Black Panther - Spoiler Thread

I’m sure i’m not the only one here who saw Black Panther last weekend. It had the fifth highest grossing debut weekend ever with $202M in North America and is the second highest debut for a Marvel movie only behind Avengers. With an A+ Cinemascore and 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes it’s also one of the most universally beloved movies by both fans and critics.

What did everyone think? Did it live up to the hype? Where does it rank for you of the Marvel movies?

I personally loved it. I was very excited for it when it was first announced as I thought Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther stole every scene in Civil War that he was in. And then as the early reviews started coming in I got even more hyped and it managed to meet my incredibly high expectations.

Michael B Jordan as Killmonger and Letita Wright as Shuri ended up stealing the movie from Boseman. Both performances were terrific and felt different from other Marvel characters in the way they were both fantastical and grounded.

I’m not sure if it ranks in the top five yet but it might after I see it again.

I personally didn’t set the bar high for this one. But I came out loving it. Probably my second favorite marvel movie right behind captain America the winter soldier. Special effects and the cast was totally on point.

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It’s top ten for sure but could sneak into the top five on rewatch, for me. Really excellent world building, wonderful story lay-out that showed us how things worked within Wakanda and then went ahead and revisited the same types of situations and put a different spin on it, lots of parallels running through it that made for a very strong base.

I thought Killmonger was a phenomenal villain with a fantastic backstory and legitimate gripes that I could sympathise with, it was only his methods that made him the bad guy - meanwhile Nakia, who had very similar feelings throughout, never resorted to killing innocents and the “colonise or be colonised” mentality and ended the film succeeding in what she set out to do; helping organise a real outreach program and humanitarian efforts from Wakanda.

The cast was phenomenal, the effects (for the most part) were great and I utterly adored Letitia Wright as Shuri! That girl is joy personified. Ever time she appeared on screen I knew that I’d be laughing in moments; “Did he freeze?”, “WHAT ARE THOSE!?”, “Another broken white boy for me to fix!”… she was total gold and I cannot wait to get more of her in Infinity War and any other films they choose to put her in.

This is a spoiler thread, so I’m going deep in here - you’ve been warned…

Killmonger’s death shocked me. With Infinity War coming up, and my feeling being that Loki is a dead man come the end of this phase (if not in IW, then in Avengers 4) I saw Erik and T’challa as being able to have that same kind of dynamic between them that Thor has with Loki, and partially I just wanted more Michael B Jordan in the MCU, but that final line was such a gut punch and so perfect. Of all the final lines for characters in Marvel movies (or even just movies in general) that might be the very best.

Klaue’s death shocked me too, but not in the same way.

Martin Freeman’s American accent is shit though. Really, really shit.

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The last thing Killmonger says in the movie bruh! It never occurred to me that men were jumping ship to escape slavery. That wasn’t a scene I ever played in my mind. I like that the movie had us thinking from a black perspective.

Top 5 MCU film.

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Definitely one of the better MCU movies, as it didn’t follow the usual origin story with the fun stuff happening halfway through the movie. This felt more like “a day in a life of…” story, with great acting all around.

It did drag at times for me, with the 2+ hour running time being a bit too much. Then again, I’m old and my favourite movie length is 80 minutes.

Loved Black Panther. Top five for me!

I felt that Killmonger’s story needed more time to be fleshed out. If they took a chunk out of Klaue’s screentime to give a bit more backstory into Killmonger’s post 1992, then I felt that his motives would’ve struck a chord in the movie.

His fight agains’t T’Challa was weird. He won fairly, never cheated and did so within the rules of the bout, yet Shuri, Nakai & Co. acted as if a Killmonger cheated? There was no iner conflict visible for T’Challa or hesitance to fight him, he just lost.

Best line for he (Besides “Hey Auntie!”) was when T’Challa returned for his rematch.

Killmonger: “That Challenge shit is over, I’m the King now!”

Other than that? Loved this movie!

Well Killmonger did just kill their Son and Brother, it’s understandable that Shuri and the rest of the royal family would be devastated. They didn’t believe he should have been given the right to fight in the first place and understand the scary implications for them, Wakanda and the world having a bloodlusting mercenary as the king.

The fact that Killmonger (thought he) killed T’Challa when T’Challa encouraged M’Baku to yield highlights the difference in their character and that even if you feel sympathetic towards his view of the world, Killmonger is still the bad guy.

I thought Kilmonger was great in general but I agree he won cleanly and they accepted it easily. However, I think they were in shock and they had to accept that he won.

I loved almost everything about the movie. Martin Freeman was a little pointless but I appreciate his role as the US ambassador who was accepted by the tribe.