It grew on me....a little.

Rating: 5/10 (26 January 2019)

First off, I'm a HUGE Marvel fan and a HUGE Black Panther fan, so I was really excited for this movie. Unfortunately, pretty much everything fell short of expectation. Maybe it was all the hype, maybe it was my own desire for it to be the next Ragnarok, but BP was far from it. I completely realize the cultural significance of the film, but I'm going to just focus on the movie itself, as I think the critics should have.
As far origin stories go, Black Panther has one of the more unique and interesting pasts. No radioactive spiders or aliens from a different dimension, just a fresh story with a ton of potential that was, unfortunately, wasted. I really wish the movie would have taken more time to focus on T'Challa BECOMING Black Panther and the personal struggles that surrounded it instead of focusing so much on Killmonger. While I enjoyed Michael B. Jordan's portrayal of Killmonger, I felt the character itself was written a bit too one-dimensional, with no real development over the film.
Next the CGI....ugh. Given the GAGILLIONS of dollars that Marvel puts into it's movies, there were some real issues with a few of the CGI scenes. Wakanda itself was beautiful, but a few of the action scenes really jumped the shark for me, especially with the war rhinos. That scene in-and-of-itself was enough to really stain the movie, but it was not the only one.
Lastly, the writing and acting felt a little stale. I realize that Wakanda is a monarchy that has been shut off from the outside world, so their social interactions would be different than the rest of society, but I still felt that they could have added a little flair to the dialogue and personality to the acting. Outside of Letitia Wright's portrayal of T'challa's sister, who's dialogue and performance really saved a lot of scenes, there was a lot of missed potential to create characters with a little more personality.
Overall, Black Panther was a miss, but there is still opportunity for redemption! As we saw with the first two Thor films, which were far more terrible, it is possible to come back to the same characters from a new perspective and really make something special. Unfortunatley, with the box office success of Black Panther, I fear that the studio will approach the subsequent films using the exact same formula, and we'll get more of the same.