MCU 30 : Black Panther 2 : Wakanda Forever
To my great shock, this film is actually one of the better Disney-Marvel movies to come out in years.
I hate using terms like "Woke" or "M-she-U", but it is hard to ignore, that besides the bad guy, there are only 3 males in this movie. Apart from extras or minor parts that are not much more than extras. We have a faceless "top henchmen". An Odd-Job style dude. Arthur Dent who is in the film for not much more than 2 minutes and there is the big King guy that bashes his chest a lot, who is also in the movie for almost no time at all. The movie does revolves around old female characters, or new female ones. There are jokes about white cops, jokes about "colonials in chains", an entire subplot about the Spanish invasion of South America. Black Panther is of course a gender swap and it also, bafflingly, they chose to feature Iron Heart for some reason. Iron Heart was a Iron Man race / genre swap from the comics. Her comic series btw turned out to be the worst selling Marvel Comic in history of Marvel Comics at the time of release. So why did they bring over a failed hero into the MCU? Makes no sense to me. So the thing is, if that kind of stuff really annoys you, then there is plenty of fodder in this film to fuel a rant about it all.
The thing is, while all that can be intrusive at times, surprisingly, most of this movie is actually solid. It is much darker than the average Disney movie. Darker in tone, and even in the pallet. This is so refreshing and much more aligned to what I want to see in a soup-movie. The story feels more sophisticated as well. I mean, sure, it's a comic film, do not expect too much. Still, this is not the typical Disney film with random out of place jokes all the time and people acting like sexless, dogooder Star Trek type people. Namor has been completely reimagined in the MCU and this version is actually excellent. I dig the new history and the look of the Atlanteans. All his scenes rock, the actor nails this role, and I think the entire way his plot was handled, just worked. The subplot of new Black Panther reconnecting to her spiritual roots, which she feels are at odds with her scientific mind, is done well and interesting. And just when they could pull out the stinky Pont l’Eveque cheese, they switch it up with a boss camo scene that steels the entire movie. Her arc was just cool.
Still, this is an MCU film and it suffers from all the normal stuff that I despise about these movies. I know I gate watch them MCU a little, but as a life time comic book reader who has never not once bought comis every week since I was a little boy... I just can't not see a comic book movie. Though I do so at home now, I have not been to the cinema for a MCU movie since Infinity Wars.
The disappearing helmets are back and it is still the most fucking stupid shit ever, and it is beyond ridiculous in this particular film. Even worse than normal. In the final fight scene the characters fighting and chatting away mid fight, already dumb, but they have their helmets appearing and disappearing every camera change and practically every sentence. Zip away. Say line. Zip on. Punch. Zip away. Say another line. Zip, punch, etc. It really is the gold standard for this disappearing helmet, magic communication bullshit that has become a staple of this series. It felt like a visual strobe. This fucking hat turning off and on again. The strobing effects being exacerbated by this all these helmet vanishes happening in near full screen close up and in tandem with full screen close ups to inside Iron Hearts helmet. It was so ridiculous.
Also the film tries to do to much. Nothing gets the time it needs. There is just to many things pulling focus. Also, the entire Iron Heart thing was a colossal fuck up. Every scene she was in sucked and she is completely unnecessary to this film. If I was less bored, or more busy, I might have bailed on this movie in the early Iron Heart scenes. They are that bad. The character sucked, not the actress herself I think, but her lines gave her nothing to work with. They should have done some minimal tweaking to remove Iron Heart and that entire fucking buckets of cunts could have been avoided and the film would have been better off.
As expected nothing in the film really stands up to any application of logic. I mean the events in the film do not really make sense. World Nations do not interact like that, and wars are not fought by 10 dudes on a highway. I am not some tactical genius but if I was a fish man and someone attacked me in a massive boat, I would swim down under the waves and then away.
Also with bringing in big guns like Namor the MCU is running into the Superman problem that DC has. When a guy can take a punch from Sentry, there always needs to be some kind of "kryptonite depower" scene. These scenes are as old and cliché as Batman's Origin Story. I am just sick of seeing it, and if you spent 5 mins reading comic you can see how you can have these superpowered people battle without powering them down. It is a soup-story. Them being ubr-powerful is the point. I do not want to see them depowered, I was to see other people powered up.
Still this film really surprised me. The trailers looked beyond terrible and if I started vomiting blood during this film, it would not have been totally unexpected. The big difference for me is that I didn't have that bone chilling boredom I had with the original Black Panther and much of this phase's films and tv shows. The fights while typically ridiculous, lacked that completely boring "time-wasting" feeling that so much of the MCU has.
So what we have here, despite my initial conceptions, is a cool action film. Mostly cool characters I enjoyed watching. A awesome set of baddies. A main character with a cool and interesting arc that actually showed change and dilemmas she had to over come, both physical and spiritual. Also, it is a Disney film, and these guys know how to make a great looking blockbuster. It is a slick film in many ways.
Verdict : The darker tone, the film having actual emotional motivations and stuff that I enjoyed and a surprising lack of cheese (there is still plenty of cheese, I guess it is all relative)... This film is easily the best of the recent movies and TV Shows. It is a good MCU film, up there in the upper-middle of the stack.
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