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Out of 10: 'Black Panther'

The 'Iron Man 5' joke doesn't work here, but the website needed a subtitle.

By Conor HuftonPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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Don't know why they're inside an X unless , they should've been inside a 4 to insult all Michael B Jordan's fant4stic co stars who are yet to make a redeeming film. (Never seen fant4stic) 

One of the newest MCU entries. The new king of a secretly advanced country battles with the morally grey dimensions of his late father’s rule. Very mild spoilers abound — but deliberately avoided for the most part.

With mostly new or now more important characters, performances can be discussed more freely. Chadwick Boseman’s titular character basically expands on his strengths in Civil War firmly cement the perfection of the casting. His performance is mostly suitably understated and is characterised as an honourable merciful conflicted & playful, but disciplined ruler. His performance becomes stronger with the realisation his natural voice is far removed from his characters.

Lupita Nyong’o plays Nakia, a spy and T’Challa’s love interest. They form one of the stronger MCU couples, since the usual issue is that the superhero in the relationship is much more interesting.

Best ultimate frisbee advert ever.

Winston Duke’s M’Baku is one of the most surprisingly complex characters in the film, beginning as a boisterous proud confrontational warrior, briefly transitioning into comic relief later with a sense of new found justified nobility, and returning to his ruthless self by the end of the story, only with altered motives.

M'Baku

I can't insult his picture, his children will eat me. I'm kidding, they are vegetarians.

Building on the comic relief, Letitia Wright’s Shuri is a playful and efficient technician with her own bravery and combat skills and a genuine seeming relationship with her brother, T’Challa. Wright is among several British actors playing non British characters with effortless accent imitation. Andy Serkis’ entertaining yet sinister villain Klaue, Martin Freeman’s competent brave and helpful CIA Agent Ross and Daniel Kaluuya's changeable Wakandan security chief being the others.

Shuri

I need tin openers styled like that. Preferably they'll also send shockwaves to defeat my enemies- like all good tin openers.

I need a role as a non-British MCU character solely to stop the trend of British MCU actors proficient in other accents. Let it be known if I ever am cast and my accent's temperamental, It was intentional and not lack of talent (yes, I will keep telling myself that). Danai Gurrira’s endlessly serious Okoye provides some of the most inventive and fluid fight sequences in the film.

Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger’s among the best villains of the MCU with perfect personality balance: deceptive smug theatrical and ruthless with a well explored tragic backstory that avoids the aimlessly evil villain trope while his less desirable traits avoid the overly sympathetic villain trope.

Killmonger

Checking if his fly's undone- had he done this in the film he'd seem even more 3 dimensional. That's how villains endear themselves to audiences.

There’s an astounding sense of world building and identity in this film, with respectful homage to culture and traditional meeting futuristic designs seamlessly, it takes every opportunity of the visual experimentation. Even with all the lifesaving technology the film unapologetically addresses the existence of, there’s a much greater sense of threat than in several other MCU films, story enhancing risks are taken without hesitation. The fight scenes are endlessly well choreographed, with two major ones being filmed more viscerally, devoid of unnecessary CGI indulgent slow-mo or over editing and instead capitalising on relentlessly display of brutality and dread through performances.

A Klaue Picture That Needed Inclusion

Spoiler: his arm is fake

There’s an astounding sense of world building and identity in this film, with respectful homage to culture and traditional meeting futuristic designs seamlessly, it takes every opportunity of the visual experimentation. Even with all the lifesaving technology the film unapologetically addresses the existence of, there’s a much greater sense of threat than in several other MCU films, story enhancing risks are taken without hesitation. The fight scenes are endlessly well choreographed, with two major ones being filmed more viscerally, devoid of unnecessary CGI indulgent slow-mo or over editing and instead capitalising on relentlessly display of brutality and dread through performances. There are still plenty of layered and fast paced fight and chase sequences where acrobat fighting stylings and impressive visual effects are placed at centre stage. Like ‘Ant Man’ and to a lesser extent ‘Spiderman Homecoming’ the film only minimally uses typical superheroics, prioritising other types of plot and character development in order for the more familiar superhero type scenes to gain stronger impact. There are political arguments and discussions on ethics effortlessly transposed into an action sci-fi. Every character is well illustrated and given purpose, the pacing and flow of the story is perfect, the visual style is refreshingly unique and in general the film is a perfect example of a film with valid strengths outside of its adherence to a popular genre.

Now for the Rating

That perfectly good jacket that fell apart is the film's most tragic casualty.

I’m back to the initial 9 out of 10 rating. In the same way that there’s strength in every poor film, there’s also weakness in every good film. It’s harder to criticise because it lacks or improves on a lot of faults that are expected of superhero films. For example, it isn’t unnecessary length, it’s slightly shorter than most MCU entries and covers more plot than some longer works. Also, the fatigued idea of the hero fighting a similarly powered similar dressed villain is salvaged here by giving more justification than usual to this device. Also underused characters like Klaue were underused for plot relevant reasons. One genuine criticism is the abruptness and extremity of Daniel Kaluuya’s loyalty changes and though he’s shown to be disappointed at T’Challa’s leadership, seems to show no emotion when he’s endangered, despite their relationship being close earlier in the film and the fact T’Challa’s experience should logically have mustered some form of emotion from anyone spectating (and clearly does from everyone else). He also shows no remorse at similar danger involving another character who he had no obvious conflict with, causing him to suddenly seem detached and irrational. His eventual experiences didn’t follow what I desired and his characterisation was more obviously flawed since he’s played aside such well-crafted characters. Another criticism is both the post credit scene and actual end pre credit scene involve T’Challa staring in prolonged silence after a simple question’s asked to forcefully manufacture two slightly cinematic cuts to credits, which again is more obvious on a film that uses more sophisticated techniques elsewhere. As with other 9 out of 10 films, these are very minor issues that were only evident due to actively searching for genuine criticism.

I want to start writing about the MCU films I enjoyed less but I forget what my issues were and haven’t rewatched them. The reason I haven’t rewatched them is because I don’t own them and the reason I don’t own them is that I didn’t like them enough to buy them for rewatching capabilities. It’s a real dilemma.

superheroes
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About the Creator

Conor Hufton

getting better at this writing thing (aka slowly learning the alphabet, learnt how to use pen). Spanning critical writing, fantasy, parody and sci-fi (ruining all of them in the process).

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