[Brujah]

Deciding if I will watch in 3D or standard for tonight.

[Macros]

ah FUCK!

had a full review of black panther written and it got swallowed by a miss click.

fuckity fuck

[Macros]

sigh

ok. this will be shorter

right, first off - if this wasn't an MCU film, it would Tank financially.
and not because RACISTS, but because its a blockbuster budget film that is very very average. (and ok a bit of RACISTS)

now now, put down your pitchforks and torches.
I am aware of everything it is, and what it does. Yes, blockbuster budget, tent pole movie, all black main cast, rich developed african nation, very brave by the studios, bla bla bla.

pish tosh, its not brave by the studio, MCU could release a Vision rom com now and it would still make money.

Ok, lets strip away the connotations of what its doing on the race front and just treat it as a film (difficult to seperate granted, as race is very much a part of what the film is, but try, just for me)

Its an average MCU film, not touching thhe top 5 at all, not even troubling them.
Pacing is blegh, the action is stale and boring. The attempts at levity generally fall flat, and some of the performances are just crap (looking at you Forrest Whitaker, you're much better than that)

spoilerific gripes

Spoiler

MArtin Freeman was alright, but what would have lifted his performance and characters role above that would have been dying. This is why the studio is NOT brave, they don't really take many risks here, you could maybe say that black panther kills, so un super hero like, but he doesnt really, not the way Wolverine does. back to bilbo, he nails the last cargo ship, knowing he is going to die, gets hit. if they feel the need, give him a death scene with the annoying sister. this is a further catalyst for wakandas coming out into the public and helping the world be a better place.
A lot of flat, unconvincing performances.
and fucking BAD so so BAD CGI RHINOs. telegraphed in from early in the film but still so fucking badly executed, and fucking dumb.
the "civil war" was lame and weak
Wakanda is very pretty, and the tech being thrown about is cool and impressive, but it suffers from Asgard syndrome, I see lasers, give the royal guard lasers, I dont care if your spear can punch through a tank, give them fucking lasers.
the plot by killmonger, weak. I dont care that the spears you are sending your wardogs can stop a tank. can they stop a regular soldier with an SA80? a marine with an m50 or whatever the standard issue is? no. unless you are sending them all silly purple flowers and cat suits, don't fucking bother.

Jordan and Serkis DID do a good job, and probably give us the best MCU villains we've had since........ well MCU has a perennial villain problem, excepting Loki they've all kind of sucked.
so thats a plus.

but over all, blegh, its an average MCU film, if not MCU probably a substandard sci fi action film with poor pacing, average performances, bad CGI in places and boring/ dull action scenes. which given its budget mean it would be considered a flop, if not for the MCU banner luring the crowds in like a man in a brown van with a bag of candy.

apologies for grammar and spelling, this was the second time typing it out, and on a new keyboard.

eta - spoiler tag broken

eeta - I think the impact of the black cast thing is probably lost on a lot of the rest of the world, definitely is in Ireland, none of the ones here get why its a big deal when I try to explain it to them

eeeta - I await the nerdgasm of hate coming my way, be such to go clean the cream from your panties before sitting down to type

This post has been edited by Macros: 16 February 2018 - 11:13 PM

[amphibian]

Macros, your review is the exact "doesn't connect to this" thing Film Critics Hulk talks about in this article: https://filmcrithulk...rs-right-thing/

[Macros]

that's a very good review and article. I've never seen or heard of Do the Right thing, so I had to google it to get some context for his comparisons.

I don't think it alters my complaints with the film, where he saw excellent performances I saw mediocre acting (excepting, as I said already, Micheal B Jordan who was good), where he saw a fun Rhino I saw a really badly CGI'd mess that was just crap and silly. As an action/ superhero film it fell flat for me, I apologise if this incenses the masses but it is what it is. I am not arguing with its importance and/or its message, I'm saying I didn't think it was a great movie.

[polishgenius]

I thought it was cracking, even apart from all the positive messaging- which is important, and well done here- it's just a film full of joy of life.

It's also the rare Marvel film that has not just a strong villain - two, in fact!- but a supporting cast that matches the main character. It's almost more of an ensemble piece than a single-character story and everyone in the ensemble was, imo, fantastic. Thor 3 did that too and both movies were all the better for it.

Spoiler

Especially Shuri. She fucking rocks.

[Silencer]

Yup, loved it. Absolutely excellent on all fronts. Not quite Thor 3 in terms of humour but it had another focus that it delivered on in spades.

[Brujah]

It was good, but I went in somewhat biased, I like C. Boseman.

