Highly entertaining and thematically rich; one of Marvel's best.

Rating: 8/10 (17 July 2018)

The great characters, action and setting make 'Black Panther' an extremely enjoyable Marvel film and one of the MCU's best. The film is always entertaining, bolstered by an amazing score by Ludwig GÃ¶ransson that really captures the essence of the flick, and the self-contained story feels refreshing as it's never concerned with setting up further films, only being good in its own right. While the plot is quite predictable, the writing ensures that the audience always care about the characters and are invested in the narrative, leading to one of the more engaging stories of the MCU. The film is also definitely an ensemble piece, and, as good as Chadwick Boseman is in the role of T'Challa, it sometimes feels like the eponymous 'Black Panther' is outshined by the outstanding characters that surround him. That's certainly not a bad thing though, as it means that every major character has their own moment to shine - including T'Challa himself, who gets several of the film's best moments. Although the CGI looks unfinished in some of the action scenes, risking a disconnect between the characters and the audience, the action is always enthralling - a stand out being the entire South Korea sequence - and this is in part due to how invested we are in the story and how much we care about the characters. Overall, 'Black Panther' is an always entertaining superhero flick, with fantastic characters and action, that ranks as one of the MCU's best to date. 8/10