Over-hyped - Not enough effort put into core aspects of a film

Rating: 1/10 (15 February 2018)

With all the hype surrounding this movie (excellent trailers, Kendrick-curated soundtrack, all-African cast) I thought I was in for something special with Black Panther, as while they aren't remotely the highest quality movies, the Marvel cinematic universe movies are generally pretty entertaining. As it turns out I was wrong, Black Panther was extremely average, I have no idea what these critics/review bots are talking about when they say that it is the best Marvel movie and worthy of "critical" praise (as not just a super hero movie but as a movie in general.)
Things that I liked:

Effort put into aesthetic authenticity of the African elements of the movie - within the Marvel universe the look and feel of the movie was unique and you can tell care was taken in this regard.
Andy Serkis - My favorite character by far, was probably the only person who didnt seem like he was reading from a script sheet and got some genuine laughs out of me.

Things that I didn't like:

The story was extremely predictable and to be honest I don't know if the most virtuous resolution was reached in the climax. Michael B Jordan's character had fairly reasonable intentions for wanting to kill the Black Panther and take his place in Wakanda as he had been abandoned, with seemingly no family, to live in the ghettos of Oakland. However, his whole plan to give advanced Wakandan weaponry to every African person in the world so they could kill and overthrow people in power who weren't African was extremely "on-the-chin" in terms of its narrative motivations within the current climate. It wasn't remotely clever or nuanced and really unbalanced his character, his motivations were understandable but his plan was moronic. Additionally, who didn't see Black Panther surviving his fall? Who didn't see the Gorilla tribe coming to the rescue at the end? The entire movie was so bland and predictable I wanted it to be over well before the end - I didn't even stay for the post credit scenes...
The acting was very wooden - Not a lot to say here really, some really poor line delivery from the cast across the board except for Andy Serkis. No one was particularly charismatic, the main character for instance was extremely boring.
The script was very robotic - This ties into the poor acting, but perhaps as a result of the script, some of the actors never really had a chance to bring their characters to life.
The characters - I have already addressed the mess that was Michael B Jordan's character Warmonger(?). Basically throughout the entire movie you never really learn anything or see anything of the Black Panther's character, he basically moves from one place to another showing no emotion and just either smashes things or asks people questions. Apparently the character is supposed to be very intelligent, while it was probably a narrative choice, the Black Panther in this movie seemed like an emotionless Jarhead whose only really characteristic was that he get nervous around his girlfriend... The women in this movie had a bit of attitude and charisma and shouldn't be blanketed down with the Black Panther and Warmonger as bad characters, but they didnt really get a chance to shine and really only contributed a few one liners and a bit of fighting.
The action - Shaky-cam rubbish, the action in the movie is terrible and not remotely on the level of the well-choreographed fighting in say Captain America Winter Soldier - please for the love of god show someone getting punched or kicked without having to cut the shot 5 times. There is an action sequence at the start which basically flagposted what the action was going to be like, it is shot at night and you basically cant see bloody anything...
The CGI - Honestly, the CGI in Black Panther felt extrmely overused and was surprisingly quite bad. It really took me out of some scenes because the environments and effects looked average (not quite Justice League bad but not far off). It is obvious in scenes in Wakanda, for instance, where the plains/mountains are in the background but they are clearly filming in front of a green screen. Some of the effects just looked silly and got laughs out of me and my party. I personally though the Rhinos were stupid...
The Soundtrack - After all the hype surrounding Kendrick Lamar curating a soundtrack for the movie, the tracks from that album barely feature at all. They faintly play from some cars and stuff here and there and a couple feature in some action scenes but I though we would be watching some decent action scenes with some bass heavy Kendrick blasting along to the fighting. Alas, no dice. The orchestral score is also quite average, coming in strong at weird moments and being quite out of place in certain places, there are a couple of moments where it seems like some sort of fairy, Harry Potter, Narnia music that just doesn't fit the scene.

Overall I think this is probably one of the weaker Marvel movies, avoiding honest criticism because of the hype surrounding it. The basic components of the film are all poor-average, with the only real 5+/10 aspect being the aesthetics of Wakanda and its people. Like I said above, I wanted to leave well before it was over because I knew the action was probably not going to improve from nauseating shaky-cam and I knew how it was all going to play out.