It's an awesome movie but I could never get over the fact that Killmonger sounds like a 14 year making what he thinks is an awesome online handle for himself.
LTTP: Black Panther: Everything is better in black
- Thread starter Mediking
- Start date
It's rough for sure, I rarely see people pretend otherwise. All the same, there's more to a movie than CGI, simple as that. That people often go further with it and use that fight to act as if it represents how the entire movie looks is also rather irritating and disingenous.
As for the 3rd act, for me personally it ended on a high note for me due to how the big battle ended, as well as Kilmonger's final words/death.
Well it's not like he gave himself the nickname lol
Even if Wakanda wasn't positioned as an aspirational goal for the rest of the world (which I disagree with), why is the secret crown jewel of black achievement in the MCU a nation governed by regressive, throughly outmoded traditions that every other developed nation on earth has long since discarded (for very good reason)? It's insulting.
It sucks because the performances, visual design, and soundtrack are all excellent, but I just can't connect to T'Challa's quest because he's fighting to restore a status quo for his people that I fundamentally, viscerally disagree with.
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That was the point. We knew T'challa, the film was introducing us to his world and everyone else. And the guy playing BP is such a good and generous actor that he doesn't need to be centre of attention at all times.
Yeah, I don't need a Killmonger type background for a villain whose plan is so comically over the top devastating. Brolin did a great job bringing a giant eggplant to life. Thanos is a fine villain for what he is.
The whole thing about T'Challa in BPis that he isn't ready to lead. That is the whole point of his arc in the film. He's much more decisive in Civil War because he's only really driven by emotion, and acting in his own interest. Here, we see that though he's a good man (which we know from the end of CW), he just isn't ready — the death of his father has forced him into a situation where he needs to decide what kind of king he wants to be and what kind of country Wakanda will be going forward.
Each of the other characters represents various aspects of progressivism (Shuri), pride in their culture & empowerment (Okoye), tradition (M'Baku), altruism/humanitarianism (Nakia), those the nation has failed (Erik Killmonger), protectionism (W'Kabi), the risks of outsiders who could want to exploit your resources and so on (Kalue, to a lesser extent Ross). Them having such a strong influence in the film is necessary to show all the different facets that will be important for T'Challa while he's still searching for the "right" thing to do. T'Challa is a man who wants to do right by all of them, but in practice what does that mean? And until a leader has their answer, how much can they really do? They'll lack the decisiveness/boldness he had when he was singularly focused on revenge in CW.
To quote the film itself "You are a good man with a good heart. It is hard for a good man to be king".
So T'Challa is unready, but he is not unworthy — in contrast to Erik who is ready, but is unworthy. In another thread some peeps were saying that they didn't get why T'Challa could lose one fight against Erik, only to beat him again later, and I said this at the time:
...Because he had zero interest in changing Wakanda in any kind of way you are imagining. Wakanda was just a tool, a milestone, an enabler for what he wanted to do. Militant expansive empire was the only change he was interested in.
Killmonger didn't really have anything else left in him but a deep anger towards everything in the world that had betrayed him and those like him, and he couldn't escape it. It was his source of strength but also his character weakness, and why he was ultimately not fit to rule despite raising very valid points about Wakanda's former governance. However there were broader consequences to Killmonger's actions in that they fully convinced T'Challa on what path to take for Wakanda's future, what kind of king he wanted to be and what it meant for their place in the world — which was the entire point of his arc for the film...
But all of this is wildly off topic in a box office thread and should be in the discussion/spoiler threads. I'm actually disappointed in myself for perpetuating it.
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Erik wouldn't yield. Part of what separates him from T'Challa (and also from his own father N'Jobu's original goal) is that he is too far gone — all he has left in him is his anger. It's whats driven him all that time to do what he's done since childhood. Losing a single fight to T'Challa isn't going to free him of that. He can't let go of it and he knows it, which is why he knows he wouldn't be take a place living among them and live normally and only incarceration would await him. Hence his final line.
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Also while I agree that some of the CG was rough (and erasing the stunt performances and replacing them with complete CG replacements was a mistake), people can miss me with the "BP is worst MCU, its CG looks like PS2 lol", when Infinity War's Iron Man looked like this:
As a nigga, it's not insulting. Not to me, anyways.
Their tradition has kept them safe for centuries, and they've thus held on to it, in part because they're so damn closed off from everyone else.
They're not meant to be what you're saying they are. Not yet, anyways.
Black Panther is a damn fun and solid MCU film and is one of the better ones in the MCU library. But outside of that it is an average film that has a lot of issues. The main one being the CGI. It is glaringly bad at times.
Looks good. Don't see anything wrong.Also while I agree that some of the CG was rough (and erasing the stunt performances and replacing them with complete CG replacements was a mistake), people can miss me with the "BP is worst MCU, its CG looks like PS2 lol", when Infinity War's Iron Man looked like this:
That still frame he pulled out compared to a bunch of noticeably bad CGI in BP is just as bad okay.
I thought I read that BP got shorted dev time on the CG because teams were pulled over to Infinity War at the time. Could be bullshit but doesn't sound too far fetched.