re: 'Black Panther ' Spoiler Thread

It was good, not great. I honestly think Thor Ragnarok did a better job of critiquing colonialism, mainly because they were able to smuggle it in a movie no one was expecting.

The CGI was terrible, as many have noted. They created this cool futuristic city based on actual African tribes, and then did nothing with it, and punted the detail. Does that capital have just one city street?

T'Challa was sidelined for a third of the movie and I didn't miss him. Now, part of that is that there's no way they are killing the titular character of a tentpole film in the second act, so it was robbed of some of its tension. But also, that speaks highly of the supporting cast, who were almost uniformly terrific. They threaded the needle on Man-Ape and managed to make perhaps the most racist character in comics history not offensive.

But it was a film dominated by the women. Okoye was the bad arse, Nakia (not Killmonger, people) was right all along: Wakanda should share its tech as a middle course between hiding and war against the world. Shuri was the best. And I'm always down for Angela Bassett, though she didn't have a whole lot to do.

For a long movie, it took some narrative shortcuts (not for a second did I buy Okoye's romance with W'Kabi). And W'Kabi's betrayal makes little sense, nor why T'Challa didn't point out Killmonger freed Klaue, so he gets no credit for then killing him. And let's not even talk about how silly their mode of secession is. They train a guy to be a king his whole life, but then someone can take the crown by beating him up? It's a wonder they didn't descend into anarchy.

But it was fun and I liked that Killmonger made sense as a villain. He's not as good as Loki nor was he having as much fun as Hela, but his motives made sense, and fed into his ultimate demise. He's right about Wakanda needing to abandon isolationism, but his anger at everything turns that into a desire for permanent war. It made sense that he would destroy everything he touched, and not just for narrative ease.