Why I think Black Panther is overrated
Disappointed with the movie but hopeful for the future of the characters
Everyone is talking about how magnificent Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is, the movie is surrounded by an impenetrable hype to those who even dare to speak against it, but is Black Panther that good of a movie?
For hardcore fans or casual moviegoers it is very hard to admit that something we are excited to see isn’t as good as we thought. Disney has been doing an incredible job in the past few years by getting us hyped and excited about movies that ended up not living up to the hype they carried from teasers, trailers and online speculation between hardcore fans. Star Wars, The Last Jedi is the most obvious case of a movie that didn’t live up to his build up, despite crushing box office numbers.
After watching Black Panther last night I felt disappointed. I am not saying it is a bad movie, but I felt, once again, fooled by the brilliant marketing Disney surrounds his movies.
Black Panther excels where other Marvel movies fail miserably, however it also fails where other Marvel movies excel! At the end of the movie you get that underwhelming feeling of: “This wasn’t bad but it could have been so much better”.
The character development and universe building is without any question the best of any MCU movie. The way we are introduced to the beautiful afro-futuristic country of Wakanda, the people and the traditions feels extremely deep and real.
The character of T’Challa, our hero, the Black Panther, faces the challenge of becoming the new king of Wakanda and with that, all the struggles a leader can face to gain the trust of his people. We see the character evolve from a very quiet, scared, not that charismatic young prince into a powerful King. By the end of the movie we know he is the man Wakanda needs him to be, the one who has the courage to assertively lead them to the most important chapter of Wakanda’s history.
Despite how good T’Challa’s arc is, it is only possible because of how brilliantly delivered, Erik Killmonger, the Villain, played by Michael B. Jordan, was. For the first time in a long time, we get a meaningful villain in a super hero movie, probably the best since the Joker in The Dark Knight. Killmonger’s back story is clear, we understand his motivations, what he wants to do, and from a certain point of view he is, in fact right, he could be the hero of his own story and we almost feel for him at the end. Yes, he is the bad guy, he kills people and he clearly wasn’t going to do any good to Wakanda and the world, but his motivations are something very valid that ultimatly leads our hero, T’Challa, to question his own leadership and become the King Wakanda needs. The line between being a hero and a mad man is very thin and that’s what makes him so great. He isn’t just the classic “world domination” villain, he is more than that, he has a purpose. Killmonger’s actions will live beyond his death, Wakanda will remember him, and he was the wake up call the next kind of Wakanda needed.
If you think of how great the characters are, it feels almost impossible to screw this super hero movie but, in fact, they did the unthinkable, they underused the great villain they had! They show us a beautiful shot of Killmonger admiring some african art at the beginning of the movie, with one of the coolest outfits you could possibly get and then he disappers for almost an hour! Instead, for the first half of the movie they decide to show us the most boring stuff you could imagine, I felt like I was forced to read an entire wikipedia page about Wakanda and how you actually become the king of wakanda. The pace was slow and boring, and you weren’t really sure where they would go with the story
If you are into costumes, african traditions or for some reason you just love Wakanda from the comics you might enjoy the first half of this movie, but I didn’t. Sometimes, less is more and this movie tried to be something way more complex and deep than it needed to be.
I just felt disappointed they underused such a great villain and I can’t stop thinking of how great this movie could have been if they focused more on the madness Killmonger brought to the screen. I was expecting an uptempo movie with great pace and we got something totally different. At the end of the day this felt more like “Wakanda: The movie” than anything else.
Despite this, the movie isn’t bad, it just doesn’t meet all the hype surrounding it. The score is probably the best of any Marvel movie and the idea of trying new things, adding so much depth and backstory, is definitely very refreshing and welcome, they just have to find the perfect balance to enrich their formula of success. As the years pass, and the MCU is well established in the pop culture, they seem like they are finally ready to experiment more.
You still have to understand that this movie is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and, in part, the job of the movie was to introduce us to all this characters, develop them and make us care about them, and that was definitely overachieved. Now everyone knows what Wakanda is, how it fits within the MCU, who are the characters we should know and that’s about it. An average movie, with a great cast that gives live to beautiful characters we care about.
At the end of the day, we will see these characters again and I am excited for that. I feel like everything boring we had to see from Wakanda, we did in Black Panther and that will enable our heros to shine in future movies, starting with the Avengers: Infinity War, releasing next May.