[QuickTidal]

I thought it was utterly phenomenal! Like easily in the top 3 MCU movies ever. I will post later with a more in depth review...but man, I walked out thinking it was amazing start to finish with very few (if any) stumbles.

Boseman was poise and perfection....and Letitia Wright may have stolen every scene she was in as Shuri!

EDIT: I should add...it almost doesn't feel beholden to the MCU like some of the other standalone films do...which makes it that much better.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 19 February 2018 - 01:35 AM

[amphibian]

This movie manages to move past some clunky things and scenes that don't quite work to become something that is genuinely important and brilliant.

Going spoilers

Spoiler

The Vibranium car in Korea makes zero sense. The expense/time cost of making it and shipping it to Korea is ludicrously dumb.
It is surprisingly easy to disable a car without shredding the car itself (hit the road in front of it or push it into a building and skedaddle), so the car shouldn't be guarded with anything beyond the energy shields W'Kabi's group had.
This is even without accounting for Klaue's Vibranium weapon that did shred the car itself. Cleaning that up,
getting all the pieces etc is going to be such a hassle.

Nakia is a bad spy and not a good team player. She blew the casino scene and never faced repercussions for that. Dumb stuff.

But what was brilliant about this movie was that there was a lot to connect to with most of the characters. We could readily understand their motives - although Killmonger didn't seem to have a coherent plan for actual world domination. His pain drove a storyline that made sense and Sterling K Brown lifted that story into true meaningfulness with the vision scene in which they talk about the past and what they wanted.

I also very much liked that true apologies and fixing the wrongs of past featured heavily. The precipice scene was extremely powerful and Killmonger speaking about slaves and imprisonment was unusually good. This movie also somewhat addressed my major criticism of Superman - why doesn't Superman share Krypton tech with the world? He should junk the journalist career and become a Parker Industries type of character bc his tech can save billions and do things like fix the ozone layer.

The big laughs come from Shuri and M'Baku, but everyone has humor, pain, anger, and happiness to display. Nobody is a caricature. Although making a white CIA agent a critical point of saving the world was kinda dumb. Fuck the CIA.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 19 February 2018 - 03:23 PM

[stone monkey]

I think it was a middle-of-the-road Marvel Movie in quality. Not up there with their best, but hardly their worst. I certainly enjoyed it for what it was.

If I'm going to be picky... and I am, I think it hews slightly too closely to the formula for these movies - Marvel may need to mix it up in future to stop things getting stale (I'd like to see Infinity War go unapologetically Cosmic, for instance) - and the last act is basically a mashup of the final acts of The Lion King and The Phantom Menace. However, it's competently made (and not as flat looking in the cinematography as a number of the previous Marvel films, and they obviously got the lighting right for black skin - a particular bugbear of mine), the design is beautiful, the acting is mostly good (although I did think the actress playing Shuri wasn't all that good - something about her line delivery seemed off to me), and the cast look great (Lupita is lovely, as always, and I'd pay actual money to look like Chadwick Boseman). It does succeed, for the most part, in what it sets out to do and doesn't outstay its welcome.

The most interesting thing about it is probably the meta- point (much like it is with Wonder Woman) of how (or whether) its success will move Hollywood forward with making big budget, mass market, movies that aren't basically just about some white guys saving the world. I guess we'll have to see how that one plays out.

All well and good.... But it's very obviously a film whose message (as exemplified in the villain's motive rant) is aimed squarely at African Americans. Which is fine as far as it goes. He has a point... right up to when his actions and words kind of obviate that point; which is why he's the villain, I guess.

Spoiler

While I get the sentiment, obviously, Killmonger's final line about being buried at sea like his ancestors who jumped off ship rather than live a life of bondage makes no logical sense; they'd have to have actually survived The Middle Passage in order to even become his ancestors, surely? It made me twitch a little, anyway...

The rest of us in the African Diaspora do get a mention, but that seems like almost an afterthought on the part of the screenwriters imo. Which plays a little into some thoughts I've had recently about the way some African Americans seem (to my mind) to view blackness that isn't itself African American. But that's another discussion, I think.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 19 February 2018 - 11:13 PM

[amphibian]

I think the point of Killmonger's last statement was to both center the pain of the descendants of slaves in the meta narrative and for him inside the narrative to connect to someone closer to his desired ethos and also other than the Wakandans who rejected (and eventually killed) him.

