What a massive let-down. Don't believe the hype.

Rating: 2/10 (15 May 2018)

Oh dear. I managed to avoid spoilers before going to see this but, quite frankly, it wouldn't have mattered either way. This film has the most predictable script I've seen in a long time, to the point where me and my other half were able to tell each other what was going to happen next with a 100% level of accuracy for the entire film. Most MCU films I've seen (there are a few exceptions) have scripts that at least have some parts that surprise me. Not one bit of this travesty did.
Realistically, any MCU film that isn't prefixed with "Avengers" is basically a filler film to move the narrative along. We all know this. Yet recent efforts like Thor: Ragnarok and both Guardians movies have been enjoyable and fun despite this. Black Panther felt like the writers scribbled this down while saying "Well, the audience needs to know this so it has to go in the sequence. It doesn't matter if they don't enjoy it". Every minute of it felt like a setup for Infinity War. And that makes me sad. Every move through the narrative felt laboured and clunky to the point where I nearly left the cinema.
My biggest bugbear of all though (and this is where the SPOILERS appear), is how they wasted the best villain they've created in years. Hell, it might be the best villain they've EVER created. Michael B Jordan is sublime in his role as the antagonist and puts in quite probably the finest performance in a MCU film (closely battling Brolin's Thanos). He was cold, calculating, brutal and, most importantly, totally believable. And then they killed him. I was genuinely so angry that I gave an audible FFS in the cinema.
This film is a crime against cinema. It gets an extra point for Jordan's performance which makes it all the more frustrating that they killed him off. I wanted to like it so much but it's impossible.