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Which movie did you watch today and how would you rate it?

Black Panther 9.5/10

Not the greatest film by any stretch, but one of the best Marvel films if not the best Marvel film.

The reviews didn't lie. The whole cast was great to the point where they almost overshadowed the lead, especially Okoye, Shuri, and the villain (easily better than Loki). Did not shy away from political topics, including:

  • America's Cold War history of destabilizing foreign governments.
  • Racism
  • Colonialism
  • Slavery
  • Identity issues for African disapora
  • How should developed nations interact with underdeveloped nations?
    • Isolationism vs interventionism
    • Conquest vs guidance towards problematic less developed nations

It strays from the Marvel formula more than most Marvel movies, but there are definitely still elements of it here. Instead of using agent Ross for the comic relief, a lot of it actually came from Shuri being a snotty teenager.

Not sure yet how I feel about this re-imagining of the Nakia character, but M'Baku is a vast improvement.

There's two end credits scenes. One near the beginning of the end credits, and another after the credits are done rolling.

I'm not sure, but it seems like they combined the Mound with the Techno-Organic Jungle. Why couldn't they be separate locations?
 
Opoponax said:
Wonder Woman

Didn't think I'd like it because of my disdain for the majority of superhero movies. But it was solid enough watch. I'm not a comic book fan so almost all of my Wonder Woman references relate back to Linda Carter role in the mid/late 1970s TV series.

Maybe I missed it, but can she be killed? Or is that coming in the sequel? Because if she can't be killed, then she's a god, which is more akin to what Superman is than say, Spiderman.

6/10
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You might like Professor Marston & The Wonder Women.
 
Underseer said:
Black Panther 9.5/10

Not the greatest film by any stretch, but one of the best Marvel films if not the best Marvel film.

The reviews didn't lie. The whole cast was great to the point where they almost overshadowed the lead, especially Okoye, Shuri, and the villain (easily better than Loki). Did not shy away from political topics, including:

  • America's Cold War history of destabilizing foreign governments.
  • Racism
  • Colonialism
  • Slavery
  • Identity issues for African disapora
  • How should developed nations interact with underdeveloped nations?
    • Isolationism vs interventionism
    • Conquest vs guidance towards problematic less developed nations

It strays from the Marvel formula more than most Marvel movies, but there are definitely still elements of it here. Instead of using agent Ross for the comic relief, a lot of it actually came from Shuri being a snotty teenager.

Not sure yet how I feel about this re-imagining of the Nakia character, but M'Baku is a vast improvement.

There's two end credits scenes. One near the beginning of the end credits, and another after the credits are done rolling.

I'm not sure, but it seems like they combined the Mound with the Techno-Organic Jungle. Why couldn't they be separate locations?
Click to expand...

I agree, Stanley Martin Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg really made a cool character with Black Panther and the world of Wakanda is fantastic.
 
Peter Seller's part in that movie was pretty awful.

While that movie was supposedly brilliant satire, I couldn't get over how mean spirited it was.
 
Underseer said:
Black Panther 9.5/10

Not the greatest film by any stretch, but one of the best Marvel films if not the best Marvel film.

The reviews didn't lie. The whole cast was great to the point where they almost overshadowed the lead, especially Okoye, Shuri, and the villain (easily better than Loki). Did not shy away from political topics, including:

  • America's Cold War history of destabilizing foreign governments.
  • Racism
  • Colonialism
  • Slavery
  • Identity issues for African disapora
  • How should developed nations interact with underdeveloped nations?
    • Isolationism vs interventionism
    • Conquest vs guidance towards problematic less developed nations

It strays from the Marvel formula more than most Marvel movies, but there are definitely still elements of it here. Instead of using agent Ross for the comic relief, a lot of it actually came from Shuri being a snotty teenager.

Not sure yet how I feel about this re-imagining of the Nakia character, but M'Baku is a vast improvement.

There's two end credits scenes. One near the beginning of the end credits, and another after the credits are done rolling.

I'm not sure, but it seems like they combined the Mound with the Techno-Organic Jungle. Why couldn't they be separate locations?
Click to expand...

It was a really entertaining superhero movie, but it was just an entertaining superhero movie.

