I Finally Watched Black Panther! These Are My Thoughts w/Minor Spoilers

I’m definitely late to the party with this one but I finally got around to watching Black Panther the other day! It was fine, the end.

It’s a very well made movie don’t get me wrong! I enjoyed it and I appreciate that they’re trying to do something different but it just didn’t leave me with any sort of lasting impact. I was sufficiently entertained but at no point was I emotionally invested in anything, I liked Michael B. Jordan but that was about it. Maybe my complete lack of enthusiasm stems from the overly excessive praise the film received from critics, I went into this expecting something special, something with depth and feeling, that isn’t what happened, what did happen? I forget.   

Let me change the tone, Black Panther is certainly on the upper echelon of movies in the MCU and I enjoyed it a lot, it’s a good film all round but it’s also without a doubt one of the most overrated movies of all time, it’s not even the best movie in the MCU let alone the world, calm down! There’s a blandness to the tone, a completely boring first hour and I found Black Panther himself to be quite a dull character, he’s too together and perfect and I just wasn’t invested in him at all, that might be personal preference though! 

Visually it’s undeniably stunning, it’s beautifully shot and with it being set in Africa it felt fresh, it was a nice change from New York or the New York-like places these things usually take place in, it’s similar to Guardians of the Galaxy in that regard, setting-wise, it’s refreshing! Other than that I wasn’t particularly invested in the story or any of the characters, the first 45 minutes or so were fairly boring then Michael B. Jordan pops back up and it gets good for a bit then it kind of tapers out into something that was fairly unfulfilling.   

I’ve been a Michael B. Jordan fan since he played Wallace in The Wire and I thought he was great in Chronicle and Creed as well, he’s also great in Black Panther, I’d go as far as saying he’s easily the best character in the movie but collectively he’s only in it for about 5/10 minutes. He turns up early on in a scene with Andy Serkis and then disappears for about an hour which was a shame, especially due to the fact that nothing interesting really happens in that hour, he’s completely underutilized and there’s no excuse for it. 

I loved the idea of Killmonger and I pretty much agreed with his point of view, not his motives or his methods but the idea of Wakanda sharing it’s technology, why not!? It just didn’t ever feel like they did anything interesting with the idea, it felt like a bit of a mess. First things first Andy Serkis didn’t need to be in this at all, all the time his character took up in the film should have been time spent developing Michael B. Jordan and don’t get me wrong I like Andy Serkis, he was great, but his character was fairly pointless in hindsight.   

The action scenes were fine I suppose but they held absolutely no weight and were ultimately completely forgettable, it didn’t feel like they served any real purpose other than being the required action scene in these things, they were void of both emotional impact and a sufficient enough impact on the narrative to be invested, they happened, I didn’t care, if I wasn’t forcing myself to remember them now they’d have dissipated into the ether completely! I don’t care about Black Panther, I barely care about any of the Avengers but I enjoyed the first Avengers film and I enjoyed Ragnarok recently as well, shout out to Joss Whedon and Taika Waititi!

I liked Andy Serkis (Gollum and other CGI things usually), Danai Gurira (Michonne from The Walking Dead) and Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) but no one else really stood out to me, maybe at this point it’s just ‘’superhero fatigue’’ as RedLetterMedia describe it because it’s definitely a sufficient movie but what was special about it, okay, a change of scenery, fine, what else? People were acting like this was the best thing since sliced bread, is it literally white guilt? I hate to even take it there but what’s the big deal? I don’t get it at all.   

It could have been a mistake watching Avengers Infinity War first because I definitely enjoyed it more than this and I think that’s because there’s a sense in it that they’re finally drawing some sort of conclusion to this endless universe of movies and I’m in anticipation of that ending, that closure, we’ve all invested a lot of time in this thing and it would be nice if it led somewhere, that could be a big factor in my dissatisfaction here, maybe it’s just a disappointing movie though. Those CGI rhinos looked terrible as well, fuck those rhinos!

I’m gonna give Black Panther 7.8/10, it’s a good movie I’m just a negative person and it was definitely overhyped, I went in expecting something more than the usual, I tried not to but it was impossible after seeing how everyone reacted to it! It’s a good film but it’s pretty forgettable, I think what it boils down to is that people want something new and this looks new, visually it’s refreshing but outside that what is there? A sickeningly underutilized character in Killmonger? It’s sufficient surface level entertainment, it’s pretty, I really liked the soundtrack, Kendrick is on fire! but it's a forgettable movie.

What did you think of Black Panther?