... and I'm just gonna take your word for for it that I can post my random opinions on movies here, now that the Wild West has gone to the land of the ancestors.
So, like, me and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have never exactly been very sympatico, to say the least. I've seen a bunch of those movies and disliked most of them to some extent, if I had to pick a favourite I'd probably say it's Iron Man 3 on the virtue of having been made by a director to whom action comedies are practically second nature. Despite better knowledge I've been wanting to see Black Panther because I like afrofuturism as an aesthetic, unrerrepresented as it may be in american film.
So, my big reservation for Black Panthers was it seemed to, knowingly or not, portray nationalism positively by showing a thriving isolationist country and making its ruling family the main characters. Now, a video by one of my favourite YouTube talkin heads kinda alleviated some of my fears in that regard but I remained skeptical. And having seen it I'm gonna say I wasn't wrong. Sure, it ended with Futuristic African Bhutan reaching out to the world and a dude named W'Kabi, who I fucking hated because he almost verbatimely repeated the rhetoric of your average rightist early on ultimately turned out to be traitor but you still had the good guys shouting "Wakanda Forever!" when they go into battle so, you know, mixed messages and stuff.
Now, putting my nefarious cultural marxist politics aside the movie was... you know, alright. It had a fun setting that could probably support more movies and, let's be honest here, definitely will, it had a likeable enough cast of characters played by actors who were mostly decent, 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.
Now, don't get me wrong, the movie doesn't do much to make me more interessted in Marvel's illustrious ensemble of grape coloured alien overlords, talking raccoons and costumed heros, most of what I liked about it were quite exlusive to this movie in particular but hey, I mostly had a good time. It was an entertaining enough action movie. It didn't manage to transcends its genre the way something like Fury Road, Batman v Superman or the better parts of Last Jedi did in recent years but it's probably unrealistic to expect as much. It did what it was supposed to do just fine, that is presenting a mostly engaging adventure with mostly likeable characters. And you know what? It did have likeable characters.
There was the protagonists sister, who's a genius inventor, which would have been really fucking stupid, but I can't be mad at her. She's so fucking cute. I want to be her broken white boy she can fix. There was the leader of a warrior tribe who was secretly the best character in the entire movie and totally deserves his own spinoff and there was Martin Freeman playing a CIA spook who was still written as a good guy because, hey, it's still a Marvel movie so he supported the Royal Family of Wakanda rather than arming far right death squads to overthrow them and install a fascist dictatorship.
Talking about death squads and dictatorships, the villain was... you know, decent. His thing was wanting to take revenge on the king and also using Wakanda's superior technology to stage a revolution and abolish white supremacy, which seemed mostly relatable to me, but he also killed his own girlfriend when it was convenient so that we all realize he's a bad guy so there's that. A particulary deep character he wasn't, but at least he had both a motivation and a personality, which makes him stand out among the MCU's rogue gallery in a positive way.
So, overall it was a perfectly watchable movie and nowhere near the worst way to spend about two hours and fifteen minutes of your life. I mean, it didn't blow me away or anything but I mostly had fun watching it and didn't roll my eyes more than twice during its entire runtime and I'm pretty sure I didn't even make it through 10 minutes of Thor Ragnarok without doing so. So, all things considered, Black Panther was a MCU movie I actually liked. To a point where I'm almost considering seeing Infinity War if I didn't know I'd probably hate it.
So, like, me and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have never exactly been very sympatico, to say the least. I've seen a bunch of those movies and disliked most of them to some extent, if I had to pick a favourite I'd probably say it's Iron Man 3 on the virtue of having been made by a director to whom action comedies are practically second nature. Despite better knowledge I've been wanting to see Black Panther because I like afrofuturism as an aesthetic, unrerrepresented as it may be in american film.
So, my big reservation for Black Panthers was it seemed to, knowingly or not, portray nationalism positively by showing a thriving isolationist country and making its ruling family the main characters. Now, a video by one of my favourite YouTube talkin heads kinda alleviated some of my fears in that regard but I remained skeptical. And having seen it I'm gonna say I wasn't wrong. Sure, it ended with Futuristic African Bhutan reaching out to the world and a dude named W'Kabi, who I fucking hated because he almost verbatimely repeated the rhetoric of your average rightist early on ultimately turned out to be traitor but you still had the good guys shouting "Wakanda Forever!" when they go into battle so, you know, mixed messages and stuff.
Now, putting my nefarious cultural marxist politics aside the movie was... you know, alright. It had a fun setting that could probably support more movies and, let's be honest here, definitely will, it had a likeable enough cast of characters played by actors who were mostly decent, 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.
Now, don't get me wrong, the movie doesn't do much to make me more interessted in Marvel's illustrious ensemble of grape coloured alien overlords, talking raccoons and costumed heros, most of what I liked about it were quite exlusive to this movie in particular but hey, I mostly had a good time. It was an entertaining enough action movie. It didn't manage to transcends its genre the way something like Fury Road, Batman v Superman or the better parts of Last Jedi did in recent years but it's probably unrealistic to expect as much. It did what it was supposed to do just fine, that is presenting a mostly engaging adventure with mostly likeable characters. And you know what? It did have likeable characters.
There was the protagonists sister, who's a genius inventor, which would have been really fucking stupid, but I can't be mad at her. She's so fucking cute. I want to be her broken white boy she can fix. There was the leader of a warrior tribe who was secretly the best character in the entire movie and totally deserves his own spinoff and there was Martin Freeman playing a CIA spook who was still written as a good guy because, hey, it's still a Marvel movie so he supported the Royal Family of Wakanda rather than arming far right death squads to overthrow them and install a fascist dictatorship.
Talking about death squads and dictatorships, the villain was... you know, decent. His thing was wanting to take revenge on the king and also using Wakanda's superior technology to stage a revolution and abolish white supremacy, which seemed mostly relatable to me, but he also killed his own girlfriend when it was convenient so that we all realize he's a bad guy so there's that. A particulary deep character he wasn't, but at least he had both a motivation and a personality, which makes him stand out among the MCU's rogue gallery in a positive way.
So, overall it was a perfectly watchable movie and nowhere near the worst way to spend about two hours and fifteen minutes of your life. I mean, it didn't blow me away or anything but I mostly had fun watching it and didn't roll my eyes more than twice during its entire runtime and I'm pretty sure I didn't even make it through 10 minutes of Thor Ragnarok without doing so. So, all things considered, Black Panther was a MCU movie I actually liked. To a point where I'm almost considering seeing Infinity War if I didn't know I'd probably hate it.