Bring back the gimp suit!
Not really being a comic book fan, I've been faintly amused when aficionados complain that the film treatment of their favourite character or story didn't live up to their expectations: In issue 39 of 1976, Dr Y held the skanzen in his left hand, but in the film he quite clearly held it in his RIGHT!
Well, that came right back to bite me on the butt with Black Panther!
The character was one of my favourites as a boy. Back then, he wore a close-fitting costume that accentuated his superhero muscular definition. Probably a little too close to the gimp suit in Pulp Fiction to get away with it now; although gimp suits were unknown in the south-east of England in the '70s, at least in the circles that thirteen year-old me moved in. Nevertheless, the low-rent muscle armour introduced in Captain America: Handbags at Dawn Civil War was a major disappointment. So, the costume design left something to be desired.
To the film. Overall, it's okay. But only okay. Not the worst entry into the MCU, but that's only because the MCU includes the aforementioned Captain America: Civil War. I wasn't expecting much when the film was being lauded, not for an amazing story, but because it has an almost entirely all-black cast and whizzy CGI effects…ho-hum. The use of 3D is a bit more gee-whizz in-your-face than the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy or Wonder Woman.
The final scene was a sop, given the extent to which Wakanda has been hidden from the world, only for T'Challa to give away one of its biggest secrets on a whim to a couple of Californian kids, rather than doing anything for his country's poorer African neighbours. I understand the message, since it'd been rammed down my throat for well over two hours, but it was still fucking ham-fisted.
I'll give kudos to Michael B. Jordan, though. His Killmonger was an effective and believable antagonist.
And at least the disc retainers in the plastic holder aren't broken, so I can swap it over to a film more worthy of keeping. So that's something.
3/5
true bloodnation, closed to the outside world, which maxim did the casting director go by:
they all look alike, or
close enough is good enough?
The Critical Drinker pretty much summed up a lot of my feelings, with this special thought being the cherry on top:
The writers wanted Wakanda to be a super-advanced technological utopia, but they tried to mesh this with traditional African tribal culture. And the two things go together about as well as chilli sauce and Black Forest gateau.
The Critical Drinker, Black Panther is the Most Overrated MCU Movie Ever