killmonger to rule. And despite having technology that would make Tony Stark salivate, people still fight with spears and live in mud huts? You see how the two elements just don’t gel?

The story is flawed, has holes, and is rather oddly paced. The big baddie Killmonger, who is one of the more interesting villains, is almost not in the film and we instead get Andy Serkis for much of the run time doing a dreadful performance. As I mentioned before the action is dull due to the lack of tension and the special effects are shockingly dated. I was getting Spider-man levels of dated CGI in this.

Overall the movie was just rather dull and uninteresting. That doesn’t mean I’m done with the character. I didn’t like Captain America’s first movie and I loved the two sequels so there is hope. But to me, Black Panther is on the lower tier of Marvel movies along side Doctor Strange and Thor/Thor 2.