What I don't get is why the Wakandan outreach program was happening in Oakland and not in Ethiopia or Somalia. I get it in a "Ha ha, African charity helping out poor, disaffected people in America" point of view, but it doesn't seem the best way to direct limited resources towards the goal they were saying they were trying to achieve. Also, for a group of people who spent thousands of years sitting fat and happy in their own little paradise while millions of innocent children were starving and getting shot just down the road from them, they were weirdly passionate about the bad decisions other societies have made in the past.
 
I watched "Man From Earth" again as it is now on Amazon Prime.

It is basically a long "Twilight Zone" episode. Low budget, science fiction but without any special effects, and not much more than some character actors having a conversation in a house. But it's really, really good.

The premise is a bunch of college professors have a get-together to say farewell to a colleague who is leaving after spending 10 years at the university. But there's something different about him. He decides to tell them why he's leaving, and it is because he's not just any professor, but a man who has lived 14,000 years...moving on after a decade before his friends notice he's not aging. His colleagues, being educated and skeptical, pepper him with questions and try to get at the truth of what their friend is telling them. Is he a con artist? Is what he's telling them even possible?

The great thing about the movie is its simplicity. It is nothing more than a group of people having a conversation. It also portrays scientists and academics in a positive light not often seen in the genre. They're all just curious but skeptical people using their brains to get to the heart of a mystery they've been presented with that seems unlikely but oddly compelling.

After the end there's a trailer for a sequel. I'm not so sure about that. Man From Earth is kind of a perfect little movie. It didn't need a sequel.


Anyway, 8/10. Some of the writing and acting is a bit clunky, but overall the film is a fantastic slice of sci-fi.
 
Killmonger was a better antihero than Black Panther was a hero. That is not a bad thing, though. BP still has more room for character arc that already has gone a good distance.

Imagine a highly focused, fully seasoned hero with a scattershot wishy-washy villain - basically some of the previous marvel movies. Can be boring.
 
Black Panther 8.5/10

Very good movie, and well worth the watch, even if you are not that much into the superhero genre. It looks amazing. The nation of Wakanda is fully realized and believable. There is a significant tonal shift from the more recent MCU movies, but the tone is comparable to movies like Winter Soldier. Though the humor is downplayed, there are still some humorous moments. It delves headlong into the politics of isolationism and oppression, and that is exactly what you would expect if you have been reading the comics recently. It might be a bit jarring if you were expecting another Thor: Ragnarok, but I think there is enough action and awesome visuals up front to keep anyone expecting a more light hearted MCU film involved.
 
Black Panther also has one of the more fleshed out villains of the movies. You can understand where he is coming from, and he has a right to be angry. It is just how he chooses to respond that makes him a villain.

Yes, they kept the humor to a minimum. Some sarcastic remarks here and there, but little outright jokes. Also almost no references to the other movies. A replay of key scenes from Winter Soldier, and a toss away reference to Bucky was about it.

Not my favorite Marvel movie, but a great movie overall. (just glad I'm not part of the river tribe!)
 
I agree, Killmonger is portrayed extremely well in Black Panther. One of the best, if not the best, villain(s) in the MCU, and he doesn't even have super powers. That could be what makes him more compelling. The audience can relate to him, and where he is coming from. That is a bit harder to do when your villain is a robot, or a giant purple guy with a nutsack for a chin.
 
YouTube personality Comic Book Girl 19 had an interesting observation about the Black Panther movie in making comparisons to the Dune series. Paul Atreides a.k.a. Mua'Dib is a monarch who gets special powers and visions from ingesting special spice, and part of the reason he has great power is because he is surrounded by powerful women including his mother, his sister, and his lover.

T'Challa is a monarch who ingests a special herb that gives him special powers and visions, and part of the reason he wields great power is that he is surrounded by powerful women including his mother, his sister, and his lover.

I saw Black Panther twice and didn't notice the similarity. :D

On a separate note, Coogler deserves a lot of credit here. In order to make this movie worthwhile, Wakanda needs to be practically a character unto itself, and he succeeded. Not every director can do worldbuilding that well. If we're going to compare this movie to other sci-fi staples, I think worldbuilding deserves some mention.

Oh, and in the second end-credits scene[ent]hellip[/ent]


[ent]hellip[/ent]when one of the Wakandan children calls Bucky "White Wolf," that's an Easter egg that implies that Winter Soldier is going to become a Wakandan citizen and may serve the crown in some kind of military or secret police capacity.

