The Mother Of All Bad Finales!

Rating: 5/10 (17 February 2018)

I went into BLACK PANTHER with high expectations and looking forward to a fresh and exciting new MCU franchise and for most of the film that was what I got. BLACK PANTHER began as a fun, new, superhero adventure romp with good acting, a fairly decent plot and brilliant visuals. Director Ryan Coogler, for the story of BLACK PANTHER has combined the old, tribal customs of Africa with fresh, new, brilliant technology and a mother load of vibraniam to create a fascinating MCU world. Wakanda is an amazingly colourful world brought to life with the great visual effects and natural scenery. It's looks almost like an African version of Coruscant from STAR WARS.
The casting for the most part in this film is brilliant and almost every member is on great form and doing their uttermost. Boseman is obviously the main highlight in this film and gives a very convincing performance as T'Challa. We only caught a small glimpse of his true talent as Black Panther in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. In this film we get a much more thorough and fascinating look at the character with Boseman playing all his characteristics and emotions brilliantly and becoming a real hero we can care about. He's brilliantly complex and multi-layered and a very fun character to spend time with. The rest of the cast is on top form with the likes of Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira and several others. They gave real life to the characters and made them fun and interesting. There was one rather silly performance: Michael B. Jordan as the movie's main villain Erik Killmonger. It's not really his fault, it's more the writing. Killmonger as a character and as a villain is completely bland and two-dimensional. Jordan tries his best to save the role and make it convincing, but turns the part into more of a shouting act. On the other hand, it's disappointing that the great Andy Serkis is only made a MINOR villain as Ulysses Klaue. His character is dynamic, fun and really pops so it's a shame that he's "offed" so early.
Now, onto one of the good things but also the problem of this film: the plot. To start, it's fun, action-packed and very entertaining. Coogler choreographs really brilliant action scenes that feel almost like something out of THE MATRIX at some points. It's a great ride with fairly fun characters and that's all great until we get into the 3rd ACT. The finale is possibly one of the worst endings to a movie I've ever seen and takes a real dump on the whole movie! It's so lazy and stupid and goes WAY beyond the far-fetched antics of the beginning with laser ships, giant rhinos and a VERY disappointing sci-fi battle on the planes. I'm not just saying this because it's set in Africa and involves big cats but the ending is THE LION KING on acid and not in a good way. The whole final battle revolves around Killmonger's plan and it's just SO silly and pointless and frankly something one would expect from the Red Skull. Danai Gurira as Okoye leads her warriors against the villains on the plains and it quickly turns into pure spear porn. The sins of this ending were just SO terrible and it was impossible to overlook them, and this sadly dragged the film down terribly and made it a convoluted, silly, sci-fi mishmash that ruined a perfectly good movie premise. This was a real disappointment when I had such hopes for this movie and had enjoyed it so far.
Here's what I say: enjoy Black Panther's role in CIVIL WAR and leave it at that!