Black Panther is a wild and energetic African-inspired fantasy film with a hot cast of tomorrow's biggest stars and a social message that'll give you plenty to chew on for days after. I liked it, and it looks like so did everyone else. It's one of Marvel's most successful movies and it isn't even done running in theaters yet. But... In spite of all this, could it somehow be the worst superhero film ever made?
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These are my favorite comics. Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist (and Luke Cage appears in each of them). These aren't just comics that I like a lot, in a subjective sense. These are among my best comics, objectively. The writing, the artwork, the social commentary, character building, all of it comes together with a degree of literary cohesion and sophistication that most comic books only dream of. The Brubaker/Fraction/Aja run on Iron Fist. The Bendis/Gaydos run on Jessica Jones. Countless Daredevil runs by way more than just Frank Miller. These are the jewels in my collection. And Netflix has made them into four shows. And now they put those shows together. Haven't you heard? Doctor Strange is supposed to be really good. It's got like a really high score on Rotten Tomatoes and it's got that up and coming Benedict Cumberbatch. Plus it totally looks like Inception! Win win win! Right? So I saw it. And... Meh. They should really start getting the people who make movie trailers to start making movies, because they all seem much better at structure, style and pacing. Even my wife thought it "Looks awesome!" Instead? When we saw the actual film? Meh. Now don't get me wrong. "Meh" does not equal "Ugh." "Meh" means it was an okay film, where they managed to avoid all the things they could've done wrong. The film is no embarrassment. And many people seem to honestly like it. But I was, as they say, whelmed. Sure, it has great special effects. Sure, the acting is all sincere. The jokes land. The plot thickens. The ending appropriately solves all the issues it needs to solve while being both kinda clever and awesome looking, and only enough plot threads are left loose to seed future story lines in a deliberately organic sorta way. And yeah, it's more or less a fairly accurate interpretation of the comic book core concept. But still. Meh. Why meh? Keep reading... |
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