In Retrospect: Black Panther

I hope you all enjoyed Infinity War. I didn't see it obviously, but the news of the passing of my two favorite Marvel movie heroes is distressing.

Despite that, I still do enjoy Black Panther immensely. If memory served I said I liked it better than Doctor Strange, and....I don't know. I'm still torn on favorites, I love Doctor Strange and I love Black Panther so I believe there is no superior film. And now that time has passed and multiple viewings have been taken into account, I am still glad I went to see this movie and bought this movie. But why did this movie grab me when really, no other Marvel movie did? Was it because it took on a more serious story with a low emphasis on comedy? Absolutely. Because of the characters and the unique world it created? Certainly, the characters are all great and the world is absolutely stunning to behold. But the truth is, and this is as snobbish as I am ever going to get, nobody unless you were a hardcore Marvel comic fan wanted or knew about Black Panther. So it had that mystery, that allure of something no one knew about. It was like Guardians Of The Galaxy, no one unless you read the comics knew who Rocket Raccoon or Groot was and yet they still took the time to make a movie about them. I mean really when you get right down to it, nobody really knew the extent of Marvel characters. If you asked me in say, 2005 who did Marvel had I would tell you Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, and Thor. That's it. And I'm sure it was like that for countless other people. So when I heard of this Black Panther guy, despite me not seeing Civil War, I wanted to know more about him and was intrigued when his own movie was getting made. Pretty much same for Doctor Strange, except they had Ben and Mads to make me obligated to see it. But Black Panther had nothing beyond intrigue so the movie paid off for me in aces. I love the characters, and while Chadwick Boseman is a fantastic actor and held this movie to something beyond your regular popcorn flick, Danai Gurira steals the show for me! I love her character, she's a badass but has deeper motivation and identity beyond that, my eyes were glued to her everytime she was on screen. And yet another good thing it did, it gave ample screen time to characters that are more off to the side. If this was another studio all the time and screen presence would be dominated by Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, and maybe Martin Freeman, with very brief scenes of Letitia Wright or of Lupita Nyong'o but they expanded upon them which helped the film greatly. Yeah it does suck that Andy didn't get much screen time but hey it looked like he had fun doing it! But what really sold me on this being a good if not great film were the visuals. There is such deep rich color in costumes, set design, and effects. When a movie makes you stick around at the credits to appreciate the visuals, they did something right. And just a sidenote, I am so happy I did not sit until the after credits scene cause I just watched it and my reaction was pretty much this, "Who the f*** are you? Who's White Wolf? Is that the, what's his name, the Winter Soldier? I'm so confused...." and that's it. That would have kind of pissed me off royaly in the theater. At least in Doctor Strange I could be like, "Oh hi Thor. This sounds interesting, I wonder what the next movie will be.", there's none of that here. It was so bad they had to put, Black Panther will return in Infinity War. Must have been a slow writing day over at Marvel. Oh well, we know how it ends. Have fun crying kids over characters you have probably grown up all your life watching! Say hi to Thanos for me! But yeah, Black Panther is a good movie.

It's a slow week here, I only got one more movie for the week. But for the sake of interest, tomorrow we will be looking at Batman Ninja.