Black Panther (2018), dir Ryan Coogler

I know, I meant reunited in some regard.

yeah but my point is that they'd suck now if they did

Biggest reactions in my theater were to "hey, auntie," and maybe Killmonger going "'S'up." Driest joke maybe the "sneakers" joke. Lil' sis got a lot of good lines. No one laughed at the soundcloud/mixtape joke.

yeah, all the WHAT ARE THOSE MY SOUNDCLOUD MIXTAPE I MADE IT RAIN jokes were super cringey and I was thinking, "What do these guys think we're teenagers or something?" and then it's like ... "Oh... oh yeah."

i did enjoy ‘what are thoooooose’ because i still miss vine

but those jokes in the hands of the white dudes were maybe intentionally cringey?

they should have had a button on the hologram ship that just said NUT

xpost that is a very generous reading imo, but not out of the realm of possibility

veg otm

and as someone said upthread klaw’s whole thing is stealing black culture literally and figuratively, it kinda makes sense he’d have a mixtape and be embarrassingly enthusiastic about it

it still doesn't explain away "what are thoooooooose"

"what are those" was the biggest laugh by far when I saw it

‘what are those’ might not age well tbf but it made me lol, suck it whiney

when the joke doesn't age well but i keep succin

what are those may have a short shelf life (or not!) but it got a big reaction both times i saw it and it gets Shuri's character across about as efficiently as i can imagine.

Black Panther was a fine movie but its politics were a bit iffy. wouldve been way better if at the end the Black Panther turned to the camera & said "i am communist now" & then specified hes the exact kind of communist i am

— TORMABLAIEFDHZSJKLNBDSFEJKL PICKASDFJKLFDSNMKOFDSJ (@Tormny_Pickeals) February 19, 2018

(I haven't seen the movie. I don't watch superhero movies anymore. The last one I saw was Captain America: Winter Soldier.)

lol

haha

i can't imagine a less fun crowd to follow than lefty film twitter

For years now I've envied the people who get to do production and costume design for epic films of this sort. This movie just set some pretty high standards in those departments.

there was a piece on The Cut arguing that this should be nominated for oscars in costume design and makeup & hairstyling

wau what an achievement

Holy hell: #BlackPanther with the 5th biggest opening of all time pic.twitter.com/UjIBFJmCdt

— Chris Scott (@iamchrisscott) February 19, 2018

lol

#s 3 and 4 are giving me brain palpitations.

"WHAT ARE THOSE" absolutely killed in my theater.

the costume design was so beautiful i can’t contain my love for the textures & fabrics & cuts & aaaaah

this interview with Ruth E Carter is great
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/2/15/17012262/black-panther-costume-design-ruth-e-carter-interview-ryan-coogler-michael-b-jordan

Okoye's gown during the car chase
Shuri recording T'Challa kicking the armor for science reasons
Shuri and T'Challa's handshake
"... I'm going to feed you to my kids... lol jks we're vegtarians"

Lots of great performances, I've been thinking a lot about Winston Duke as M'Baku, the way he subverted expectations with that line in particular.

the "we're vegetarians" line.

i can't imagine a less fun crowd to follow than lefty film twitter

I can; there must be Marvel Twitter.

"What shall I choose as my online handle, that communicates my status as the arbiter of what is fun? Perhaps... 'Dr Morbius.' Yes, that's it."

j/k MCU twitter is probably tied with the rest of twitter and arbitrating fun is everybody's shared responsibility

i can't imagine a less fun crowd to follow than lefty film twitter

I can; there must be Marvel Twitter.

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Monday, February 19, 2018 7:34 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbh, i could've expanded my statement to just say "film twitter" in general

except Matt Zoller Seitz, that guy's cool

srsly, everyone's entitled to their own fun. I freely admit I haven't enjoyed any (contemporary) pop culture that's trying to be "fun" in years if not decades.

except Matt Zoller Seitz, that guy's cool

Nah, he's become a Peter Travers clone; the fucker likes everything, especially megabudget multiplex crap.

good enough at twitter, though

The way T'challa glides into the throne room, vs the way Killmonger struts in full of impertinent American swag.
Their fight in free fall.
M'baku vs Killmonger: the former gets set up as the antagonist, but compared to Erik's accession, we appreciate how much he operates within Wakandan hierarchical institutions: he throws his challenge down at the traditional moment, he passes up the chance to imbibe the heart shaped herb because the rightful ruler is still alive, and of course provides military assistance (albeit melodramatically) to defend his sovereign, despite saying that since he saved T'challa's life and thereby no longer being in his debt.

tbh, i could've expanded my statement to just say "film twitter" in general

― T'Chadwick (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 20 February 2018 00:49 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still think there's some fat there look again

Their fight in free fall.

This was actually my least favourite bit, it looked 100% lousy CGI up until they actually hit the train.

Chris Scott is having some fun with you, it's Force Awakens / The Last Jedi / Jurassic World / Avengers / Black Panther. I keep forgetting that Jurassic World is that huge, the same way I keep forgetting that Tim Burton's first Alice movie grossed a billion dollars.

