He Just Can Wait to be King

Rating: 5/10 (18 February 2018)

Serviceable. As many positives this movie featured, the one word that popped up in my head constantly was: Serviceable.
Don't get me wrong: the movie's good and there's not much to point to that's bad, but stripping away the great cast, incredible world-building universe and special effects, it's the most average origin story.
The star and best part of the movie, Chadwick Boseman a.k.a. The Title Character, was fantastic and stole every scene. Granted, I would've liked to see him more in his full-body superhero outfit (you'll see as much of him as the Panther as you did Batman in The Dark Knight Rises. In other words, not much.) But, thankfully, he does carry the feature with his great chemistry with the cast and charisma on screen.
As mentioned, the world these characters live in and their mythos was also great to see and unbelievably believable. I knew little to nothing about this comic book's background and for them to set it up so nicely that it became realty, was very welcomed.
Also really nice was that this was a self-contained story in a huge universe. Never opposed to other Marvel characters showing up, even just to say: "Greetings!" but it's nice this stood alone. Of course, aside from the setup, that is.
Boseman's T'Challa is still mourning the loss of his father in Captain America's Civil War movie...but, then again, it's only been a week since those events. Nevertheless, he needs to be the new King of his (certainly not a ****hole) nation of Wakanda, he needs to prove himself to his people, himself and his father's spirit and bring in a criminal who's taking a break from Middle Earth, Kong Island and this very MCU. There's much more to the story, but why ruin it?
The movie takes itself very seriously and that's an ENORMOUS relief from Marvel's go-to formula: 80% comedies with 20% superheroing, i.e. Spider-Man: Homecoming, Iron Man Three, both Guardian of the Galaxies and Thor: Ragnarok. Those movies relied almost exclusively on humor and so little on what I bought a ticket for. Mercifully, they kept the humor - which was sometimes funny - to a minimum here.
This isn't a movie I'd rush to see again, mostly because the main plot is so average and predictable, but it's definitely recommended to see once, especially for all the positives mentioned above.
***
Final thoughts: As a favor and quasi-birthday gift to my friend, I agreed to stay and see the two post-credit scenes that I usually hate to waste my time waiting for. No spoiler to the content, but a warning: these were two of the lamest I've seen. The first is something we already knew was coming and the second is something we already knew about. There were no surprises and, AS ALWAYS, they were completely avoidable. They're always available online to see so you don't have to spend an extra 20 minutes in the theatre to see 3 seconds of blah.