I also think this movie features a cast who genuinely change over time (beyond Okoye and Shuri). The T'Challa at the end is not the same T'Challa who started the movie. That is different than the standard Marvel format in which the heroes basically walk out of the end conflagration exactly the same as they were at the beginning - reaffirmed and ready to be served up to the audience. That didn't happen in this movie and T'Challa starts an effort to reshape the entire world in a nearly Dr Doom like way at the end.

[stone monkey]

I think I disagree slightly with the last point. The Marvel movies are almost always (barring anything to do with Captain America; he's always right, even when his antagonists aren't necessarily wrong) about about the hero Learning A Lesson; Thor, Tony, Peter Quill, Stephen Strange, even Scott Lang, learn to be A Better Person (or maybe a different person) by the end of their initial outings, at least... T'Challa's journey is more transformative, from a worldbuilding perspective, because he's the Sovereign of a Nation State and because of the nature of that State.

Killmonger's statement is totally easy to parse within and without the narrative frame (and it has a very obvious Malcolm X -style ring to it, that should go down really well with an African American audience), but as I said, makes no logical sense to me, thats all. Which is nitpicky in the extreme, I suppose. But that's how my mind works.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 20 February 2018 - 01:44 AM

[QuickTidal]

Wanted to organize a better review than my initial comments.

Spoiler

First and foremost what I noticed most about this movie is its standalone nature. If this wasn’t an MCU movie, connected to the rest, it would still be one hell of a movie in its own right. I think other than the two Guardians movies (which pretty much operate as standalone space operas), only WINTER SOLIDER is also able to function as a great standalone (it’s very much an action-y political thriller). BLACK PANTHER stands above in the same regard. I would have been just as blow away by this if it was not an MCU film.

The acting, the direction, the score, the costuming (oh sweet gods the costuming!), and script are all top notch. If I had a minor complaint with the acting department…Jordan (who was great in CREED), it’s that while surrounded by such other incredible talent, his more “villainy” speeches felt a tad overwrought. In his quieter scenes, he’s fine…but when he’s shouting about being king now and shit…it’s a bit OTT. But again, I think that comes down to the sheer level of thespian that is occurring around him on various levels.

Coogler is an amazing director, and I’m hoping this flick pushes his star even higher as we need more films by him. Hell, I watched this behind the scenes thing about the casino brawl, and it’s explained that there are so many subtle nods in the sequence to everything the movie is about (T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia are all wearing one colour each of the pan african flag and Klaw is wearing the blue of colonization, for example)…he’s one of those directors who thinks about everything in a sequence, which to me is the mark of a gifted filmmaker as a lot of them don’t do that.

Boseman pulls out such an amazingly worthy performance. He’s charismatic, deft, and solid in every scene he’s in and carries the film with ease…but is also able to pull the emotional heft of some of the later scenes with ease (not just the final with Erik on the cliff, but earlier when he’s telling his father he’s not ready to go on without him, or when he demands to know why they left a child (Erik) behind). I think the MCU has introduced some characters who aren’t quite able to stand amongst the big leaders of the MCU (Ant-Man, Hulk, Spidey ect.)…but shit, when this is all over, the two leaders….like TRUE leaders…are T’Challa and Steve. You watch T’Challa and he pulls off not just the superhero, but the statesman and king as well.

Shuri was perfection. As one of my more favourite characters from the BP comics, seeing her depicted and played with such aplomb by Letitia Wright? Amazing. Like every scene she is in, I loved. Though one of my fave scenes is when T’Challa comes in with sandals and she reprimands him for being in her lab like that. Also, I want Shuri and Rocket to be in a scene together (in Avengers IW or Avengers 4) both SCHOOLING the Science Bros. of Tony and Bruce. That would be amazing. And let’s face facts, Wakandan tech is WAY above what Tony & Bruce are messing with.

Winston Duke was also great as M’Baku….especially in the latter scene “Are you done?"

Speaking of Wakanda, what an amazingly realized setting. I’ve seen it depicted a number of ways in the comics, but they pulled out all the stops in the film. It feels lived in, and true to the notion of an place that has seen a thousand years or more as a civilization. The costuming stopped at nothing to make diverse, traditional in a lot of ways, and yet quite futuristic (very afrofuturist)…Shuri’s wardrobe is the biggest crossover between the two modes, and it comes off like the kind of items you might see on a runway at Paris Fashion week. If the costuming in this film doesn’t in an award, I’ll be astonished. Speaking of costumes…T’Challa wears a plain black hoodie after the tussle in Busan….and I wants it. I watched the scene thinking…I NEEDS me that hoodie!