This has to be the only time I’ve known exactly what the credits scenes would be, not because I’d heard in advance what they were but because it was well telegraphed exactly what would have to happen, and they both really worked with the film

I'm not sure what the telegraphing of the final one was, other than possibly Shuri asking if T'Challa has brought her 'another broken white boy'?

Their fight in general was a CGI-heavy muddle. I couldn't even tell what T'Challa did to win. The aftermath was great though

A flashy move which ended with him stabbing Erik where the trainline dampeners had temporarily disabled the vibranium, I think.

Tim Burton's first Alice movie grossed a billion dollars

this is the worst movie i've actually in the cinema in service of research for a published piece i'm pleased with (abt the history of the cinematic treatment of alice)

(upside: will self was sat miserably in front of me next to a kid -- i assume his -- with a face painted like an animal: they kid may well have loved the film it but will did NOT lol)

*enters a realm of wonderful ambiguity*

i'm gonna choose to believe that will self had his face painted like an animal during a screening of tim burton's alice

A friend of mine wrote this review.

Now, before we proceed with the ugly part, let’s make a few things clear: no superhero movie needs to have good politics. In fact, none of them have, and probably none of them ever will, because the superhero genre does not lend itself to them easily. Vigilante action, power fantasy, and the idea that some people are just inherently superior are baked right into the recipe and extracted only with great effort and self-analysis; comics have attempted it only rarely and movies never. Furthermore, nobody ought to go into Black Panther — a multi-million-dollar product released by a mega-billion-dollar corporation — expecting it to be progressive, or woke, or even politically aware. That would be terribly naïve, and nobody should have done it; not before the movie was released, and not now.

And that’s good, because, folks, the politics of Black Panther are pretty goddamn terrible. I’m not the first person to point this out — I especially recommend Ricky Rawls and Leslie Lee’s Twitter posts — but the plot of the movie essentially involves a heredity monarchy built on ritual combat monopolizing a natural resource to maintain a nationalist, isolationist system. When a legitimate heir to the throne appears and decides to use that resource to arm and equip oppressed people of color all over the world, he instantly becomes the villain. Rather than participate in anti-imperialist revolution, the country’s leaders opt for a violent civil war; the revolutionary figure (who, to boot, is portrayed like a mad-dog ghetto thug straight out of a paranoid NRA fantasy) is killed and the newly aware monarch settles for teaching inner city kids to code. As Lee puts it, Black Panther “dangles the idea of global black liberation in front of you, paints it as villainous, and then ends in an orgy of the freest black people to ever walk the Earth slaughtering each other to protect whites.”

There’s all sorts of other problems with the movie politically. The presence of the Martin Freeman character, a CIA agent who literally blows black people out of the sky to prevent them from aiding the struggle against people exactly like him, is a huge mistake, particularly in light of the real CIA’s real history with real African leaders. The movie also tries to have its cake and eat it too, in an obvious dodge swallowed whole by way too many Marvel stans, by implying that the problem with Killmonger isn’t his revolutionary intentions, but his violent means.

First of all, I have bad news for you, folks: the question ‘Is violence bad?’ is deeply and profoundly dumb and boring. Yes, violence is bad. So is cancer. The question is what we’re supposed to do about it. A much more interesting question is ‘Is violence effective?’; another is ‘When is violence justified?’ But Black Panther isn’t very interested in those questions, so we’re left to somehow accept that it’s bad for Killmonger to use violence to overthrow oppressive governments that exploit entire countries and wipe out entire populations, but it’s fine for T’Challa and his people to use violence to beat Killmonger — or, for that matter, to fuck around with slavers and child soldiers in neighboring countries, as long as the people they kill are other Africans.

It’s a complete ducking of the issue, made even more absurd by the fact that it takes place in the context of a superhero movie, where the whole genre is built in the idea that it’s fine to use violence against bad people. Do you remember any other Marvel or DC movie that did so much hand-wringing over the concept of violence? Apparently it’s only a concern when the violence might be targeted at the ruling classes. Beyond all that, as Rawls argues, the whole notion is bogus from the premise up: Wakanda has had incredible technology for a thousand years that puts them light-years beyond any other country on Earth, but it’s never even occurred to them to have a system of government slightly more responsive to human needs than a bloodline monarchy predicated on whoever is the best at beating the shit out of people? These aren’t inherent qualities of the narrative. These are choices made by writers, and they’re bad ones.

Lol

Furthermore, nobody ought to go into Black Panther — a multi-million-dollar product released by a mega-billion-dollar corporation — expecting it to be progressive, or woke, or even politically aware. That would be terribly naïve, and nobody should have done it; not before the movie was released, and not now.

having said that, let me tell you why it is bad not good

this movie is like a political rorschach test

That third paragraph is pretty impressively incoherent and point-missing.

Next time just link or embed like most people do?

I can't imagine watching the movie and thinking that it doesn't have sympathy for Killmonger and his ideas.

I also can't imagine judging a movie by how much I agree with it, but whatever

I also can't imagine watching the movie and thinking that it's uninterested in the question of when violence is justified.