Review of Marvels Black Panther

Black Panther arrives on screens with considerable hype, so much so that SJWs are calling it the Black Panther movement, not to be confused with Malcolm X this is a fictional marvel super hero movie giving us more insight into a bitpart character from Civil war.

Critics with liberal agendas and playing up the identity politics place this superhero movie on a major pedastal, like its very existence is a game changer. When in essense BP a big budget mainstream Marvel movie that not only features a nearly all-black cast, but it also has an African-American writer director (Ryan Coogler) and co-screenwriter (Joe Robert Cole). And it was lensed by Rachel Morrison, tipped to become the first woman to win the best director of photography Oscar for her work on Mudbound.

So why am I giving you all this background? Because on pure content it was pretty flat, a 7 out of 10 in the superhero genre at best, everything else was purely cosmetically reskinned with an African touch.

I saw this movie in a sold-out cinema on its opening weekend surrounded by young black people and there was not a lot of enthusiastic energy coming from the audience.

What’s the problem? Well, the dialogue was most of the times pointless and tedious, scenes were dragged out, the movie really only gets going in the third act and just when you think it will reach an epic conclusion it just leaves you with a mediocre ending

As for the comedy now a staple of Marvel movies the scenes with Andy Serkis, playing a truly evil South African assassin, are fun but he’s out of the movie too swiftly and there isn’t enough of tribal warlord MBaku (Winston Duke), who has an excellent ability to redirect racist stereotypes with comedy.

Sadly, Black Panther is just a bit too much Lion King for my liking. To take a character that was relatively obscure to many of the cinema go'ers the film could have taken much more of a risk knowing many viewers are not familiar with the original content, however, all we get is a superhero with daddy issues nowhere near the gravity of Peter had with his father and uncle ben

There are however a few highlights worth mentioning British actress Letitia Wright is a blast of total freshness as Black Panther’s princess sister Shuri. There are several other seriously feisty women fighters, and Lupita Nyong'o as the Panther's love interest delivers some subtle challenges to gender stereotypes.

Black Panthers production design is rather fabulous, fusing African tribal townscapes and costuming with sci-fi futurist fantasia – referencing films from Metropolis to Blade Runner and introducing us to a whole new world for the MCU to take advantage of with stunning visuals and a unique backdrop never before seen in the superhero franchise.

If you're going to see this movie I would suggest you drop your high expectations and take it for what it is another generic superhero movie. While i may be harsh in my critism since ive been watching everyhitng marvel has put out since the MCU began i think many first time viewers will find BP the entry point into the MCU and Marvel have just unlocked a relatively lucrative new fan base who will not only stay with them going forward but pick up the back catalogue of content, which means big bucks for them