Also, I’m not sure what people are complaining about with regards to the CGI. I thought it looked great throughout. Even the last battle sequence with the rhino’s was fine. There is nothing there to take me out of the sequence. Looked fine and dandy to me.

amphibian, on 19 February 2018 - 03:00 PM, said:

Going spoilers

Spoiler

The Vibranium car in Korea makes zero sense. The expense/time cost of making it and shipping it to Korea is ludicrously dumb.
It is surprisingly easy to disable a car without shredding the car itself (hit the road in front of it or push it into a building and skedaddle), so the car shouldn't be guarded with anything beyond the energy shields W'Kabi's group had.
This is even without accounting for Klaue's Vibranium weapon that did shred the car itself. Cleaning that up,
getting all the pieces etc is going to be such a hassle.

Spoiler

Uh....you got this way wrong Amph. The car is not Vibranium. It's a normal car that Shuri commandeers remotely through the neck-bead link, and a hard-light interface for her in Wakanda. There is no vibranium in the thing. In the comics T'Challa has used a similar tech to comandeer a 747.

amphibian, on 19 February 2018 - 03:00 PM, said:

Spoiler

Nakia is a bad spy and not a good team player. She blew the casino scene and never faced repercussions for that. Dumb stuff.

Spoiler

This is not what happened though. The cover is blown by Okoye up on the top tier of the Casino when she speaks isiXhosa through her comm bead, and one of Klaue's South African hitmen notices it being spoken....to which Okoye says "I've been made." and pulls out her spear to start the fight. Nakia doesn't do anything before that other than express the desire to WANT to hit out at them...which Okoye is trying to calm out of her.

amphibian, on 19 February 2018 - 03:00 PM, said:

Spoiler

although Killmonger didn't seem to have a coherent plan for actual world domination. His pain drove a storyline that made sense and Sterling K Brown lifted that story into true meaningfulness with the vision scene in which they talk about the past and what they wanted.

Spoiler

But I mean, wasn't his goal pretty simple? Introduce Wakandan tech to the outside world? Other than taking the Wakandan kingdom for himself, I think that was the extent of his plans...get tech out....even the playing field for everyone.

amphibian, on 19 February 2018 - 03:00 PM, said:

Spoiler

The precipice scene was extremely powerful and Killmonger speaking about slaves and imprisonment was unusually good.

Spoiler

This was a wonderful scene that really solidified making Killmonger the sympathetic villain that he is, and that's a rarity in the MCU thus far. They've not made many villains with such a valid reason (or valid reasons) to do what they do. It also shows T'Challa for the leader he is by not wanting to kill the aggressor...but having that choice taken from him.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 20 February 2018 - 03:05 PM

[amphibian]

The car that Okoye and Nakia were in was made of vibranium. The bullets sparking off it without effect was the establishment point and they even talk about it. That is the car Klaue broke into a bajillion pieces with his drill repurposed into a weapon. The car Shuri drives is another car entirely.

Okoye also had to speak Xhosa because Nakia was about to blow their collective cover by being a bad spy (being impulsive and about to take direct action against Klaue). Sort of like how in sports the person who got beat for a goal might not actually be the one who screwed up, but the person before that. Nakia is also a terrible spy because she doesn't believe in the Wakandan philosophy before the end of the movie. She is very clearly an interventionist and also well known to be important to the crown prince of Wakandan. She should not be in the field for any sane covert ops director. But hey, movie logic.

N'Jadaka specifically said that he was going to establish a new world order with black people at the top. It was explicitly said and he moved immediately to arm the War Dogs to start revolutions aimed at exactly that.

Forest Whittaker's accent is the worst thing about this movie.

Also liked the underground railroad being a very subtle detail. And that the explanation of Wakanda in the beginning was N'Jobu telling it to N'Jadaka.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 20 February 2018 - 04:22 PM, said:

The car that Okoye and Nakia were in was made of vibranium. The bullets sparking off it without effect was the establishment point and they even talk about it. That is the car Klaue broke into a bajillion pieces with his drill repurposed into a weapon. The car Shuri drives is another car entirely.

Was it? Ah okay I missed that line then.
EDIT: I looked it up...according to the script the car disintegrates when Klaue hits it with his weapon. Which I guess is why Nakia slides up in the pilot seat and nothing else. Perhaps this is a failsafe to prevent Wakandan tech from getting into the wrong hands by having it disintegrate on attacks from an energy weapon? Shrug, I dunno.....but it works for me as it seems like the kind of thing Shuri might build into a Bond car?

amphibian, on 20 February 2018 - 04:22 PM, said:

N'Jadaka specifically said that he was going to establish a new world order with black people at the top. It was explicitly said and he moved immediately to arm the War Dogs to start revolutions aimed at exactly that.

