Black Panther Review
As someone who’s fairly critical of the superhero genre, Black Panther is a welcome addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a movie that truly feels like an “event” that you can’t help but support. It has a masterful director, Ryan Coogler, behind the camera and it feels like an extremely important and culturally significant film. It represents a drastically changing Hollywood, with studios realizing that straying from the status quo is often quite rewarding.
Black Panther has a lot attached to it that other movies just don’t have. It’s one of the first true blockbuster films led by a predominately black cast. Regardless, even if it may be difficult to disregard, Black Panther still has to stand on its own as a great film and for the most part it does. Is this the next Dark Knight like many are saying? Absolutely not. However, it’s finally something that stands out and feels unique from the vapid big budget movies.
Before discussing the positives, this film isn’t without its problems. A common characteristic of almost all MCU installments is the steady sprinkling in of humor throughout their stories. It rarely works for me and in the case of Black Panther, it almost never does. Instead of adding anything of significance, it almost always falls flat and takes you out of the action. There’s also some strange consistency problems throughout the film, mainly with the language the Wakandans speak. Half the time it’s English and half the time it’s their own language reminiscent of many African dialects. There was also one issue very specific to the plot of the film. We start of with King T’Challa ascending the throne after the sudden death of his father. However, that tragedy doesn’t seem to be felt anywhere throughout Wakanda. Nobody seems particularly sad and the country seems to be in a perfect state of peace and security.
Aside for those main negatives, Black Panther does a lot right. From the get go, it introduces and extremely fascinating concept. An hidden Afrofuturistic society with the technology capable of solving almost all of the world’s problems. It’s a Catch-22. Should you help others with all your advancements or will your exposure to rest of the world lead to the corruption and ultimate downfall of your utopia? Perhaps to thrive, you have to close yourself off to the rest of the world? Wakanda is also very cool in the sense that it’s so advanced and yet archaic at the same time(especially in terms of its government, traditions, etc.). It’s the oxymoron of places. You have magnetic hover trains and unimaginable weapons. At the same time, the country is still ruled by a monarch and places immense importance on the ancient traditions of its ancestors. All these ideas are really interesting and Coogler delves deep into a lot of them. That’s what you get from a smaller budget director like him. He places a lot of value on the story. The one disappointment was that even amongst all those positives, Black Panther still seems to have that glossed over finish that most big budget films have. It makes the movie feel a little more lifeless and indistinguishable than you’d hope. That said, with everything that Wakanda has to offer, there is also plenty of distinct qualities to this story.
Another huge aspect of Black Panther, absent in many other MCU installments, is the wonderful, fleshed out characters. Again, when you get such a talented director like Coogler, a lot of importance is placed on things like character building. Michael B Jordan’s Killmonger is a very good villain with an interesting background whose motives help you empathize with the character. In the end, I felt he would have been an even better character, had he been written a little more subtly. Chadwick Boseman is also great a King T’Challa. Both him and Killmonger have some amazing moments, particularly the scenes where they visit the afterlife. They are both visually stunning moments and also extremely heartfelt and touching. There are a number of moments like this that make a big emotional impact(something that most superhero movies miss the mark on).
Black Panther is a clearly step forward for the superhero genre and Hollywood as a whole. While it still grasps on to some very annoying tropes of all blockbuster films(such as a long, drawn out 30 minute explosion heavy climax), it also takes chances. It’s something to experience on the big screen and get ready to hear about it for quite a while. Black Panther is here to stay.
