Black Panther Review

Rating: 9/10 (14 February 2018)

Black Panther is the 18th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the last before the MCU's biggest film yet, Avengers: Infinity War. Black Panther was always going to be a comic book film that held significance. Like Wonder Woman last year, Black Panther has a cultural significance to it that is going to have a positive effect for the communities it is representing.
Like all MCU films in recent years, Black Panther has it's own unique feel. This film has the perfect blend of the space and futuristic setting that Guardians presents with the ancientness and mystical shown in Doctor Strange. Ryan Coogler's directing really leans into that with many shots and scenes embracing the style and reaping the benefits.
Also adding to the overall unique feel of the film is the use of music and score. I have always been a big fan of Ludwig Goransson's work with Childish Gambino and I though he did an amazing job with the music. The way it blended African instruments into the score and background music helped set the tone that this film presents. Much credit can also be given to Kenrick Lamar and the decision to bring him on in the first place for the soundtrack. Throughout the film you can hear his touches all throughout and it was a perfect foil to the tradition African instruments.
While I have given much credit to the technical aspects of the film, it does not discount the work done by Ryan Coogler and his cast. As mentioned before, Coogler set a tone with this film that feels really unique and did a terrific job in pulling as these pieces together. The work done by Coogler puts him up there along side the work done by Taika Watiti last year as some of the best directing done by a director in the MCU.
Getting into the cast, every one amazing in what they had to do. This film had quite a large cast and majority of them got a least one big moment that they got to step up and take a lead role in a scene. To highlight a few performances, Chadwick Boseman took what he did in Civil War and pushed it to a new limit, Michael B. Jordan nailed the role and cemented himself as one of the best villains in the MCU and Lupita Nyong'o brought life into a new character that I am looking forward to seeing in the years to come. Mentioning these roles of course takes nothing away from all the other great performances such as Letita Wright, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman, Forest Whitaker, Daniel Kaluuya and Danai Gurira.
Like all MCU films, Black Panther is packed full of action. Again like most MCU films, the action style from Black Panther is a lot different to what we have previously see. The closest comparison for the style of action is something like from the TV show Vikings. We get to see some great tribe battles while getting some really well executed one on one battles.
What most of the MCU films get right is the overall writing of the film, and Black Panther is no different. The story was extremely well written and fleshed out. The overall dialog with the characters was great with some terrific beats of humour. From a writing standpoint, there isn't anything in this film that could be seen as at least solid writing.
Black Panther is a film that I believe doesn't have any glaring negatives. While each person will come out with little things here and there they didn't enjoy about the film, it is hard to pin point anything that felt out of place or poorly executed. For me, the only slight negative I had is that I feel that the film did not overall cover that much story. While I never felt like the pacing was off or that anything was rushed through, when I looked back at the film and recap it in my head, the list of everything that happened felt quite short. I would have been perfectly happy if they extended the film by 10 minutes or so and added an extra sequence, however the film works perfectly fine without it.
Overall, I loved this film. While I am not the community that this film is going to effect significantly, I could still feel the significance of it like I did with Wonder Woman. On top of that, this film is a technical masterclass that all by helps the terrific performances and work done by Ryan Coogler and everyone else involved.
9/10