Okay, so what's so difficult about that plan? Seems pretty straightforward. He was looking for cause and effect. I'm not sure why you think it wasn't a good plan because it was more broadly scoped?

amphibian, on 20 February 2018 - 04:22 PM, said:

Forest Whittaker's accent is the worst thing about this movie.

I didn't notice that it was particularly bad.

I honestly can only come up with the one complaint I mentioned about Jordan's acting being OTT during scenes where he was shouting or commanding.

Everything else in this movie was magic to me.

[amphibian]

The car thing is dumb in a number of ways and inventing outside of the presented movie reasons why it could go apart like that instead of the shown onscreen energy weapon shooting it apart is a waste of time.

N'Jadaka is supposed to be a badass to the point where he can effectively run shadow op units, destabilize countries, and does succeed in obtaining the kingship of perhaps the most advanced nation on earth. And his plan to immediately give very advanced arms to a few hundred people of unknown loyalty to him or the cause he now implements upon them in a worldwide situation is going to do exactly what? It's not smart - which pretty much contradicts every very smart thing he's done immediately prior to that.

These things are actual flaws in the movie, but that's ok. The movie is able to get past them and it works very well as a whole.

"I give you de bleck penter" - Forest Whittaker doing the uneven accent that nobody else in the movie does.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 20 February 2018 - 05:33 PM

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 20 February 2018 - 05:33 PM, said:

The car thing is dumb in a number of ways and inventing outside of the presented movie reasons why it could go apart like that instead of the shown onscreen energy weapon shooting it apart is a waste of time.

Eh, I think the pilot seat (and Nakia) being to be the only thing to survive the destruction is the "on screen" reason, no? Again, shrug, it doesn't bother me.

amphibian, on 20 February 2018 - 05:33 PM, said:

N'Jadaka is supposed to be a badass to the point where he can effectively run shadow op units, destabilize countries, and does succeed in obtaining the kingship of perhaps the most advanced nation on earth. And his plan to immediately give very advanced arms to a few hundred people of unknown loyalty to him or the cause he now implements upon them in a worldwide situation is going to do exactly what? It's not smart - which pretty much contradicts every very smart thing he's done immediately prior to that.

I'm fairly sure it's in line with the other things he did in the film, including loudly busting a criminal out of a CIA black site. I think you might be giving him more credit here...he is going on a LOT of rage about his father's death (and his abandonment) more than anything else. That sort of blinds him to some of the intricacies of that level of planning in the short term. It's both a character flaw and a character boon. He's very matter-of-fact..."I'm going to do this. You watch me."....as opposed to some machiavellian plot to cleverly destabilize the global community. He was starting with the best option he knew how, The military Ops version or "drive to the end, and don't let anyone stop you from hitting that goal", no matter how broad and seemingly flippant....and if the Wakandan's weren't worried about it having a level of success....they would not have been so concerned with letting him carry it out. He was methodical about it, but he's not some general either. He's a highly trained soldier. That requires a different skill set from the leader who can control armies, and social plans that destabilize nations. I actually feel it works well for his character to be that way and to plan it that way...it feels organic from who he was in his life till that point.

amphibian, on 20 February 2018 - 05:33 PM, said:

These things are actual flaws in the movie, but that's ok. The movie is able to get past them and it works very well as a whole.

For sure. Even the flaw I mentioned doesn't bother me much. It feels so minor in the grand scheme of the things the movie does very well.

amphibian, on 20 February 2018 - 05:33 PM, said:

"I give you de bleck penter" - Forest Whittaker doing the uneven accent that nobody else in the movie does.

I mean, they all had a vocal coach for the accent (from what I hear) so maybe Forest had more trouble with it?...but for me perhaps it's more that his character was Wakandan-born, but secretly planted into Oakland for who knows how long...so the muddling of his mother tongue is kind of on point for someone who crossed over between accents at such a pivotal age? I once knew a South African guy in high school who came here at like 13, and his accent got all kinds of screwed up living in Canada.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 20 February 2018 - 06:04 PM

[Maark Abbott]

I'm just picturing a SA native saying 'eh?' at the end of everything. Oh lordy.

[QuickTidal]

Maark Abbott, on 21 February 2018 - 08:50 AM, said:

I'm just picturing a SA native saying 'eh?' at the end of everything. Oh lordy.

I can't recall if he did that, but it was interesting after a few years to hear him talk and then hear his dad talk.