Black Panther (2018)

[96583UP]

My kids had a LOT of questions about this movie.

Why did no one have names? Heh, my kids are very white.
Why did that guy have a thing in his mouth?
Why was Black Panther helping Kilmonger at the end?
What were all those bumps on Kilmonger?

Also, my 5 year old daughter legit cried when Kilmonger threw T'Challa off the waterful. I know, we all know he's in Infinity War, but she thought he was dead, and she was fucking crushed.

how did your 5 year old react to the orgy scene?

[B]

My kids had a LOT of questions about this movie.

Why did no one have names? Heh, my kids are very white.
Why did that guy have a thing in his mouth?
Why was Black Panther helping Kilmonger at the end?
What were all those bumps on Kilmonger?

Also, my 5 year old daughter legit cried when Kilmonger threw T'Challa off the waterful. I know, we all know he's in Infinity War, but she thought he was dead, and she was fucking crushed.

how did your 5 year old react to the orgy scene?

She thought it was lacking the cinematography of Eyes Wide Shut.

[96583UP]

just not a thing to put in a youth-marketed movie

again, haven't seen the movie, because i am amish, but having difficulty where the word would even fit in this type of film? everyone knows that african stereotypes are strictly monogamous

I can’t tell if you’re being serious about this point or not. Anyway, the US has dumb hangups about sex and I have no sympathy for sheltering parents. That is all.

disney has been sticking dicks in children's movies for ages but they just need to make it less obvious and i'm ok with it

[LoathedVermin72]

Real talk: I was obsessed with Eyes Wide Shut when I was 11

[96583UP]

the CGI in the bukkake scene was second-rate

[96583UP]

so back to the movie, which again, i didn't see, because i live a primitivist lifestyle where most of my day is spent foraging for edible shrubs and berries and as such i am afforded little time for leisure activities in babylon,

how did they portray the Fred Hampton scene?

[The Argonaut]

I'm genuinely surprised at some of the comments on the technical work in the movie, since that's been spoken of very positively in the reviews that I've read. But I just knows whats I likes, and don't have the vocabulary or knowledge to really unpack it. It looked good, but it wasn't like this was seeing Jurassic Park or Avatar or Matrix or Fellowship of the Ring where I felt like I was watching something groundbreaking in terms of the effects and visual design of the movies.

I've been thinking about this

I think Bada's comment about BP looking like a CW superhero show is very harsh (nothing looks as bad as a CW superhero show) but it does point to some of the choices they made in this movie, that are consistent with choices Marvel seems to mandate for all their movies, and why they stand in sharp contrast to a few scattered images here and there.

We've all seen that video about Marvel's color grading and how that makes the end product look that much flatter, but tbh I think the major culprits of Marvel's "flat", "drab" look are the cinematography and the production design. They tend to use colors that harmonize visually. Optically, there are colors that, when placed together, trick your mind into believing you are seeing a muted version of both. So if you put two colors like grey and red together, then your mind will make the red appear more grey and the grey more red. This happened to some extent during this movie, but there are a few brief moments with really beautiful vistas and color combination (I am thinking of that heaven-dimension-ghost place they visit a few times, and a few of the Wakanda wide shots, which made me go "whoa").

I think this speaks to the fact that Marvel seems to be entirely story-driven in their approach (to the detriment of the end product) and they don't use these cinematic resources to furtheir their themes or speak to the characters' inner lives. This seems to be much more of a Marvel thing than a Disney thing. When you look at previs cards or color palette cards for the animated movies like Aladdin or Lion King, they begin previs talks with a color palette that corresponds to the emotional transitions in the movie. But the Marvel movies don't seem to have that level of color transition. This contributes to that stagnant feeling throughout.

What I think is the worst part is the lazy, straightforward, "boxy" cinematography, which this film also fell victim to. This may have to do with hiring primarily TV directors, but I think it's probably mandated by the studio. When was the last time you saw characters in silhouette or in shadow in a Marvel movie? When have they been underlit or had rim lighting separating them from the background? The cinematography of these movies is flat and uninspiring. Like I said earlier, there are moments here that seem lit like TV commercials (those fights by the waterfall, holy hell). When you do color photography you calculate the value range and contrast of f-stops between the colors to maximize your exposure. Hard to make production design pop when it inherently uses colors that harmonize too easily together.

tl;dr most of Marvel movies suffer from bad/boring production design and cinematography. This movie does too but it is able to get away from it for a few shots.

Great post. You put perfect words to what I've long felt but don't have the knowledge to articulate. Thanks for this

[verb_to_trust]

When does this hit Netflix?

[Jorge]

Great post. You put perfect words to what I've long felt but don't have the knowledge to articulate. Thanks for this

Thanks but I wish I could rewrite it. I use the words "I think" or some variation thereof like 12 times in the span of a couple paragraphs

[bune]

Black Pantha get his ass kicked a lot in this movie. He was more badass in Civil War.

He spent a lot of time in the film de-flowered though so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

[bune]

I was going to post some comparison money shots of Black Panther and CW shows but Google no longer has the option to view image and get the url. I'm not sure life is worth living anymore.

1. Right-click image
2. copy image location (Chrome, at least)
3. ????
4. Profit.

[BurtReynolds]

Black Pantha get his ass kicked a lot in this movie. He was more badass in Civil War.

He spent a lot of time in the film de-flowered though so I'm sure that had something to do with it.

word choice.

[B]

This video did a good job of laying out how BP addresses Marvel's biggest weaknesses.



- Boring music
- Muted colors
- Lame villian
- Indistiguishable army of enemies
- Humor undercutting dramatic moments

[LoathedVermin72]

But...it has like all of those problems

[dimejinky99]

Black panther made more money its its first four days than justice league made in its entire run. That’s cool.

[LoathedVermin72]

So cool!!

[B]

It has none of those problems.

- Sounds great.
- Looks great.
- Complex, emotionally motivated villain.
- Brightly colored, distinguishable tribes in the final battle with their own motivations.
- Kilmonger's destruction of Wakanda's traditions are allowed to hit and be processed.

[LoathedVermin72]

It does not look or sound great at all and it’s loaded with annoying jokes

[Jorge]

"Loaded" is a lot. It's jokey but nowhere near as jokey as the last GotG or Thor movies

[B]

It does not look or sound great at all and it’s loaded with annoying jokes

I won't go down a rabbit hole on the look and sound.

But it's not that there are no jokes. It's that they're timed and spaced so that when there is an important dramatic moment, you're allowed to absorb it and process it without it being undercut by a joke. The most obvious recent example was in Ragnarok. Thor is on a ship with the remaining Asgardians as their entire world explodes, and Korg immediately cracks a joke. The audience doesn't get to feel the pain of a people watching their world end at all.

Compare that to Kilmonger's murder of Zuri and throwing T'Challa off the waterfall. When is the next joke after that? Not for a long damn time.