Pretty good flick overall. Certainly not the
second coming that the media has made it out to be. Of course I say this as a white male in his 50's. I can only imagine what it must be like for black kids to finally see someone up on the screen that is uniquely theirs' and not just a superhero, but a monarch who is so many things, most all of them good. Props for Marvel for not only taking what was a hot potato and not only going with it but wholly embracing it and pushing the blackness of the film to 110%. That took balls, and for Disney & Feige it is obviously paying off in spades (no pun intended).
THE GOOD: Visuals were, for the most part, spectacular. The costume design is hands-down among the very best that I have ever seen in any movie, of any kind. If The designer doesn't get an Oscar nod (and the trophy itself), the academy is crazy. Music? Awesome! I was so fearing that the whole thing would be choked with hiphop & rap garbage, like they did in the trailers. Except for brief rap bits at the beginning & end, they gave us a full gorgeous score that
fully embraced the African tribal aesthetic. Best African-flavored soundtrack I've heard since Ghost & The Darkness. The acting across the board is among the best of any Marvel film. The women were especially strong and impressive - in every way. Chadwick? Loved him ever since I caught '42'
THE BAD: The CGI is really waffly in this.
So much of it was obvious computer stuff, yanking me out of the narrative every time it floundered. You'd think this stuff would be getting more polished, but it seems to be the opposite. Perhaps it's the rushed production schedules? ILM should be ashamed at some of what I saw. And I for one am getting REALLY tired of heroes who jump and just seem to float. There is almost zero gravity-influence on a lot of these characters. If you can fly like Vision or Superman, fine. But when you jump you almost immediately start to arc down due to gravity. These floaty jumps look just awful. The rhinos looked pretty bad, too. (How hard would it have been to get a real rhino in that early scene where he's in a pen? Prosthetic long horns and presto! You'd think that would've been much less expensive than paying a company to CG a whole animal. Odd.) I found it hard to sit through some of the fight scenes with Panther trying to follow what's going on. Two black guys, dressed head-to-toe in black, fighting in a dark tunnel... really? Somebody give me a clue as to what went on. LOL. I would've preferred a little less choppy editing overall during the fight stuff too, while I'm at it. Lastly, I didn't buy the whole "your entire suit deploys out of this tiny necklace" stuff either. That was really stretching 'suspension of disbelief' a bit too far, for me. YMMV.
I give BP a solid 7.5/10 but will be going back this weekend to give it another look. My rating may improve with a second viewing.