Matt Reviews: Black Panther

WARNING: SPOILERS

Gotta say, I didn’t really expect to see a reference to the “What are Those” Vine in a 2018 Black Panther movie.

A week after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) – a.k.a. the Black Panther – is still reeling over the death of his father as he ascends as king of Wakanda, and not without the stresses that come with it. As he reconnects with his old flame Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), he must find the people he can trust – like his genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and CIA agent Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) – as Wakanda and the world are threatened by the machinations of arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) and soldier-turned-terrorist Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), who has ties to Wakanda and T’Challa’s past.

Black Panther’s aesthetic and cultural influences are what make it unique. Marvel’s films have often been criticized for relying too much on white male protagonists, with minorities and women being delegated to supporting roles. With this movie, the whites are the minorities here. The film is absolutely seeping in African culture, from the music to the art style to the costume design, and I’m in love with it. It’s something you don’t normally see in a superhero movie, let alone a big blockbuster one from Marvel.

The major strength of this movie is its characters. T’Challa remains awesome due to the performance by Chadwick Boseman, but I feel that special mention has to go to two specific characters introduced in this movie: Shuri and Killmonger. The film has a lot of awesome female role models that kick a lot of ass and fortunately make up much of the main cast, but I feel Shuri stands out because of how funny and intelligent they made her. She’s constantly cracking quips and flipping off her brother, and has electrifying chemistry with Chadwick Boseman. And her character trait of being the one to make Black Panther’s tech makes her the Oracle or Lucius Fox to T’Challa’s Batman.

Over to Killmonger, he continues Marvel’s trend of making their new villains actually interesting. Killmonger (despite his over-the-top evil name) is a very humanized villain. He has daddy issues caused by T’Challa’s daddy, and we actually see him get emotional and cry about them. But he doesn’t act broken and haunted all the time; he has a quirky, casual way of talking and acting that makes him incredibly likeable, despite his antagonistic stance. His plan and viewpoints are also sympathetic, in that he wants Wakanda to actually use its resources to help black people around the world instead of hoarding their secrets to themselves. Not only is his plan sympathetic, but it’s uncomfortably topical.

"I'm here for revenge against Fant4stic."

The best villains are the ones who think they’re the real hero, and Killmonger’s plan can definitely ring true to the audience. He plays into the theory that villains always want to change the world, while heroes try to keep it in the status quo. And by the end, even after Killmonger is…well, killed, his viewpoints still ring true with T’Challa as he applies some of what Killmonger believed in to spread Wakanda’s influence to the outside world. As it stands right now, Killmonger is in my top 3 MCU bad guys, right up there with Loki and the Vulture. (Of course, this doesn’t include Netflix villains like Kingpin and Kilgrave).

Andy Serkis reprises his role as Klaue from Age of Ultron, this time with more screentime. While he definitely portrays the character as more humorous this time around, sometimes it gets a little grating, like when he started singing “What is Love” in an obnoxious voice. But he comes in and out of the movie real quick and doesn’t really overstay his welcome, so that’s a plus. Though I gotta say, I’m a little disappointed that they killed him off instead of having him occasionally pop up in future Marvel movies as a bit villain, kind of like the Scarecrow in the Dark Knight movies.

Also, the movie turned the character of Man-Ape – a villain with a rather unfortunate, racially insensitive gimmick – into a surprisingly complex figure, which I feel is an impressive feat in itself given that the character has literally been called “Man-Ape” since the 1960’s.

The humor of the other Marvel movies is still here, but it’s greatly toned down. One of the biggest offenders of recent Marvel movies, in my opinion, is how their reliance on humor tends to severely undercut a lot of their more dramatic moments (I’m looking at you, Thor: Ragnarok). Here, there are jokes, but the dramatic scenes are allowed to be dramatic, character deaths have weight to them, and there’s more heavy themes than your traditional Marvel fare. After the kind of movies where Doctor Strange’s cape gains the sentience of Aladdin’s flying carpet, a more serious and dramatic superhero movie was certainly welcome.

I don’t really have a lot of complaints with the movie, but just so this review seems fair and balanced, I’ll list the few nitpicks I had. The fight scenes, for example, are not great. Some of them are shot in a darkened way with an almost jittery camera direction that it makes them kind of indecipherable, which is a problem when your protagonist fights in an all-black suit. When you can see the action, however, it’s kind of generic, which is a real disappointment considering how heavy our heroes and villains rely on hand-to-hand combat for their fights. I know I can’t expect all superhero movie fight scenes to be as good as the ones in movies like Winter Soldier, but it feels like they could have done so much more with what they were working with.

T'Challa go nyoom.

And while I praised the costume design before, I’m not a super big fan of the new Black Panther suit. T’Challa starts of the movie with the costume from Civil War, but then changes to one that forms over his body using nanobots or something. The new suit just looks kind of flat, less like armor and more like someone just casted Chadwick Boseman’s body in rubber. The armored look of the previous costume I felt fit better with the other costumes seen in the MCU. It’s a similar problem I have with the new Spider-Man costume. On the subject of controversial costumes, there are nipples on the armor for Okoye and the other Dora Milaje. And once you notice them, you can’t unsee them.

Also, those CGI war-rhinos looked fake as hell. Probably the only special effect in this movie that doesn’t work.

I feel like Marvel has been trying new experiments with their movies in Phase 3 of the MCU, and it’s all for the better. While still usually entertaining, I felt that most of Phase 2 got rather formulaic with the kind of superhero movies they were cranking out – Guardians of the Galaxy aside – and that trend continued a bit into Phase 3 with Civil War and Doctor Strange. But then Spider-Man: Homecoming became a John Hughes high school film with superheroes and Thor: Ragnarok became a heavy metal action-comedy, and it felt like Marvel was more willing to test the different genres of movies they could explore with their superheroes.

Black Panther continues this trend. While it still has a lot of the same trimmings as its previous superhero movies (big special effects, a climax where the hero fights someone with similar powers as them, etc.), it doesn’t feel like a traditional superhero story. It feels more like a big, dramatic version of The Lion King, or a Shakespearean epic. It’s all about African culture and claims to the throne and what it means to be a good king. It’s about family and tradition and sins of the father. While at its core, it's got a similar narrative structure and cliches as many other superhero movies like it, but it's wrapped in beautiful afrofuturism-printed paper that you don’t even notice until you get down to the nitty-gritty.

While Black Panther isn’t Marvel’s first foray into black-centric superhero entertainment (Luke Cage was probably the closest thing to this they had made previously), its place in the uber-successful and mainstream MCU means that it is on its way to being a very important movie. The silver screen has a new black superhero for kids everywhere to look up to as he represents a people that have sort of gotten the short end of the stick in superhero movies. Not only that, but strong women have a lot of representation in this movie too, giving girls more well deserved role models. And for ignorant white people like myself who have had it easy with white superhero movies for years, Black Panther was a well deserved sprinkle of culture, and a journey I’m glad I made.

Wakanda Forever.

Remind me why Disney still has to remake The Lion King again?

Final verdict: 9/10.

So did anyone else think that Bucky coming out of the hut in the post credit scene looked like Jesus with his long hair and beard? Or has DC’s cinematic universe caused me to expect Jesus imagery in superhero movies too much?