Well, folks, I just saw Black Panther...

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

As someone who is all in on the MCU, and has had more fun watching Marvel movies than just about any other franchise, who thinks The Winter Soldier is a legitimately great movie, Black Panther was okay.

I felt it was extremely stylish and very cool to look at, and had a very good cast of heroes and one good villain, and was at least fun pretty much throughout. But it was also just kind of bland as far as the story goes, and not until the end was there a real sense of stakes. Most of what happened just didn't have much intrigue. I'm not sure why, but I felt like it was holding something back. Maybe they didn't want to change anything big right before Infinity War. Maybe they felt like it's "revolutionary" racial politics would hold up a lackluster story. I dunno, but it should have been better.

Now, regarding those politics... as a full-on European-descended caucasian I can only be second-hand happy for the people who saw this as a big step for people of color; and I am happy for them. I think the movie did a good job of not hammering that point, but not ignoring it either. The motivation behind Killmonger's killmongering was just the right level of believable and sympathetic while also being obviously immoral. I think they got that aspect of it right.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

despite having to deliver their entire dialogue in a silly fake accent so that the viewer doesn't forget that these are, indeed, africans and the action was... well, the action was actually nothing special for the most part but, you know, it was there.

The language and accent is not actually fake, it is an actual African Language, "IsiXhosa" one of South Africa's official languages. It was chosen by a cast member, as that was their native language. Due to much of the cast actually being from Africa, their accents are not as fake as you may have thought they were.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/us/wakanda-black-panther.html

And now PsychedelicDiamond feels stupid for that comment he made.

Perhaps he/she meant fake as in it's not a byproduct of their native tongue, as they're English speakers?

Anyway, I give big props to them for learning that accent and delivery, it must have been quite a challenge. Let alone an obscure dialect. I've heard similar sounds to that (clicks and pops) in a tribe in the Indonesian islands as well, somewhere around Irian Jaya. Takes balls to actually do that and do it on the big screen, where you just KNOW you're going to get judged to pieces if you arse it up.

I think they did a fantastic job, coming from an outsider who doesn't know the accent or language. The accent was yeah, kinda choppy at times, I mean it sounded really authentic, just a bit slow and deliberate in places. I dunno if that was a direction cue to make it more understandable, or just the actors doing the best they could. But I only noticed in places, and not as much as my wife (who has studied a shit ton of languages and dialects over the years).

OT: Loved the movie. Felt fresh, and different from the other superhero movies of late. There were some loopholes and things that outright bothered me I'll admit, like

Spoiler

how the king of this extremely advanced civilization can be contested and won by essentially deathmatch, using SPEARS and melee combat...I've watched enough MMA matches to know how these things can sway one way or the other in a blink of an eye[/spoilers]
and

Spoiler

how they managed to keep vibranium such a secret for so long, that the smallest piece of it is considered a national treasure, commanding an extremely high price and guarded like the last Van Gogh, then they just transport in a car made of the stuff and it gets crashed and left there. Among other things

Yea action was really good in the middle, the beginning and end weren't the best in my opinion. But overall I gave it a 8/10, which among the highest scores I've given to a superhero movie.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

I thought the movie was fine, but only just fine. Quite frankly, it had a lost of interesting themes and ideas going on, but all those ideas ended up feeling incredibly watered down and not really given proper treatment at all. And the ending just blows. There are numerous better movies in the MCU.

Maybe I just keep watching the wrong ones but the core question of how Wakanda should go forward, between the isolationism promoted by the likes of W'Kabi, the imperialism as promoted by Killmonger and T'Challa's reformism was mostly well enough executed. I mean, it's still an action movie so the battle of ideologies, at the end of the day, was mostly depicted through... well, a physical battle but again, my expections were not nearly high enough to be dissapointed. To indulge my habit of backseat screenwriting, if I was in charge I'd have cut out the whole subplot in Korea and had taken the time to flesh out the political landscape of Wakanda, the differences between the individuals tribes and T'Challa's struggle to push his country forward while trying to appease the more traditionalist parts of his population but, while also giving more scenes to Killmonger after his coup to show how his rule affects the country as compared to T'Challas. But there's no point lamenting how good a movie could have been, had it been more about the stuff I happen to find interesting.

