Black Panther (2018), dir Ryan Coogler

“You can’t have an advanced techno-tribal utopia without democracy” is the new “if you can just hyperspace kamikaze things why don’t they do it all the time” is the new “you can’t hear explosions in space”

princess anne was only 2 when E2R ascended the throne, which makes the 110 mins required all the more puzzling

she was a fucking badass toddler - this is basic british history ffs

elizabeth was of course hobbled by a catastrophic attack of diarrhea minutes into the battle - suspicions remain, of course, that a partisan footman spiked her pre-combat breakfast of larks' tongues

the image of her caked in shit and blood, holding her unconscious young sister aloft by one of her feet, remains one of the most cherished images of 20th-century britain

Trafalgar Square also has a time-warping force field so that 4 minutes inside is actually 110 minutes outside. Plus there were several trailers and a post-bout sequence

Lasagnegate I am wounded wounded it will never truly heal

wait anne is her sister? my basic british history is even further off than i knew

It's the big reveal at the end of empire

one of us was clearly born in an alternate universe but i refuse to be drawn on my suspicions as to which one

that's why they called the darkest hour tbf, no one could tell who was who for weeks

either way the royals are so inbred that we're in a real sister/daughter chinatown situation whenever we try to draw up a family tree imo

forget it jake it's sandringham

Anyway back to Wakanda analogues, wouldn’t it have been dope if George VI had been a spy? “Oh, you’re the King’s brother? Espionage school for you”

It's the big reveal at the end of empire

― DUMPKINS! (darraghmac), Tuesday, 20 February 2018 14:38 (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Guys

needy imo, nagl

Sometimes we have to allow that our inner lj is in fact otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNHc2PxY8lY

do we tho would be my q xp

that video looks great, thx phil

Before I saw it I read a review that said the fight scenes were kind of incoherent, especially from the director of Creed, but I didn't have any problems with the fight scenes (besides, like, why an armored rhino is a bigger advantage than flying spaceships with lasers and shit). However, I thought the foley effects (at least as they sounded in my theatre) were weird. Like, totally '80s action movie punches.

“You can’t have an advanced techno-tribal utopia without democracy” is the new “if you can just hyperspace kamikaze things why don’t they do it all the time” is the new “you can’t hear explosions in space”

To be fair, this entire movie was literally about the handwringing that comes with being an advanced civilization, yet what felt like half of the run time was shirtless people punching each other over a waterfall.

Dod they no longer have any magic blue flowers? She only saved that one ...

man I love Ryan Coogler's Oakland accent

yes i was bothered about the last blue flower -- in the pub afterwards we decided it would be fairly easy to hide some as killmonger did not seem especially detail-orientated tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9VYzNUXGDA

ryan coogler is 31 btw

gonna sit awhile and quietly contemplate my mortality

xp I dunno, he seemed to hang about to check their work.

So either:

"The right/rite of challenge has been regrettably postponed indefinitely"

OR

"As Wakanda's protector, I am happy to swear in M'Baku as the first president of the Republic of Wakanda"

michael b. jordan will always be haddie braverman's troubled boyfriend alex to me.

speaking of bad panther, why did he even need that...uh, i don't know where klaw is supposed to be from...guy with the accent to help him steal that artifact? seemed like a waste of time. oh wait he needed his dead body to use as a calling card i guess...nevermind.

just dawned on me that the only white people in the movie were gollum and bilbo...

I'm sure there's some lesson in responsibility about a more technologically advanced nation not unilaterally deciding to arm people in less-developed nations in order to bring about regime change, but I just can't quite put my finger on it

Less-developed here includes the US tbf.

Less-developed here includes the US tbf.

You must have heard the pun scott

xp that's kind of the buried lede

i don't know where klaw is supposed to be from...guy with the accent

surely he was meant to be south african?

just dawned on me that the only white people in the movie were gollum and bilbo...

lol yes, i mentioned that to the people i came with during their interrogation scene. no riddles, though.

klaw's accent was (roughly) south african, yes

(i think his full marvel lineage is more complicated than that) (ie his dad was a nazi?)

I like the light continuity of him just being some south african mercenary that, we now know, entered the story when he was contracted by a rogue Wakandan

so he's a villain, but it's refreshing when the actual antagonist wastes him partway into the movie

the part in the museum where Killmonger observes that security has been watching him like a hawk since he arrived but haven't been watching what she's been putting in her mouth was a good one. basically racism got them all killed.

Before I saw it I read a review that said the fight scenes were kind of incoherent, especially from the director of Creed...

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The fight scenes in Creed were kind of incoherent too! Creed is not a very good movie!

i know i said it already but the museum scene is my favorite thing in the movie. i could "unpack" it but i almost don't want to disturb it...

but yeah, it's not just racism that bites our Africa Expert, it's the consequences of what she's been ingesting all this time...

the beat at the end of the scene, where killmonger reappropriates the mask not bc its vibranium, or even wakandan, but bc he's just feelin it... i could watch that over and over

And what color is coffee? Black!

I liked Creed.

Klaw (at least in this movie) is from South Africa. He even makes a reference to returning to Jo' Burg.

Killmonger's final monologue would have been incredibly heavy-handed in so many movies but I feel like it worked here? My jaw dropped in the the theater

xpost well sure i like some crap movies too but that doesn't make them good

how many of the rhinos did Andy Serkis play

The final monologue was indeed all that.

Final business end update:

http://deadline.com/2018/02/black-panther-thursday-night-preview-box-office-1202291093/

Disney has just confirmed what we saw earlier: Marvel’s Black Panther is the second-biggest 4-day opener of all-time at the domestic B.O. with $241.96M, after Force Awakens ($288M) and beating Star Wars: Last Jedi ($241.6M). Monday also marked an all-time record with $40.167M, beating Force Awakens‘ $40.11M (Dec. 21, 2015). Black Panther also posted the second best Sunday ever at the domestic B.O. with $60.096M behind Force Awakens ($60.5M).

"He even makes a reference to returning to Jo' Burg."

forgot about this. yes. maybe Die Antwoord can avenge his death in the next movie.

I was thrown off by the heaviness of the monologue set against what looked like a backdrop for the (currently filming!) CGI The Lion King.

Ooof though when T'Challa takes the herb the second time and is yelling at his dad, the mystical land of the ancestors looks like a matte painting 3 feet behind his head.

I wonder if that boils down to the distance you're sitting from the screen. We were up in the second tier and none of the CGI took me out of the film at all.

Interesting detail here to keep in mind, building on the much noted fact that Coogler is only 31 -- we've been so steeped in the 'filmmakers recalling the 80s' wider culture that we're missing other kinds of referents and acceleration, combined with the fact that ten years really is a long time:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/theres-more-going-on-in-black-panthers-end-credit-scene-1823050309

“I saw Iron Man the first day it opened,” Coogler told io9. “I was at film school the day it came out. I was in Los Angeles. Iron Man is the first movie I saw at the Arclight, which is like my favorite theater in Los Angeles."

As a friend said on Twitter: "a bit like when rock & roll starts being played by people who grew up listening to it"