Black Panther

RATING: B+

While this may be Black Panther's first solo movie, it's not the first time we've seen him. We were introduced to him before in Captain America: Civil War, and that intro worked out pretty great and helped to create interest in his upcoming movie. (Obviously a lot of people were interested regardless, but it's difficult to deny that seeing him in action in a separate movie helped--much like with Spider-Man's intro in that same movie.) The result here is a kind of Marvel movie that in some ways is different from any of the others--but in other ways still kind of features more of the same. 

It's unclear just when exactly this takes place after Civil War, but at the beginning of this movie, T'Challa--the "Black Panther"--is ready to assume the throne in Wakanda after his father was killed in that other movie. Here we find out more about this mysterious Wakanda--it's actually a secret location hidden from the rest of the world, and is also essentially the home base of all the vibranium, a material that Marvel viewers should be pretty familiar with by now. As a result of them utilizing this vibranium, Wakanda is very technologically advanced. 

Anyway, T'Challa faces some tough times in his leadership pretty quickly. For one, he has to deal with Ulysses Klaue, a former foe of Wakanda who is out stealing vibranium objects and who his people have a heavily vested interest in. Then, another enemy by the name of Killmonger shows up, wanting to take the throne from T'Challa for his own goals. 

What we get is overall a pretty good movie. Being a MCU movie, most all of their films are this way, but this one still finds a few ways of its own to stand out--kind of. Like most Marvel movies, it has some pretty fun action sequences in it--the Black Panther is a pretty fun fighter to watch. Probably the most memorable scene is the car chase in South Korea (which we already saw parts of in the trailers), but the final act is pretty fun as well. While at times the plot is a bit predictable (there's a pretty ridiculous point where they try to fool us into thinking someone's dead), there's still a few surprises here and there and overall the product works well. 

As a character, T'Challa lacks the wit that many of his peers in the MCU have to help bring them charm (not even really any dry wit), but he makes up for that with convincing stoicism--which Chadwick Boseman portrays quite well, stepping firmly into the role. However, the other star of the show is Shuri, T'Challa's sister--who is a tech genius and provides much of the comic relief in place of her brother. 

There are still some issues. The CGI is all over the place. While Wakanda generally looks quite nice, there are still some points where that place or other places have an overuse of CGI--or just poor CGI altogether. Also, the character of Klaue is tragically underused. Andy Serkis has an insane amount of fun playing the character, hamming it up like we've never seen him before--and yet he does not have nearly as much time as he should, giving way for Killmonger to be the main antagonist. (Which is okay, Killmonger's a good antagonist... but still.) Also, certain parts of the first half of the film are a little more unevenly paced. 

Black Panther isn't quite in the top echelon of Marvel movies--but it's not too far off either. It works on its own merits, and it's about as fun and entertaining as any Marvel movie and also has a couple of different angles that help the film stand out a little bit from its crowd. While this movie could potentially have been more difficult to pull off due to the audience's unfamiliarity with the character before Civil War happened, Marvel has already pulled off so much (with some of those feats being arguably more difficult) that there was little to worry about anyway. It's another average success for Marvel: nothing more, nothing less. Not overly special, but absolutely no disappointment either.