Melanistic Leopard

Rating: 4/10 (20 February 2018)

We toddled off to see BLACK PANTHER and I renewed my Hoyts Seniors card and got in for nothing! Yay me!
And it was worth every cent too.
The Black Panther is the newly minted king of Wakanda, a super-dooper advanced country hidden in Africa like skull Island is hidden in the Pacific but there's no giant ape although there are ginormous CGI armoured rhinoceroses but more on them later.
A black panther is the melanistic color variant of any big cat species but in this case, it being Africa, izza Leopard! So to remove any reference to colour (although the educated will know that black isn't actually a colour) King T'Challa could have been non-judgementally called 'Melanistic Leopard' but that doesn't, I suppose, have the same ring to it.
Wakanda has heaps and heaps of a metal that I can't remember the name of but it's terribly, terribly useful and rare and it is the reason that they are so advanced. Aliens might've given it to them. Dunno. Can't remember that either. They also have some purple plants that give the king his Melanistic Leopard powers and this is just what the Dockers need. Except Nat Fyfe. He doesn't need it.
There are also some fierce warrior chicks who are like Amazons but aren't from an island. They scowl (a lot!) and are the King's special bodyguards. But not like Colonel Gaddafi's bodyguards, at least I don't think so. There is a lovable sidekick who is a CIA operative and a nasty villain who is a Yarpie (obviously!)
King T'Challa's father has just died and this sets the scene for the sort of conflict that is central to any Marvel movie. Yes, there is another claimant to the throne who appears and he has hundreds and hundreds of what appear to be little boils, each of which represent someone he killed. I think. Who they were or why they were killed I cannot recall, but he's from America, so anyone really.
His father was killed by T'Challa's father so there's bad blood aplenty. T'Challa has a sister who is terribly good at inventing things like new Black Panther suits sort of like Tony Stark except she doesn't get to wear 'em and she's a chick..
The new claimant wants to take over the world and right centuries of wrongs done to Africans and their descendants worldwide and violence is his weapon combined with other weapons made out of terribly, terribly useful and rare metal. And he wants to do it NOW! King T'Challa favours a more measured approach to world domination using a creeping goodness and mercy and understanding strategy. No-one is stepping up to redress the wrongs done to Australian Aboriginals, or first nations folk from other, more heavily armed, countries.
In the finest tradition of Marvel there is a really big battle between the two forces, and the usurper has the CG ginormous rhinoceroses who cut a swathe though King T'Challa's forces but are tamed by someone that they used to know and she gets her face licked. They, the CG armour clad rhinos, don't look very real. Although I've never seen a real ginormous armoured rhinoceros so I might be judging them unfairly.
In my view, the battle scene would've been heaps better if there had been a contingent of Welsh infantry singing 'Men of Harlech'. I suppose some will ponder upon who was good, and who was evil, or were either of them good or evil or on infinite variations of the two. But I didn't.
Is it a parable? Does King T'Challa represent Martin Luther King? Does usurper-guy represent Malcolm X? Or the prophet Mohammed? Dunno.
Is it any good?
Look. I may not have been part of the target demographic. Lots of clever and self important reviewers have compared it, favourably, to bees-knees. Me? Not so much. It's better'n Interstellar, but so is having an eyeball removed with a spoon that has just been licked by, say, Jabba the Hutt.
A bit dull.