It was a fun, beautiful lightweight action movie
The very opening shot of stars with a kid asking for a story reminds me of when Curtis, the newspaper comic strip, would take a few weeks every Kwanzaa to just make up an African fable
the afrofuturist look is great to see, this is the third visually richest movie I can remember after Curse of the Golden Flower and Fifth Element
I like how they have a real muscular-yet-feline movement/fight style for suited-up T\u2019Challa
T\u2019Challa\u2019s sister/gadgeteer/Guy In The Van Shuri totally steals the movie
also rebel nobility/mountain gorilla man M\u2019Baku
BUT
it was overstuffed and consequently spread thin, maybe it\u2019ll all be better in the 4-hour #WakandaForever director\u2019s cut
Between the mechanical plot (gotta get the Macguffin from point A to point B in time to stop character X, etc.); the rise-of-the-hero arc (T\u2019Challa goes from thinking himself unworthy to fill his ancestors\u2019 shoes, becomes king, loses his title, regains it, is ready to move his role beyond his predecessors); and the \u201cthis is all thematic of the Black experience\u201d angle they\u2019re playing to, the movie manages to keep 2 in alignment at any given time while the third fumbles around in proximity without aligning and it\u2019s just frustrating
like the Oakland bits, they fit with the mechanical plot, and \u201cguy in a 1992 apartment like that planning an operation with guns but it goes bad\u201d has a VERY pungent valence to play off, but later it\u2019s like \u201coh, and that\u2019s why Killmonger showed up\u201d and eeh
or at the end returning to Oakland and it\u2019s like yes character X suggested so-and-so and plot obstacle Y is resolved. and yeah showing up in your \u201cBugatti Spaceship\u201d to represent Truth, Justice, and the Black Way to those kids has emotional weight, but there\u2019s nothing in the previous fight scenes or looking off the ledge at Wakanda that earn making T\u2019Challa a pan-africanist
the nobility characters were colorful but they ate screen time and everyone got exactly 1 trait and 1 visual signature each (meanwhile it\u2019s really striking how none of the rest of Wakanda seems to particularly notice)
one character is T\u2019Challa\u2019s ex and they have to keep explicitly lampshading that because it doesn\u2019t really affect the plot any
two characters are current lovers but I forgot about that until it was invoked in resolving a fight scene between them? because for the most part they had stuck to thematic/stylistic distinctions (him: flowy blue cloth revenge-seeking rhino, her: tight red and gold dutiful spearwoman)
the South Korea casino fight set was close enough to Kill Bill\u2019s Gogo fight set you noticed by comparison what a great fight scene it wasn\u2019t
but the car chase on the roofs was the best action scene, but that\u2019s *because* they could show off the pouncing with everyone at full power and didn\u2019t have to service plot twists or even the Wakanda esthetic, which is also why in retrospect it\u2019s disconnected from everything
they had to set up the coronation to set up the Klaus plotline in order to even get to the main plotline
there aren\u2019t that many scenes where when you scrape off the afro-aesthetic facade the framework is \u201cthis could only be Black Panther\u201d.
part of it T\u2019Challa\u2019s powerset just isn\u2019t that distinct, he\u2019s a particularly good melee STR/AGI fighter? but it doesn\u2019t really interact with his themes except through the aesthetic. the suit absorbing/releasing kinetic energy is novel but doesn\u2019t build to anything. he jumps on a grenade at one point and it makes him stronger! for like a single disposable attack
for having an ambiguous power-set they keep working up excuses to depower him for fights, two times out of three it\u2019s the same one and the third it\u2019s just some TOS-level jargon they referenced earlier
which is true to how comic books work yes, but not the arcs that get remembered c\u2019mon
CIA didn\u2019t need his piloting mini-arc, especially when it was undercut by M\u2019Baku showing up to save the day simultaneously
the Stan Lee cameo is overdone
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