BLACK PANTHER REVIEW

BLACK PANTHER (2018)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Rating: 8.6

Welcome to my first review in Geek for Hire in English, this time my debut is with the latest MCU installment, Black Panther, one of the most anticipated movies of the year, directed by Ryan Coogler, the man behind some great movies like Frutivale Station and Creed. Chadwick Boseman returns as the king of the fictional country of Wakanda who returns to his home in order to face his duties as king and Black Panther, in the meantime a powerful enemy shall challenge T'Challa for the throne of the most technologically advanced civilization in the Marvel Universe.

I was very excited for Black Panther, this character was one of the highlights of Civil War and the idea of his solo movie was very interesting. I am glad to see a representation of an African country unlike most of Hollywood clichés were it depicts Africa as a dreadful place to live. 

Let's talk about the cast, Chadwick Boseman is great as T'Challa, he has to be very proud of his career since he has played several pop culture characters like James Brown or Jackie Robinson and now has the honor to portray the first black supehero in the history of comics. Michael B. Joran killed it (pun intended) as Killmonger, he was a very convincing villain with a motivation that really felt like a threat to our hero, and the whole supporting cast is amazing, especially Lupita N'Yongo, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman.

Let's talk about the postives, the mythology of Wakanda is amazing, even if it's a fictional place it makes you wonder, What if there is a civilization like that and we're not even aware of?, the costume design should earn an Oscar nod, Coogler's direction is on spot, the plot is very balanced and the soundtrack was EPIC. Ludwing Gorannsson really crafted a magnifiecent score where African music is respected and treated with magic.

Now, let's talk about the negatives, because even though the film is very cool, it's not a perfect film. There are some pacing issues in this movie, also the action sequences felt very choppy and some of them are barely lit so it's sometimes difficult for you to see something. The CGI felt very CGI, specially on most of the backgrounds, I went to see this film with my sister, and she who isn't well versed in filmmaking noticed a lot of greenscreen in the film. But the biggest gripe I have is that they could've explored Killmonger a bit more, such a great villain should've had more screentime so we could care more about him.

I don't consider Black Panther to be on par with other comic book movies like The Dark Knight or Logan, it is very enjoyable nevertheless, I feel like critics don't wanna say negatives about the movie because they feel the audience could point them as racists. Dude, that is not the case, it's really great that African Americans have a mainstream superhero film that will explode at the box office and that celebrates such a great culture, but that doesn't mean that if you're not honest with that you're seeing you aren't doing your job.

Black Panther is one of the best MCU movies so far and I highly recommend it. This was my first entry and hopefully you will see more coming, so thank you for reading it and if you liked this, you can comment below and share it, this blog isn't just mine, it's yours.