Black Panther

So, everyone, we're at the first comic book movie of 2018 and one of my most anticipated things of the whole year, Marvel's Black Panther. As I said before, this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year and I couldn't wait for it. I was also really excited considering it was coming out so early in the year. I just saw it yesterday, and, what did I think of it? I thought it was really great, but not perfect. But it was really close. So, in case you didn't know this about the movie, apparently a fair amount of people were organising a group to try to have it where this movie got a terrible score on Rotten Tomatoes, even if it was good. Apparently it was because they wanted revenge for DC getting bad reviews lately and Marvel doing so well. My brother and I both agree that it's most likely a racism thing considering this were choosing THIS movie out of all the Marvel movies, but they were proven wrong because this movie was really fantastic in my opinion and it has an incredible score on Rotten Tomatoes. And I love this movie. Again, it's not perfect, but I loved this movie. And, yes, like my other reviews lately, this will have no spoilers for the first part, and then I'll do the spoilers with a warning. What's the story? It opens up with a flashback of a man being taken away to Wakanda and then it goes to present day when T'Challa and Okoye, a warrior of Wakanda and played by Danai Gurira, are helping a friend of his named Nakia, played by Lupita Nyong'o escape from captivity. They then return to Wakanda when T'Challa is named the new king after his father was killed in Civil War. And now he's also agreed to track down and find Klaw, who was in Age of Ultron, played by Andy Serkis. And, I'm going to stop right there. When it comes to solo movies for new characters in the M.C.U, this one is easily one of the best. I don't think I can consider it to THE best, but it's definitely one of the best. I'd say, in my opinion, it's my third favourite behind Spider-Man: Homecoming and Iron Man. However, with that, I've gotta say, this might have the best assembled cast for an M.C.U film to date. Everyone in this movie is incredible. There's not one single bad performance here. Everyone is phenomenal. Chadwick Boseman is, of course, perfect as T'Challa. I would say he's even better than he was in Civil War. This is easily one of the best casting choices in the M.C.U, period. And, with the rest of the cast, there's no one who's just doing okay, everyone does an incredible job. Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, Winston Duke, Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis. All of them are fantastic. But, the two I want to give a special mention to are, one, Letitia Wright as Shuri, T'Challa's younger sister, she's so much fun and one of funniest parts of the movie. She's the one who makes the technology for T'Challa and all that stuff. And the other is Michael B. Jordan as the villain, Erik Killmonger. In my opinion, he's one of the best M.C.U villains with him reminding me a lot of Vulture in Homecoming in the sense that he has a backstory and an origin that you understand and can even sympathise with. I even felt really sorry for him in one scene. This is also one of the most different type of comic book movie I've ever seen. And, by that, I mean it's very interesting and the stuff they touch on is very different to the type of things you'd normally see in a comic book movie and I thought it was really interesting. Now, one of main things I loved about this movie was the directing. Ryan Coogler was the director of this movie and he did an incredible job here. This movie is directed so masterfully and so differently to any kind of comic book movie I've seen before like what I just said there. Everything in  this movie looks amazing from the sets, to the costumes to the visuals, even if it does seem a little off sometimes, to the more stranger looking designs on some of these characters when they're given something cool to wear. The actual feel and tone to the movie is great too. There's never a moment in this that I thought was boring or inconsistent. And, on that, there are quite a fair amount of twists in this movie I didn't expect. Now, in terms of action, in my opinion, there's a negative and positive. The negative is that a small bit of the action is just a bit hard to follow and hard to see with how the camera is placed, especially at the start, but, positively, aside from that first scene with just a bit of the camerawork, the rest of the action is incredible and exactly what I want to see with Black Panther action. It's fast paced, there's awesome agility moves shown and a lot of it is incredibly creative. And, despite what I said about a bit of the camerawork at the beginning, a lot of the camerawork here is really cool and creative. I would say my favourite was either the ending or the casino fight scene. There's even one scene that one-take and that fight scene was awesome. The movie's music is also very interesting with it using African choir and it was nice to hear. I thought they might have used it just a tiny but too much, but it was still nice to listen to. The movie's also really funny, just like all the other M.C.U movies. Although, this one is less of a comedy than a lot of the previous M.C.U films, especially last year's movies where they were more focused on the comedy. And, like I said, I would say the funniest part is Letitia Wright as Shuri. Almost everything she said made me and the other members of the audience laugh out loud. Even things she did were really funny. Especially her first scene with T'Challa. That was great. Now, as much as I love this movie, this isn't perfect. It's close, like I said, but it's not. Firstly, like I already mentioned some of the camerawork in a few of the action scenes made it kinda hard to follow, for me at least. But also, the pacing can seem a bit slow. I personally didn't really mind it, but it did seem a little slow, especially at the start. But it does pick itself up later on, so that's not much a of a negative. Also, some of the visuals were a bit weird to me. A lot were really great, but I think they seemed a bit cartoony at points, especially towards the end climax against T'Challa and Killmonger. Some of that seemed a bit odd to me. Still though, none of that ruins the movie anyway. So, before I finish and go into the spoilers, I'll just finish up this part. Black Panther is another fantastic M.C.U movie that I loved and it was a great way to do this character before Infinity War comes out in May. This is a very fun movie to watch that I would highly recommend to anyone. Especially Marvel fans. I was so excited for this and it delivered. It's not the best Marvel movie and there are one or two flaws, but there's nothing awful here and I still had a great time with this and I'm definitely telling ya to see it if you can. And so, thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me hat you think. Okay, now let's get into the spoilers.

Spoilers:

Okay, firstly, I want to talk about that huge spoiler where you feel sorry for Killmonger, and that's when we see that T'Challa's dad, T'Chalka, killed his dad and left him there and then we see him as a boy holding him and then later on when we see him in his dream talking to his dad. That was the scene when I started feeling sorry for him and the best example of showing how he's a sympathetic villain. And then the fight scene at the waterfall when it looks like T'Challa dies but then M'Baku saves him is probably the thing that surprised me the most in this movie because M'Baku is also known as Man-Ape, Black Panther's archenemy. So, him saving him and then helping to fight for Wakanda along with his army surprised me a lot. But I liked that. He was pretty likeable there and, who knows, maybe he'll betray him in the sequel and become Man-Ape there to be the main villain in that movie. I think that would be cool. The twist on the falls when Killmonger kills Zuri for revenge for his dad was something else that surprised me, and it was sad to see him die. The scene where T'Challa was talking to T'Chalka and he admits the truth to him was another scene that was really sad, because T'Chalka was who T'Challa looked up to his whole life, so seeing that where they argue about what his did and didn't do was sad. The end climax was awesome inside that tunnel, though, again, I though a bit of it was a little cartoony, but it was still awesome. I especially loved Ross flying that jet to destroy the others. And then, finally at the end where Killmonger kills himself was something I thought T'Challa was going to do, but when he did it, again, I felt sorry for him and it was kind of a nice send-off to him, especially with the beautiful cinematography in that scene. And then, finally the end credit scenes. The first one where T'Challa is admitting to the world about how Wakanda is a lot bigger than everyone thinks was cool and it opened a lot of possibilities that could happen in the future. And then there was the end credit scene with Bucky in Wakanda and it looks like he's learning about the Wakanda culture. And this makes sense considering we see him and T'Challa together in the Infinity War trailer. But it's also a little confusing considering he was asleep in the pod and he said he wanted to come out as soon as they could get Hydra's brainwashing out of him. So maybe they have it out of him, but they never explain that they do. But it was still cool to see him. And so, everyone, that's my review for Black Panther and I can't wait for the next M.C.U movie, Avengers: Infinity War. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.