Review: Black Panther

I’m going to be honest. This is a great movie. Yay. The problem, is that I complain. That’s what I do. It’s hard to write jokes about something you really liked. So I’m going to have to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel this time, and nitpick.

T’Challa aka Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) was introduced in Civil War, and I thought he was great. I think I said that he should be the new leader of the Avengers. He’s wise, and a natural leader. Well, now we get to see him as king.

I stand by what I said about him in Civil War. He’s great. Also great is the villain, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Speaking of which, what a dumb name. I mean, I get that it’s a comic book movie, and comic books aren’t known for smart naming rules, but they might as well have called him Badguy McBaddie. Anyway, he was the first compelling villain in a superhero movie in a really long time, and it was really refreshing.

Letitia Wright played Shuri, Black Panther’s sister, and was fucking hilarious. She plays a sort of Q character from James Bond and makes the tech. Also, she’s fucking hilarious. Black Panther’s girlfriend, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) is delicious. Especially that green dress. She’s helping the common people, and is pulled back into T’Challa’s life right before all the bad stuff kicks in. Danai Gurira, who plays the badass warrior hottie from The Walking Dead plays Black Panther’s badass warrior hottie guard. This time, though, she has a spear instead of swords. In fact, all of the women in this movie are perfect. They are well hashed out characters who are smart, have their own thoughts, and can kick ass in a fight. And in case someone wants to call me sexist for mentioning their looks, I’ll say that Black Panther and Killmonger were both hunks. There’s a reason they both had topless scenes. They are beefcakes.

Spoilers Ahead:

So the story takes place shortly after Civil War. Black Panther is about to be crowned. Or necklaced, in this case. Meanwhile Killmonger is working with Klaue (Andy Serkis) to get to Wakanda. Black Panther tries to find Klaue, who is a wanted man in just about every country, but especially Wakanda, for stealing their magic vibranium. In the process he runs into our token white guy, Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman). Stuff happens, and our wise king decides to save Freeman’s life instead of getting his revenge on Klaue.

This leads to two of my favorite lines in the movie. “Oooo. Another white boy to fix.” and “Don’t scare me, colonizer.” I love race jokes. But I hate racist jokes. I hate jokes that are obvious. And I especially love when the joke is about white people. So these two jokes were hilarious.

Anyway, Killmonger is like a long lost son of an uncle of… blah. He wants the necklace. He challenges T’Challa to a battle, and fucks him up. Oh. Another side note. When Michael B. Jordan took off his shirt, my first reaction was “fuck, I’m out of shape”. But then I saw all these dots on his body, which are supposed to be scars to tally all the people he’s killed (thus his name). Instead, it looked like he was the black version of Aquaman.

So now Killmonger is the king. Before I move on, there are two things you need to understand in order to understand the main political undertone of this movie. Africans and African Americans hate each other. Or, at least, don’t really like each other. It’s partly cultural, it’s partly life experiences. The second thing you need to understand is that African Americans lost their identities during slavery. Ask any white American their heritage, and they can say “Irish”, “German” etc. If you ask an African American, they won’t know. When they got here, they weren’t allowed to be “Nigerian”, or “Ethiopian” etc. They were simply “Negroes”.

With that in mind, Killmonger ceases to become a villain, and becomes an African American. T’Challa becomes an African. They have two very different ideas about how to fix the world. Killmonger has been brought up in an environment of slavery, gangs, addiction, and institutional racism where he doesn’t really have a sense of identity. T’Challa has been brought up in an environment of luxury. Killmonger wants to use Wakanda’s resources and tech to start armed revolutions to overthrow the overseer. T’Challa wants to use the resources and tech to heal and teach. They both have valid points, and both are right, and both are wrong. But this is the main political undertone.

Speaking of the tech, that kind of annoyed me about the movie, especially how it fits in with the overall MCU. Their tech is basically so far advanced that it is essentially magic. They have clothes that make forcefields, they have suits that regenerate. They have rapid transport. With all of this, and with the ending of T’Challa revealing it all to the world, does Thanos even stand a chance in Infinity War?

Ok. Things I didn’t like. In Civil War, I hated the Black Panther suit, because it looked like CGI, and the physics were way off. Like his suit was modeled after one of those car lot air stick figures. In this movie, the CGI seems better, but the physics still don’t make sense. Maybe Wakanda’s vibranium fucks with gravity. I don’t know.

Next, a lot of the action scenes were kind of hard to watch because there was so much going on, and it was hard to focus. Perhaps this was due to my seat being too close. Maybe it was the Imax. All I know is that I probably missed a lot, from having to adjust focus constantly.

Am I the only one who saw that scene where a panther becomes T’Challa’s father, and thought they had spliced in part of the live action Jungle Book?

All in all, this was a great movie. T’Challa was just as good, if not better, than he was in Civil War. All of the women in his life were wonderful in the story, and it was great to not see them relegated to sexual objects, even though Lupita Nyong’o is fucking gorgeous. Michael B. Jordan brought a lot of emotion to the role, and made you question if he really was a villain, which is the sign of a great character. Martin Freeman who plays the sidekick in Sherlock, was at home in this role, where he is basically background noise. He is in scenes, but doesn’t matter.

I’m going to give this my first 5 out of 5 star rating. I really can’t think of a way to make this movie any better, besides female nudity. Go watch this movie.