An Honest Review

Rating: 1/10 (18 February 2018)

I guess, because of the hype, I was expecting "the best Marvel movie ever," or at least "the best Marvel movie if the year."
I pray to God and Stan Lee that this isn't the best Marvel Movie of 2018.
The fact is, there are maybe 3 laughs in the entire film. Three moments where you smile. Three moments where you crack a grin and they all come exclusively from Letitia Wright.
And it wasn't because there were jokes and they didn't land. It was really because the movie took itself far too seriously. Like Winter Soldier and Civil War it had a message to tell...but unlike the Captain American movies, it thought its message was so serious that it couldn't laugh even at itself.
I think, honestly, it even forgot it was a Marvel movie. In fact at time I think that the director, crew, and cast all thought that they were making "Roots" meets the new "A Birth of a Nation"
And Martin Freedman, yeah I think he was only there to prove that he could do a better American accent than his Sherlock counterpart. Maybe it was a bet, which part of the cast of Sherlock can hold an American accent throughout an entire film?
And, honestly I am disappointed, because ALL three grins in the film went to Letitia Wright and Martin Freeman has some fairly decent comedic timing...they just didn't let it show. At least not for Freeman or ANYONE ELSE.
Honestly, I'm surprised they even let Letitia Wright makes us smile or entertain us an any way.
Honestly, it felt a lot like I was watching a college lecture...but a college lecture for a class that has a mandatory attendance policy and a professor that ONLY teaches from the book that he himself wrote...you get that kind of overly-serious pretentious feel to it.
And...really, how often do people have to tell other people who they are in this movie? That really happened far too often and not in the "Bond, James Bond" way but in the "If I tell you who I am it's going to give me extra power" kind of way.
And in the end you get two fight scenes by a waterfall that weren't very inspired and failed in comparison to other MCU fights. You get a car chase that was again...uninspired and fell flat but this time in the "we've seen this before only done better" kind of way. And a climatic battle that felt a little like the Gungan/Battle Droid battle in The Phantom Menace only with better CGI and an uninspired fight between the two powers rather than the Jedi dual.
At least Winter Soldier and Civil War allowed us to laugh and relax a bit during the more serious MCU fair. At least they pulled out the stops when it came to action and, despite the message...tried to deliver something, anything.
All this gave us was, well, a lecture and one where the action seemed, well, it seemed like the cast and crew felt they were obligated to give us that and thus did it with disdain.. It felt like all involved thought that entertainment would take away from the preaching.
And really, have a message....just please entertain me. I work hard. I already went to school. What I want for the price of admission is to be entertained.
If you can't do that, if you only let Letitia Wright make me smile and then only three times in a super hero movie that doesn't wow with action...then you've failed.
In fact, you've failed so much that you aren't "the first Black super-hero movie" I'm taking that pilfered title and giving it back to Blade...because at least Blade was entertaining.