Remember in high school when you had to give a 10 minute presentation in English and you thought, “oh my gosh how am I supposed to talk about being against school uniforms for 10 minutes?” So you decide to pad your speech with 16 useless anecdotes hoping that your teacher won’t notice you only have 3 minutes of real argumentative content since the class will be engaged the whole time. But then the teacher gives you the “one minute warning” in your speech and you haven’t actually mentioned your argument at all so you end up cramming 3 minutes worth of material into 60 seconds? That was “Black Panther”.

Before I get into what bothered me about this film, I need to give some snaps on a few things:

1) The cast is so beautiful it almost didn’t matter that the character development was so bad.

2) The world of “Wakanda” is in the top 3 best worlds I’ve ever seen in a movie. The other 2 being “Rivendell” from Lord of the Rings and “Pandora” from Avatar.

3) I love love love the moral dilemma that the Black Panther faces. It is SO relevant and the (bonus) ending was the most perfect speech any president of a made up technologically advanced country could have ever given to the rest of the world. STAY AFTER THE CREDITS.

Per usual, I also have my issues with this movie. I will continue to write it in list form because as I’ve stated before, lists are the best.

1) I literally did not care about anyone. There were 9 main characters in this movie and I got emotionally attached to ZERO of them! Why is that, you might ask? Maybe because there was like 45 minutes of fist fighting and 22 seconds of character development! I am super easy to persuade. You don’t understand, if you gave each person a one minute background summary, I’d be attached to all of them. But there was absolutely no backstory until the character was almost dead and then it’s too late. If I’m not rooting for you to live at the beginning of the fight, then I’m for sure not changing my mind at the end of it. To reiterate my analogy above, the fighting scenes were like the 16 anecdotes one would use to pad a speech for English, and the character development was the 3 minute argument you had to cram into the last 60 seconds.

2) Michael B. Jordan’s character was the most obnoxious villain ever. [Spoiler Alert] He literally shows up for ONE day in Wakanda, becomes king, tries to kill half the world with fancy metal filled bombs and then dies. Literally the most frustrating and unnecessary 24 hours in the history of a movie. Now I get that it’s “Marvel” and everything is supposed to be ridiculous and superhero-y. But really, a 12 hour villain?! We don’t even have time to hate him? Plus it’s Michael B. Jordan. To find that gorgeous man despicable, we are going to need TIME. Andy Serkis was no problem – 2 minutes of screen time and he’s Gollum real quick, but Michael – you need to give us a list of reasons, and I mean a LONG list.

3) What is up with the branding? Also, how did Michael B. Jordan get all those marks on his back? He is for sure not flexible enough to brand a perfect oval in the middle of his back exactly half an inch apart from all his other ovals. Is this where tattoos are going? Was that hard to do for hair and makeup? How long did it take Michael to get ready to shoot? So many questions. I need answers.

4) Can someone please explain the inner lip tattoo?!? I mean, yes if I could have a light up blue tattoo on the inside of my mouth that indicated I was was from a super awesome country then I’d for sure get it, but is everyone born with it? Or is it like a Tongan thing where it’s part of becoming a man? Again, I need some answers Stan Lee.

Popcorn Rating: 4 popped corns for Wakanda, 3 popped corns for the movie

Definitely worth watching once, but maybe not in theaters….but if you do watch it in theaters make sure you stay after the credits!! That speech is fire.

Truthfully Yours

PFP