Fact is, movies that take the approach I favour, like Batman v Superman, Blade Runner 2049 or Annihilation, the slow, gritty, maximalist, unapologetically indulgent kind, consistently tend to underperform with the general audience so I imagine turning Black Panther more into a political thriller about what the role of a nation like Wakanda would be in a globalized society... well, it wouldn't have gone over nearly as well as what it is now, a lighthearted feelgood action movie that pushes its political themes to the sidelines in favour of car chases and spy movie sequences.

I thought the whole idea on Wakanda's Isolationism was due to necessity rather than preference due to the concern of the extreme power they were protecting falling into the wrong hands. They were protecting and keeping secret the great power to prevent world powers gaining control over it and using it to enslave and control the world. I see the reformists as being dangerous because in their attempt to use that power to assist others, they would recklessly allow it to fall into the wrong hands and world governments would take control of it instead. Maybe that struggle is something we will see in future movies.

My favorite part of the movie though is the whole "high tech hidden inside the waterfall" aspect. As some already know my fascination with a Utopian "green" future of having our cities be extremely high tech hidden inside a jungle, the whole high tech city hidden inside the waterfall was much like what I envision for the future of the earth. I also really loved the costuming of the Dora Milaje and props should be given to Ruth Carter for creating their costumes. She definitely deserves the awards she has been given.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

despite having to deliver their entire dialogue in a silly fake accent so that the viewer doesn't forget that these are, indeed, africans and the action was... well, the action was actually nothing special for the most part but, you know, it was there.

The language and accent is not actually fake, it is an actual African Language, "IsiXhosa" one of South Africa's official languages. It was chosen by a cast member, as that was their native language. Due to much of the cast actually being from Africa, their accents are not as fake as you may have thought they were.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/us/wakanda-black-panther.html

And now PsychedelicDiamond feels stupid for that comment he made.

Perhaps he/she meant fake as in it's not a byproduct of their native tongue, as they're English speakers?

Anyway, I give big props to them for learning that accent and delivery, it must have been quite a challenge. Let alone an obscure dialect. I've heard similar sounds to that (clicks and pops) in a tribe in the Indonesian islands as well, somewhere around Irian Jaya. Takes balls to actually do that and do it on the big screen, where you just KNOW you're going to get judged to pieces if you arse it up.

I think they did a fantastic job, coming from an outsider who doesn't know the accent or language. The accent was yeah, kinda choppy at times, I mean it sounded really authentic, just a bit slow and deliberate in places. I dunno if that was a direction cue to make it more understandable, or just the actors doing the best they could. But I only noticed in places, and not as much as my wife (who has studied a shit ton of languages and dialects over the years).

OT: Loved the movie. Felt fresh, and different from the other superhero movies of late. There were some loopholes and things that outright bothered me I'll admit, like

Spoiler

how the king of this extremely advanced civilization can be contested and won by essentially deathmatch, using SPEARS and melee combat...I've watched enough MMA matches to know how these things can sway one way or the other in a blink of an eye[/spoilers]
and

Spoiler

how they managed to keep vibranium such a secret for so long, that the smallest piece of it is considered a national treasure, commanding an extremely high price and guarded like the last Van Gogh, then they just transport in a car made of the stuff and it gets crashed and left there. Among other things

Yea action was really good in the middle, the beginning and end weren't the best in my opinion. But overall I gave it a 8/10, which among the highest scores I've given to a superhero movie.

Spoiler

From what I saw from their interviews on the subject of the language, that some of the actors did have trouble learning to speak the language, and many of those that spoke other African languages still struggled to speak IsiXhosa as that is still a different language for them to learn and not necessarily an easy one. Some of the actors in the Movie did not only speak English though, they spoke English as well as other African Languages and already speak with an accent off set.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

despite having to deliver their entire dialogue in a silly fake accent so that the viewer doesn't forget that these are, indeed, africans and the action was... well, the action was actually nothing special for the most part but, you know, it was there.

The language and accent is not actually fake, it is an actual African Language, "IsiXhosa" one of South Africa's official languages. It was chosen by a cast member, as that was their native language. Due to much of the cast actually being from Africa, their accents are not as fake as you may have thought they were.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/us/wakanda-black-panther.html

And now PsychedelicDiamond feels stupid for that comment he made.

Well, I wasn't saying it wasn't based on a real accent, I was saying it's not the natural accent of most of the actors.