Black Panther

Going by the map in Civil War, Wakanda would be around (loose estimative) 80,000 km square miles of land or in American speak, somewhere around 30,000 square miles. That'd make it around 20.000 miles smaller than the state of New York.

Have people already posted links to youtube reviews?

I don't think I've seen any posted here. I did see one interesting review on youtube, and some pathetic ones too, which I ignored.

edited 25th Feb '18 3:11:30 PM by IFwanderer

Here's a video review I really like, with Kyle Kallgren of Brows Held High and Jourdain Searles of Fishnet Media and the Bad Romance Podcast.

edited 25th Feb '18 3:36:30 PM by Tuckerscreator

Red Letter Media did a Half in the Bag review of it. Haven't watched it but given they don't have a good track record with social justice related topics, I have low expectations.

RLM's review wasn't great. They basically wanted Black Panther to only depict African imagery and not the cultural values or rituals. Supposedly that makes it "not advanced enough" if their society doesn't resemble European values. Which is pretty terrible; there's a big reason why Coogler and co. included imagery like an ambassador with a lip plate in a sharp suit or gorilla-emulation being a symbol of religious pride rather than inferiority. It's to make Westerners rethink their standards of "what is civilized".

RLM also argues that the film means nothing as a representation milestone if it's a corporate product. Meanwhile The LEGO Movie is still praised as fantastic satire in spite of being made to sell toys.

edited 25th Feb '18 3:58:54 PM by Tuckerscreator

Alright so bunch of dumb racist white guys who think they're smarter than they actually are, gotcha.

Alright so nothing can a milestone unless its an indie project released for free.

Got it.

So here's a question that I don't think the movie addressed. Does every tribe have an animal they're associated with? The Jabari are obviously connected to gorillas. If the royal famiy is part of a separate tribe then they'd be connected to panthers. The only other tribal name I caught was the River Tribe. I'm guessing they'd be a fish or something.

Just came back from Black Panther. Easily up there with Captain America: Civil War, better than Thor: Ragnarok, pretty assuredly better than Spider-Man: Homecoming and Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Man I loved the plot here. It had a Lion Kin vibe I couldn't shake off and it was done very well. Killmonger is one of the best villains in the MCU to me, and is basically what Hela could have been if her relation to Thor mattered beyond the surface level. You could really feel why he does the things he does, and why it matters to the plot and his relationship with T'Challa. He's just impressive, hands down. Even Klaw was better than he was in Age of Ultron. You could see how much fun Andy Serkis had playing him this time around, and this film honestly made his earlier appearance better retroactively.

I liked all the side characters too. Really, it's just a well done film.

The Border Tribe is presumably rhinos. The other tribes are Mining Tribe, River Tribe, and Merchant Tribe. The Merchant Tribe might be the royal family's tribe, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, we didn't get enough focus on Mining and River to know their animals.

I have returned from witnessing the might of the Jabari firsthand.

I wish I had more to say that hasn't been covered ad nauseuam by other people, but yes, it's the best MCU film. In terms of visuals, music, thematic ambition, cultural significance, there is no contest.

Michael B. Jordan needs to take on more roles where he gets to wear glasses. It totally caught me off guard with how good it looks.

I just got back from seeing this movie. It's as excellent as you all said it is.

The movie's mask designs kind of reminds me of the aesthetics used in the musical version of the Lion King. Now I wonder about T'Challa seeing the Lion King on stage and wanting it to come to Wakanda.

This is probably the worst review I've seen on Youtube. This guy has ludicrously high standards for most movies.

I feel like these two reviews are a lot more fair to the movie. It seems the most common criticisms are the pacing during the first half and the CGI.

edited 26th Feb '18 4:29:37 AM by Xopher001

The first review you posted is really bad, as you said. It assumes "black filmmaking" is a zero sum game, by saying that films like Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave should be touted as important movies in the African(American) experience. Why in God's green earth can't it be both?

It also hurls the same argument RLM had, that a "corporate product" cannot be political, which is an argument I'll never get. Firstly because it assumes that the film was made solely by Disney executives rather than, you know, the actual (black) film crew that produced the script, filmed and acted in it. It reduces all their work and effort to just "a tool of the corporate puppet masters", it's dismissing the filmmakers's hard work to treat them only as corporate tools (which on this case borders on racist with all the comments about "white corporate masters"). Secondly because it completely ignores the simple fact wide-appeal movies have....wide appeal. They tend to reach way bigger crowds than regular "artistic" films.

Alright so bunch of dumb racist white guys who think they're smarter than they actually are, gotcha.

That's character assasination

Anyways saw the film last night I give it 6 War rhinos out of 5 Andy Serkis mixtapes. Long story short it's a great film. It was definitely a bit overhyped by critics but I kind of expected that would be the case. Like everyone has already said Killmonger was the best part. My biggest complaint has nothing to do with the film itself but rather the theater experience. There was this obnoxious jackass sitting right next to me in the theater who was constantly on his phone which kind of took me out of the film. Other than that the only other problem I noticed on my first viewing was that the cgi was overused in some places.

I never said the first reviewer was racist, and I think that's really reductivist. As I pointed out, this reviewer tends to have very, very high standards for most movies, and does not use a standard scoring system where anything below 7/10 is 'bad'. Different people just have different tastes in movies.

edited 26th Feb '18 7:37:36 AM by Xopher001

Are you responding to me? Because I never said you did.

It's almost as if you sometimes need to work within the system to have the best chance at changing it. Unexpected, I know.

Also, that criticism seems a bit hypocritical coming from a channel that almost certainly relies on Youtube's platform and ad revenue to reach viewers and afford to keep making videos.

Black Panther is kind of like Avatar in that touches a feeling with a lot of people that most mainstream movie goers didn't even know was there.

edited 26th Feb '18 7:38:06 AM by CharlesPhipps

apparently there are people that actually think Wakanda is real. I'm not really concerned because this kind of thing happens a lot (the Matrix and Avatar come to mind) I just thought I'd point it out.

to be fair, a lot of people believe Hogwarts is real.

It isn't?!

Then where the fuck did this big-ass owl come from?