In the comic books, White Wolf is the one and only immigrant in Wakanda. He takes a lot of crap from the notoriously xenophobic Wakandans, and he runs the secret police.

 
KeepTalking said:
I agree, Killmonger is portrayed extremely well in Black Panther. One of the best, if not the best, villain(s) in the MCU, and he doesn't even have super powers. That could be what makes him more compelling. The audience can relate to him, and where he is coming from. That is a bit harder to do when your villain is a robot, or a giant purple guy with a nutsack for a chin.
Click to expand...

Movie Killmonger is a vast improvement over the comic book version, and borrows the best things from Magneto.

Magneto is terrifying and sympathetic because you know he's right about humans. Humans really are exactly the monster he says we are, it's just that his proposed solution is flawed. As the X-Men point out, if successful, Magneto will only succeed in reversing the roles of the oppressed and the oppressors without actually doing anything to address the injustice itself. While it would force the oppressors to gain a new appreciation of what their victims endured, it would also leave them powerless to do anything with their newfound perspective. His goals are genuinely noble. How many horrible things would you be willing to do if you thought you were preventing genocide?

The one place where MCU-Killmonger exceeds Magneto is that he forces the hero to re-evaluate his views and beliefs and change his decisions. T'Challa becomes a better person and gains enough spine to stand up to the xenophobic Wakandan traditionalists because of his experiences with Killmonger. You can't ask for much more from a villain than that.

Oh, and the[ent]hellip[/ent]

"bury me in the ocean"

[ent]hellip[/ent]scene made me want to cry. Not too many villains do that.

All that, and the character was a metaphor for things in the real world, such as the damage to the African diaspora from being disconnected from African identity.

All in all, he is far and away the best Marvel villain on the big or small screen. (Purple Man from Jessica Jones was my favorite MCU villain prior to this.)

Lastly, I don't know if it's true, but it's been suggested that[ent]hellip[/ent]

the opening narration is between young Erik and N'Jobu rather than T'Challa and T'Chaka. How's that for a tear-jerker?


I don't know how one would go about verifying that fan theory.

Does the child in the opening narration have an American or an African accent?

 
I have a theory that the glowing fruit, and the visions of ancestors is the result of the Soul Stone being somewhere in the area. That would explain why Thanos is attacking Wakanda in the Avengers trailer.
 
marc said:
I have a theory that the glowing fruit, and the visions of ancestors is the result of the Soul Stone being somewhere in the area. That would explain why Thanos is attacking Wakanda in the Avengers trailer.
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Uh, vibranium?

Many alien technologies are dependent on vibranium. If aliens attack Wakanda, it's usually because they're after the vibranium.

Further, this is Thanos we're talking about. He could be attacking Wakanda simply because they're the most technologically advanced and therefore the greatest threat from a tactical perspective.

You don't really need a special reason for Thanos to attack Wakanda. I know everyone is concerned about the Soul stone, but I'm sure it will turn up eventually.
 
KeepTalking said:
Black Panther 8.5/10

Very good movie, and well worth the watch, even if you are not that much into the superhero genre. It looks amazing. The nation of Wakanda is fully realized and believable. There is a significant tonal shift from the more recent MCU movies, but the tone is comparable to movies like Winter Soldier. Though the humor is downplayed, there are still some humorous moments. It delves headlong into the politics of isolationism and oppression, and that is exactly what you would expect if you have been reading the comics recently. It might be a bit jarring if you were expecting another Thor: Ragnarok, but I think there is enough action and awesome visuals up front to keep anyone expecting a more light hearted MCU film involved.
Click to expand...

One interesting thing about Black Panther that might be a flaw depending on your preferences.

One common criticism of Marvel movies is weak villains. This is the result of a conscious choice by Marvel to focus heavily on the hero and make the hero as appealing as possible, thus little time is available to develop the villains.

One of the good things about Black Panther is that it breaks a lot of the MCU formula, including this. Not only is the villain well developed, but so are many of the supporting characters. The villain and supporting characters are so well developed that the main character kind of gets the short shrift. The villain and several supporting characters are genuinely more interesting than the hero.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on how tired you are of the typical Marvel formula.
 
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