Black Panther (2018) | Best Picture?

Black Panther may go down in history as one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the history of filmmaking. Disney managed to convince the general public that by paying them money to see their movie, they were fighting racism. Some were convinced that this was the first superhero movie based on a black character, seemingly forgetting a trilogy of films involving Wesley Snipes killing vampires in the 1990s. This film was so important that it made over a billion dollars at the box office, and it was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. While I have it on good authority that racism was not defeated by ensuring this film’s success, in the end, the real question is: Is Black Panther better than Blade?

Pros

Decent acting

Cons

CGI looks rough in some spots; other action scenes using it are barely visible
Black Panther is not allowed to be the main character in his own movie
Too long
The most technologically advanced society in the world uses spears and rhinos?
What are Killmonger’s motivations?
What was the point of Killmonger’s girlfriend?
What was the point of bringing back Andy Serkis?
Wakanda is a country that is not only unbelievable but also manages to come across as a terrible place

Plot & Thoughts

T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) faces unrest in his home country, Wakanda, the racist, isolationist ethnostate that considers all white people as “colonizers” super-advanced nation that is more technologically powerful than any other due to early and sole access to an extremely rare resource called vibranium, which they don’t want to share with anyone, including their poor neighboring African countries. His father’s death in Captain America: Civil War has left the king’s throne empty, and there are some who think T’Challa might be unfit to rule and act as the warrior king, Black Panther. While T’Challa manages to quell a little unrest and complete his coronation, a Wakandan artifact is stolen from a museum in London, which makes him set out to find the culprit responsible, who happens to have his own rights to the throne of Wakanda.

Hopefully, the zeitgeist around this film has died down enough by now for me to have a different opinion than what everyone had in 2018, so I don’t get bombarded with claims of being a racist for what I’m about to say: I think Black Panther sucks. Some of its characters end up confusingly inconsistent, while others don’t seem to serve much purpose. The main plot and theme of the movie get lost along the way with the shifting goals of the villain. Perhaps what I found most irritating, however, is how the world-building fails almost immediately.

The opening animated cinematic that informs you of the history of Wakanda causes confusion about how that country is supposed to function. It suggests that a group of various warlike factions that got access to advanced technology early in human history didn’t bother spreading beyond the borders of Wakanda. Writers, have you read a history book? Ever heard of Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Shaka Zulu, Mansa Musa, Suleiman the Magnificent, Attila the Hun, or Hernán Cortés? When these guys had technology that was more advanced than their neighbors, they weren’t afraid to use it in their war campaigns. The opening narration isn’t saying that the Wakandans were a docile people before vibranium arrived, and that they remained peaceful. It says that they were willing to go to war over things, but they just decided to stay in their little bubble rather than spread across Africa and the rest of the world. Why expand your empire when you can stay isolated and continue to think less of the world around you while doing nothing to improve it? Also, I love that a country that is supposed to be the most advanced in the world determines its ruler through physical combat. That makes more sense in war-like nations like those run by the Huns or the Zulus, but an advanced society that acts like it’s better than the “colonized?”

Throughout the movie, when we see more of the secret nation, it makes even less sense on a visual level. They’re the most advanced country in the history of the world, with flying vehicles and nano-technology, yet their warriors use spears instead of projectile weapons, and their advanced cities are littered with thatched huts and primitive structures. In the climax of the film, rhinos are used as heavy cavalry on the field of battle. It’s as though the filmmakers couldn’t think of how to show African culture without resorting to showing weapons and buildings of hunter-gatherer societies; that seems more racist than giving this movie a bad grade, but don’t mind my opinion. I simply do not understand how Wakanda functions as a country or how I’m supposed to either like them or be impressed by them, when I find them to be just racist, selfish, or stupid. They’re extremely advanced but secretive, and they reside within a protective cloaking shield, unwilling to share their technology and resources with their surrounding African nations, let alone the rest of the world. How many countries in Africa that aren’t filled with filthy “colonizers” would benefit from Wakanda’s help? The isolationist ideology, coupled with a sense of superiority, makes the Wakandans seem like arrogant pricks who are going to get what they deserve; it made me root for the villain.

Speaking of the villain, Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), I never quite understood what his ultimate goals were. Jordan is a good actor, and he does as good a job as everyone else here, but the character he’s playing is not fully realized. It starts out that he wants to share more of Wakanda’s technology with impoverished communities in the world (how horrible of him). Seems like a noble intention, so to make sure the audience understands he’s the bad guy and that sharing something from a nation that wants to keep everything to itself is bad, the movie has him kill his associates when he’s done with them. Yet, I don’t know what purpose they were really supposed to play in his grand plan. The initial goal seems to go away as soon as Killmonger goes to Wakanda to claim the throne from T’Challa. He then takes over and destroys the magical flower that is used to create Wakandan super soldiers because…reasons. It’s a shame that Michael B. Jordan is wasted in this movie as a character who ends up being forgettable due to his inconsistencies.

Speaking of wasted actors, Chadwick Boseman was great as T’Challa in Captain America: Civil War. He brought charisma and gravitas to the role and immediately made the character interesting and likable. His motivations were made clear quickly. He added a lot of tension to the growing conflict with the Avengers. He ended up being the person with the fewest flaws at the end of the movie. In his own movie, which is named after his character’s alter ego, he is surrounded by other characters that take away the focus from him. Between his sister, his mother, his ex-girlfriend, and his female bodyguard—all of whom talk down to him at some point in the movie—it’s unclear who the real protagonist of the movie is. Killmonger seems like the main character because T’Challa doesn’t really go on any sort of hero’s journey. He becomes king, doesn’t do a great job, loses the throne, then reclaims it after a vision he has of his father…Okay… Are there any themes we can expand upon for this? No? Cool… At least the actors do their best with the material they’re given.

Finally, there’s the action. Black Panther does some cool things in this movie. Unfortunately, a lot of it doesn’t look great due to the quality of the digital effects. Many sequences take place in dimly lit scenes to cover up the muddy CGI. Yes, it looks better and more believable than the CGI fight scenes in Blade 2, but that movie had other qualities to make up for its action and was released 20 years ago, so it has an excuse.

TL;DR

While T’Challa was a great character in Civil War, with a genuinely interesting arc and compelling performance from Chadwick Boseman, the movie that is supposed to be about him does a lot less with the character and manages to make Wakanda a much less interesting place than I expected. It surrounds him with various female characters to talk down to him, as well as drive the plot, while he just tags along. It focuses more on the villain, whose motivations never really made sense by the end. It makes the people of Wakanda appear close-minded, with a sense of superiority over the rest of the world. So many people celebrated Black Panther as the first “black superhero movie,” or the first that was any good, but I’d rather watch Blade any day of the week because Wesley Snipes is awesome, that movie is awesome, and it’s less than two hours long.

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