Black Panther (2018)
by Ryan Coogler
Starring Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Michael B. Jordan, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, and so on
The Plot
You all know it, the fantastic Kingdom of Wakanda is under threat, somebody has come from the chequered past to claim its throne, and its rightful King must fight to preserve Wakanda, as well as the rest of the world.
The Good
Wakanda is a fantastic fictional place that makes you want to explore more. Ryan Coogler is unsuspectingly a good lore-maker. Chadwick Boseman is great, regal, and elegant, befitting an African King. But Michael B. Jordan is the star, he is quite convincing, a great actor that shows clear emotions like dejection, dissappointment, as well as determination. I think he is one of the few good Marvel villains that we can actually symphatise with, given his background story.
The rest of the cast: they all received a well-balanced story telling and character development. It is not over the top, yet not too campy. Just like Marvel movies, it does occasionally make fun of you and become overly aware of typical cinema tropes, but there is only a tasteful amount of it.
The Bad
The story about modern Wakanda itself is too short. I was curious about how it manages its relationship with the rest of the world, how it plans to re-integrate, and so on.
Overall, it is made for less humorous, and a bit more serious in tone, yet not overly preachy and philosophical-wannabes.
A worthy 8.5/10. It leaves a very high mark as one of the best superhero films ever.
Wonder Woman's political hype really puts me off and actually the movie come out as rather disappointing, although I still think it is actually quite good if there weren't too many hypes surrounding it. Black Panther did suffer from similar politically-motivated hypes, but for me, it survived that hurdle, and came out rather satisfying.