Black Panther

erikphandel wrote: I found it really meh. It's serviceable. I liked the costumes and the setting a lot, but the special effects were absolute garbage. Also, final fight being almost full CGI takes away from the tension of the scene. Other than that, it was enjoyable. I'd give it a 6/10

One bad scene and it plummets to 6/10? Ouch. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it more.

Me? I had a blast. I'm rating it around 93/100 myself. Will be watching probably twice more this week sharing it with friends and family so we'll see how it stands up. I dinged it about two points each for the CGI elements in an otherwise excellent practical effects final fight sequence, the overhype surrounding the soundtrack (I found the music enjoyable but not the swoon-worthy experience it had been touted as), and some weird stuttering in the flow of the casino fight choreography. Otherwise, it hit a ton of marks with precision, including going places I didn't think they'd have the will to examine. Or having some characters in situations you just didn't know if they'd survive or not because the stakes were high enough that named protagonists having to sacrifice themselves seemed like a real threat. I loved that this was a civil war the participants could come back from (and wanted to come back from), instead of it turning into the total scorched earth such things often devolve into.

Personally, I love that it has a protagonist and a challenger more than a hero and a villain. That some 'murders' are recognized as being 'more of a defeat'. I love that the usually one-note White Gorilla tribe are the voice of sensible conservatism in a nation being swept along by change. I love that Killmonger is an unabashed product of American education/military/special forces doctrine and that to his dying breath he's sincere about the struggle. And I love that Marvel Studios is not ASHAMED of making comic book movies... So when faced with a character name as preposterous as "Killmonger", they don't change it, they make it work! Presenting it as almost synonymous with "Killstreak" made it instantly understandable to a videogame generation and when he takes his shirt off its a genuine "HO-LY SHIT!?!!" moment.

For starters I enjoy this movie a lot as a whole. There were some WTF moments for me, but none of them impacted on the enjoyment of the story as a whole.

From a comic book fan perspective this movie did something really praiseworthy: they took the incredibly weak rogue gallery of T'Challa and made them work, they even made M'Baku look cool, something that no Black Pather writer has ever been able to do so far,

brantley wrote: Like Paradise Island in WW, the "invisible" Wakanda is an absurdity, but it looks more real -- soaring towers and flitters, but also small neighborhoods and even remote villages with huts. More important, its culture sets great store by honor, almost like medieval Japan.

I'm sorry, but calling out the absurdity of any "hidden land" is like pots and kettles. Hidden lands are literary trope older than dirt and pretty much none of them made sense. I do agree atht this representation of Wakanda was really well done, balancing the high-tech element with designs that made it look like a real place and not something cobbled together by a writer with little notion of what he's working on. My general feeling is that with the various costumes coming from different cultures and populations of central Africa (and sometimes beyond) there was room to establish Wakanda as a sort of cultural crossroad that, at some point decided to lock the borders.

brantley wrote: T'Challa is a man of honor, who fights for what he holds right, whereas Killmonger is after power for its own sake, only pretending to fight for black liberation. I'm sure that's a point director/writer Ryan Coogler wants to convey to the black audience. Another point he makes is that the black women of Wakanda are the ones who fight for T'Challa even as a lot of the men are deluded by Killmonger.

On this count I have to disagree. While T'Challa is clearly a man of honor, I don't think that Killmonger is in it just for the power. Maybe it's the budding, but my impression was that Killmonger was the hero of his own story, but a hero who has gone sour over time. He went from a desire to improve the lives of his people, to the decision of oppressing others. I don't think he was pretending, but at some point he decided that he was the only one who could do what was necessary and from there things went downhill because he wasn't trying to really get rid of a form of oppression, but just replacing it with another.