A Decent Movie, but What's All the Buzz About?

Rating: 7/10 (18 May 2018)

Now I understand that a big reason for this movie's popularity is the fact that it is made up of primarily black people. Now don't get me wrong, I think this is great; in fact I would say it needed to happen. This is something we've never seen in a superhero movie and it was quite refreshing. Erik Killmonger is an excellent antagonist; in my opinion, the best in the MCU (at least until Thanos came around). He was a great opponent to T'Challa physically and emotional due to their very apparent clashing ideologies. The reason I say that is because his motive and his cause is something that is very relate-able to the US today. Many people still feel a sense of racial prejudice and he resembled that pretty well. The only problem is that he was really only in the second half of the movie. The first half was about Andy Serkis character and his whole crusade for vibranium. I think he did pretty well, but he and the Black Panther had no qualities that really resonated well together; I just wasn't interesting in the story for the first half. Then once Killmonger comes back it's a totally different movie with a new plot. Why? Because Ryan Coogler wanted to tell Killmonger's story and he simply had Andy Serkis in the film to keep up continuity after Age of Ultron... Black Panther as a character was very boring and un-compelling to me. The CGI was mediocre at best; there were multiple times where I was taken right out of a scene because I was focusing on the background that was very clearly fake. I also thought the cinematography was questionable, especially during the fight scenes. I am tired of shaky tight shots during big action scenes, which this film has a lot of. Check this movie out of you want to, but I'd say you'll live by passing it up.