In the higher echelons of the MCU

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2018)

Sit through the first half hour and you are duly rewarded. There's a lot about the MCU from a scriptwriting standpoint I couldn't stand, but this and Ragnarok prove that we are thankfully far away from the days of Iron Man 2 and Captain America 1. Black Panther is so much more thematically dense, rich and driving that many others in the franchise, and unlike Ragnarok, the emotional conflict drives the core physical conflict that is the cause of all the explosive action scenes. The film does not shy away from the obvious political bent; the dying lines of the villain lean so hard into the theme of oppression vs. the potential/imperative to improve upon it that I almost can't believe the soulless heads driving the Marvel project let them get away with it.
But you have to make it to the Forest Whitaker exposition scene around the midpoint. Until then, Black Panther doesn't feel like it has much of a story. The first act is all set-up with one action scene and not a particularly great one at that, and with only three more big setpieces to follow it doesn't actually get to show off the Black Panther toolkit much at all, even with all the Chekhov's Guns going off in just the right places. So while I think this is one of the best Marvel movies from an artistic standpoint, there are others, like both Guardians and Ragnarok, that are better paced, better delivered movies.