Ryan Coogler was given possibly one of the hardest jobs imaginable for any director and It is fair to say that this film definitely did justice to the death of the late Chadwick Boseman. It honoured his death respectfully and integrated his passing into the plot with skill and subtlety, whilst still being a well thought out, heartfelt tribute to the tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman. Coogler deserves every bit of praise he has received for dealing with this situation.
The majority of the acting is good however there aren’t really any major stand out performances. So if you are seeking any Oscar worthy performances, then this isn’t the film for you.
One of the only stand out things to me was the soundtrack, i feel that this soundtrack is one of the few things definitely deserves praise due to the excellent music choices throughout. It has a mixture of carefully selected found music and enjoyable music composed specifically for the film.
Things that i didn’t like (spoilers)
Although this film is receiving lots of acclaim I do not think this is entirely deserved as there were way too many flaws for my liking.
The first of these being the fact that this film doesn’t really know what it’s meant to be, which ends up in it being a messy narrative that’s one part about grief, another part a setup movie, another part revenge story and also an origin story for Shuri’s black panther. This results in a story that is slow paced and unentertaining for the majority of the time as we are constantly breaking up the pace to go in between these different stories.
The fact that this film was also part of a setup for the iron-heart TV series seemed forced and unnecessary to the film’s plot. I think that the film would have been a lot better without this, because it added many unnecessary scenes and the character Riri never really seemed to serve a purpose in the film’s plot.
Namor, (played by Tenoch Heurta) could have had the potential to be a good villain, however it is clear that the writers didn’t really know what they were doing as some parts of the film attempt to make us feel sympathetic for him, then the next moment he does something to make us hate him such as killing queen Ramonda. Yet we’re still meant to feel sympathy for him at the end when Shuri decides to spare him. This indecisiveness results in him being a messy, difficult to connect with character, whom I ended up not really caring about by the end. This also isn’t helped by his weak motivation of wanting to take over the world just because people wanted his resources.
Overuse of CGI did let this film down a lot which has been the case for a lot of the most recent projects. Although the Alantian characters and most of the underwater scenes were well animated, there were many parts that could have been better, one being both Shuri and Riri in their suits. Both characters had poorly animated cheap looking CGI animated suits. Considering the fact that the black panther is meant to be the main character in the film, the black panther suit was arguably one of the worst CGI animated things in the film. This could possibly be a side effect of the harsh, tight deadlines set by Marvel that can cause extreme stress for workers in the VFX department resulting in rushed barely finished CGI, much like in this film.
Even the action sequences in this film feel way too familiar; there is a distinct lack of creativity and many of the scenes that should be standout sequences feel a little like a poor “copy and paste” of many other fight scenes in much better movies. Recent Marvel films seem to lack the tension in combat scenes compared to earlier films like Captain America Civil War and even the first Black Panther.
After the credits rolled and the film had ended, I had mixed feelings. These were much disappointment and not much enjoyment. The film lacked creativity and felt poorly paced and overstuffed. There are Many faults in this film and very few things that actually were done well.
Overall, this film was a messy, disappointing film that aside from being a touching tribute for Chadwick Boseman, failed on almost every other level and has me feeling sceptical for the future of the already struggling MCU.
By Ewan Danyluk
BFI Film Academy 2022/23
I actually disagree on that as I feel the villain was portrayed in a way that not only made you feel bad for him but also not like him giving you mixed feeling which is also good to see in a movie. I liked the way the movie flowed and think it has to be up there in movies made in 2022!