Black Panther Film

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Yeah, the more I see of it (and, working at a theater, I see it a lot lately), the more those nitpicks stand out. The one thing that tipped me from "Eh, maybe I'll see it" to "Okay, I'll be there" is them filming in Busan, South Korea, where I used to live for a while, and that entire Busan subplot ends up being completely unnecessary from Killmonger's point of view. He ended up not even needing the vibranium or the money from its sale, all he needed for his plan was Klaue, who he already had access to from way back near start of the film. The rest of it was just them needing things to happen there in order to set up other things later in Wakanda, like Agent Bilbo entering the picture and plot exposition regarding the one ring.

My thought at the time, although it wasn't explicitly confirmed, was that the whole vibranium weapon sale was just designed as a lure to get on Wakanda's radar and draw out T'Challa. It seemed like he was trying to do something that was sure to get T'Challa's attention, but wasn't so visible that it raised red flags as an obvious trap.

[cilantro]

I saw this film when it came out and I liked it. Although, I have to say that at the end of the day Killmonger was just another Marvel villain that died at the end of the film.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Yeah. He didn't really have a very cohesive character. He oscillated between Well-Intentioned Extremist with a Just Cause and Amoral Hotep Fuckwad.

[ORCACommander]

Is it me or all the marvel movies these become more style over substance?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Is it me or all the marvel movies these become more style over substance?

It is you. Black Panther had oodles of both.

[SabreMau]

Yeah, the more I see of it (and, working at a theater, I see it a lot lately), the more those nitpicks stand out. The one thing that tipped me from "Eh, maybe I'll see it" to "Okay, I'll be there" is them filming in Busan, South Korea, where I used to live for a while, and that entire Busan subplot ends up being completely unnecessary from Killmonger's point of view. He ended up not even needing the vibranium or the money from its sale, all he needed for his plan was Klaue, who he already had access to from way back near start of the film. The rest of it was just them needing things to happen there in order to set up other things later in Wakanda, like Agent Bilbo entering the picture and plot exposition regarding the one ring.

My thought at the time, although it wasn't explicitly confirmed, was that the whole vibranium weapon sale was just designed as a lure to get on Wakanda's radar and draw out T'Challa. It seemed like he was trying to do something that was sure to get T'Challa's attention, but wasn't so visible that it raised red flags as an obvious trap.

I doubt it, as if his goal was to draw T'Challa into a trap, he didn't actually go through with any trap part of it. He may or may not know that T'Challa is the one who caught Klaue to deliver him to the Korean police, doesn't know if he's in that station right then and there, what he knows for sure is just where Klaue's arm is. So in his only confrontation in Busan, he fires some bullets and a grenade, none of which are any use against the suit, then some sort of sonic weapon that IS effective, but instead of using that as an opening to finish the job (again, assuming his reasoning and goal with all this was a plot to draw T'Challa out) he just continues escaping.

[cilantro]

Is it me or all the marvel movies these become more style over substance?

It is you. Black Panther had oodles of both.

Actually, I was going to say that they are becoming more style over substance.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Is it me or all the marvel movies these become more style over substance?

It is you. Black Panther had oodles of both.

Actually, I was going to say that they are becoming more style over substance.

I stand corrected. I still maintain that Black Panther has both, and it's just noticeable because superhero movies have become so very washed-out and grey. It's refreshing to see colors on screen that aren't streetlamp orange or steel blue.

[cilantro]

Is it me or all the marvel movies these become more style over substance?

It is you. Black Panther had oodles of both.

Actually, I was going to say that they are becoming more style over substance.

I stand corrected. I still maintain that Black Panther has both, and it's just noticeable because superhero movies have become so very washed-out and grey. It's refreshing to see colors on screen that aren't streetlamp orange or steel blue.

For me personally, it's the forced humor that is found in the films that is really starting to cause a problem for me. Not to mention that after a while the MCU formula becomes quite noticeable and the films are starting to look the same, IMO. Black Panther actually kept Wakanda close to its comic book origins, more or less, IMO, but there were still changes made (which was enough for me to be okay with). Overall, I liked the film and I actually thought that they did a good job with cinematography this time around (Homecoming's cinematography was so flat, IMO.) and the color grading in the film was actually vibrant and noticeable (in a good way). In the past MCU films, they tended to have shitty color grading (where the colors would be flat to look at) and shitty/ forgettable cinematography was also usually flat, with a few scenes as the exception. Also, the soundtrack was actually unique which is saying something since I can barely remember any MCU film scores.

[Nessus]

They've definitely gotten more and more set into a formula groove with time, but the style/substance ratio seems to vary randomly. When I think about the ones that have more substance vs less, the distribution is more random than chronologically weighted one way or another. The level of style varies randomly as well.

The formula aspects, however, definitely feel like a chair cushion getting gradually molded to a very specific ass with increasing depth and definition with each sit.

I agree about the forced humor. Age of Ultron was the one that really pushed it over for me. I do like Joss Whedon's style of humor, but he does have a tendency to write every character with the same "voice" when it comes to the humor, and in AoU he was pushing the "talking is a free action" thing waaaaayyyy to far to the point where it was seriously messing with the pacing and making the aforementioned "voice" issue way more more glaring than usual.

In GoG the density of humor makes sense. In Ant Man, the humor makes sense for that specific character, but not if everyone else is doing the same. In a lot of others though, it kinda doesn't always work. In Doctor Strange it was often annoying (with the exception of Mikkelsen's character), and made the title character more obnoxious instead of more likable. It was like they were trying to make Strange into another Tony Stark, and it backfired.