Black Panther

[zico]

6/10. Fantasy superhero action film from the Marvel stable, currently in the news for having a mostly black cast. The film's big (and good) idea is centred around the concept that there's an African kingdom called Wakanda which is considered a poor 3rd world country, but is secretly the most technologically advanced on Earth and "cloaks" its true nature from the rest of the world.

PG12 - Warnings - Moderate violence, injury detail, and .... brief rude gesture! (Don't worry, it's not that bad a gesture)

Standard sort of Marvel stuff, but the African setting and theme gives them the opportunity for something that looks and feels a bit different, with African settings, costumes and background music, which are a cut above the usual Marvel-USA stuff, as well as the ability to bring in a few grown-up themes like slavery and colonialism, but it's certainly not heavy-handed on the serious stuff. 135 minutes running time which drags a little towards the end, but overall it's pretty watchable. As usual, you have to turn off your critical faculties for the plot to make sense, and not think "If they can do X, why can't they do Y?". A few bits of humour here and there, early on the humour either isn't funny or is in bad taste, but the humour improves greatly as the film goes on.

Quite refreshing to see a mainstream film set around black actors and culture, but again for me, this is a film that is another huge missed opportunity to make a better film, largely around the teenage writers' ideas of what an advanced black nation looks like.

The Wakanda nation's technology rests entirely on a plant called Vibranium that grows only in their country, and gives them limitless cheap energy and other useful stuff. (I thought Vibranium was an ornamental shrub with white flowers, but I now stand corrected.) With this access to limitless power, they've spoilt a perfectly nice valley by building a futuristic city with lots of big ugly skyscrapers and very fast trains. An advanced nation needs an advanced form of government right? Wrong. It's a monarchy, and on the king's death, his heir also has to fight challengers to prove he's fit to be king, and even worse, the challengers are selected from rigidly separated ethnic groups. The country itself has a separation policy from the rest of the world even more extreme than the ideals of "America First". Virtually all the main characters are either warrior-types or kings, with just one scientist. The women are allowed to be nearly, but not quite, as important as the men (they do their fair share of fighting, but miss out on all the top jobs). Yes I know all this stuff is fantasy, but given that it's fantasy, why not create a nation with a bit more to admire?

For the first 20 minutes, it looked like Andy Serkis (one of the very few white actors) would be the best thing in it with his over the top villain (which would be a tad unfortunate), but Letitia Wright then steals scenes all over the place as the wisecracking scientist princess. Initially a lot of the acting seems hammy, with lots of earnest and slightly pompous declaiming, and terrible lines in the style of "Yes. It is I. Your king. Your rightful king. Why do you not kneel before your king!" but you get used to it after a while.

Would be interested to see what people make of it.

[Itsallaguess]

Fantasy superhero action film from the Marvel stable, currently in the news for having a mostly black cast.

To be fair, it also stars Martin Freeman, who played Bilbo Baggins, and Andy Serkis who played Gollum.

Perhaps it would be unfair to suggest that they're the Tolkien white guys.....

Yes, that's my coat at the back there, can you please pass it over?

Itsallaguess

[UncleIan]

(I thought Vibranium was an ornamental shrub with white flowers, but I now stand corrected.)

Zico, that's Viburnum*.

* Which you probably know and were making a joke that whooshed straight over my head.