Currently Online 
Just got home from the theater.
So, when I first saw the Black Panther trailer, I guessed that the final product would be a decent, middle-of-the-road MCU movie.
Then I saw the critical consensus and figured, hey, maybe it's one of the better MCU flicks.
I should have trusted my gut.
Black Panther is an uneven, sporadically-entertaining superhero movie that ends up wasting a lot of potential. I'll start with the good stuff. The cast. This is a rock-solid cast which turns in a great collection of performances. The characters are good too: sympathetic, grounded, engaging. Serkis is amazingly slimy as Klaue. The costume design is extraordinary. Some of the action is good, particularly the Korean shoot-out and the one-on battle between BP and Killmonger. The latter is personal and violent, and the stakes are super high. The mechanical structure of the plot was nice. Lots of set-ups and pay-offs. That's mechanically though, not thematically. More on that below. Finally, the soundtrack was excellent.
So, what's the bad? This movie doesn't exactly know what it is. For the first hour or so, it feels kind of like a Bond movie. Sinister villain. Globe-trotting adventure. Car chases and fire fights. Then we get more of a family drama and political thriller in the back half. As a result, many of the themes the movie introduces (which are rich and relevant, mind you) don't get enough time to develop. I absolutely love the idea of a monarch loyal to his nation and an interloper loyal to his racial identity clashing over the throne. Whenever there's a struggle between two people that's informed by ideological differences, the struggle tends to be a lot more interesting -- see The Dark Knight. Yet the screenplay doesn't let that idea breathe. Another theme -- the notion that kingship doesn't suit a good man -- is likewise left unpacked.
In addition, some of the action is clumsy and unconvincing, due in large part to the movie's biggest sin: compositing. As the credits were rolling, I was tempted to jot down the names of the compositing team to write them personally and tell them all they ways they disappointed me over the last 120 minutes. Most of these MCU movies look really good. In terms of VFX, green screen, and compositing, Black Panther looked bad. I was constantly thrown out of the fantasy of the movie by seeing real-life actors in what looked at times like a cartoon. Seriously, this is unacceptable in a major Hollywood production. It wasn't X-Men: Apocalypse awful, but it was pretty darn bad.
Gonna go with a 6/10 for this one.
