I hate to break this to you, especially since it seems like the whole world disagrees with me… but Black Panther just wasn’t very good.






Plot: There is a hidden, super-advanced civilization in Africa, ruled by superhero King Black Panther! He has just taken over being King after his dad died — and his first action after assuming the throne is going after some guy (Andy Serkis) who apparently stole some of the magic metal from the kingdom. Eye-paining vagueness ensues.
Visuals
I have a major visual complaint with a lot of of this movie. They put a blue wash over this film (a blue wash which was not included in the trailers, I might add) which washed out the color and made it murky and ugly. I mean, literally, I could not see what was happening during fight scenes because it was so muddy. It’s hard to get wrapped up in the doings of your black-suited hero if you literally can’t see him because he blends into the scenery.

How Michael B. Jordan's uniform looked in the movie. How Michael B. Jordan's uniform COULD HAVE LOOKED if the color in the film hadn't been a washed-out mess.
It was the exact problem in the movie I just talked about, The Lost World — a vague, murky mess with vague dinosaur shapes in it. A good portion of this movie is a vague, murky mess with super hero shapes in it. The parts that take place in daylight are easier to make out — but the blue wash over everything makes the movie pretty visually unappealing. Watching this movie literally made my eyes hurt.


The Story
So, our hero takes his team to go and capture some guy (aka Andy Serkis) because reasons. Then Martin Freeman gets injured so, rather than one member of the team taking him back to the magic kingdom for medical assistance, the ENTIRE TEAM TAKES HIM HOME, rather than the rest of the heroes pursuing the villain (as would make the most sense).

  Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis looking thrilled about their roles.Then, it turns out that our hero’s Dad did something pretty inexplicably unkind in his past — giving Michael B. Jordan (the other villain) a pretty justifiable reason for being a villain — which undercuts the heroism of our main characters, and undercuts you wanting him to be defeated, even though his character is really just a big dumb thug. The movie attempts to be socially-just and political in parts, but didn’t even get a theme going in that area — the overall “moral” of the film was confused at best, throwing in a few social-justice buzzwords and ultimately not achieving a point. In other words, the plot was just as murky and muddy as the visuals of the film. Very disappointing. I have no idea why this movie is getting such rave reviews, other than people are afraid to say that they don’t like it for fear of being called racists.

The Black Panther
One of the biggest problems with this movie is that the T’Challa (our hero, aka Black Panther, aka actor Chadwick Boseman) simply isn’t interesting. He comes across as benign and excruciatingly dull, even when he’s upset and flipping around and fighting people with his high-tech panther suit.

This is pretty much the expression on his face through the whole movie.

I’m not sure whether to blame the actor or the script — maybe both? I would say it was the script — because he doesn’t have a lot of interesting things to say or do, and his emotional angst at certain points comes across as manufactured and nonsensical — but the actor himself simply doesn’t exude the kind of magnetism that makes you want to watch him. You take an actor like Hugh Jackman, or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and you put them in a dull movie with only boring things to say, and if you by some misfortune find yourself compelled to watch that dull movie — your eyes are going to be glued to The Rock or Hugh Jackman the whole time, because whether or not the movie is good, The Rock and Hugh Jackman are interesting to watch. When I suffered through the hot, boring mess that was Journey 2 — I hated the lines The Rock had, I hated his character, I was embarrassed to see him being forced to ride giant bees — but I enjoyed seeing The Rock. Whenever he was on screen, I was watching him.

However, whether it was the poor script or poor Chadwick, the effect is the same — whenever he was on the screen, it was snore-time. (In point of fact, I wasn’t actually sleeping — but I did spend most of the film holding my head because the horrible, washed-out color scheme was giving me a severe headache).


Other Characters
The other characters in this film weren’t much better. We had Forrest Whittaker who has apparently started a career as “venerable and boring old man who gets killed off after five minutes” (much like the character he played in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story who got killed off after five minutes). We had a love interest who wasn’t very interesting. We had a younger sister of the hero who was also a GENIUS SCIENTIST AND SUPER SASSY (in other words, annoying). We had Martin Freeman… and I’m not sure why. He was kind of the “wimpy, comic-relief” character — except he wasn’t wimpy and wasn’t all that comic. What purpose did his character serve, really? (Other than being a cheap plot device at one point, because he got injured on their behalf and they decided they all had to transport him to safety rather than ONE OF THEM transporting him to safety and the rest of them accomplishing their goal…) But seriously, he could have been completely cut out of the movie, someone else could have got injured, and it might have been a better, more concise film. (Maybe the production company was just scared that white people wouldn't watch a movie with African American protagonists. Film studios have a history of not giving the viewing public very much credit.)

Funnily enough, these pictures embody my feelings while watching this movie, especially the guy in the top middle.
We had “strong, royal guard woman” who might have been the most interesting character in the movie because she a) was brave, b) had the strength of her convictions, and c) had actual internal conflict that made sense… but, alas, she was only a minor supporting character, and not enough to save the movie. We had Michael B. Jordan (a young actor I quite like and look forward to seeing in more films) playing a villain who was more of a jerk than anything else. We also had a villain played by Andy Serkis — who was startlingly buff in this movie, but that’s about it. (I was disappointed in him. I thought he was going to be the main villain, and then for reasons I won’t explain he disappears about half-way through, and that’s it. Could have been any random thug. An actor with an expressive face like him was absolutely wasted in this movie.) In fact, that’s what I have to say about all the actors in this movie, Michael B. Jordan, Forrest Whitaker and Martin Freeman included — they were wasted.


A Note on Costumes
Andy Serkis played a villain from the comics. He LOOKED NOTHING LIKE THE CHARACTER FROM THE COMICS THAT HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PLAYING …
Left, his look from the comics. Right, his look in the movie.

…Which isn’t Andy Serkis’ fault, but is the fault of the filmmakers.  Even Black Panther himself spent astonishingly little time ACTUALLY WEARING HIS COSTUME. This serves as further evidence that these filmmakers, even though they may have accepted the fact that they have to make superhero movies, SECRETLY HATE THAT THEY ARE MAKING SUPER HERO MOVIES (and hate to have the hero and villain in their actual costumes because in their eyes it looks so “silly and unrealistic!”).


Ultimately…
I was going to say that at least this movie had an “interesting, promising premise” — but it really didn’t. The idea of a hidden, super-advanced civilization with a superhero for a king is more of a situation than a premise — only skin deep. Once the situation was set up, they didn’t have anywhere to go with it. It more or less succeeded in being a movie, as it more or less had a beginning, a middle and an end — but ultimately it was extraordinarily dull, lazily plotted, filled with all manner of film cliches, and literally painful to look at.

Obviously, this film is...

NOT RECOMMENDED