Video review of Black Panther- by Critical Drinker

Black Panther was a cinematic sensation when it opened about a year ago, garnering the kind of critical praise that I can best describe as bordering on hysterical lighting, a cultural powder keg that had been brewing for decades and ultimately going on to make over one point three billion dollars worldwide billion where they sink in for a second. It’s pretty ironic when you consider that it’s a thoroughly mediocre comic book origin story with a simplistic plot riddled with holes and convenience dollars, dishwater characters, questionable special effects and motivations that often make no sense. The basic story is this Takala is now the leader of Wauconda know that his dad got killed in civil war even though he was a total badass in that movie and proved he was worthy of the mantle of Black Panther, whose worry here is that he’s not bad enough to take on the mantle of Black Panther. Yeah, this movie seems to treat character progression as if it’s more of a circle than a straight line. Anyway, he’s on his way back to Wakanda to be crowned king. Well, kind of looks like a poor tribalistic country in the middle of nowhere, but it’s all just a big act. The city of Wauconda is actually a super advanced technological utopia, protected by a magical bullshit shield that somehow hides it from the outside world. What they have spaceships, antigravity trains, nano machines, laser guns and shoes that let you sneak around without making any noise. Sneakers, if you will.

Sneakers.

Comedy gold, it’s all possible because of vibranium, a magical bullshit material that allows you to do anything the writers need you to, it powers all the technology. It makes up the Black Panther suit and the magical ball things that he uses to do anything the writers need him to do, whether it’s killing vehicle engines, paralyzing enemies or stabilizing major spinal injuries. What the fuck to Chella starts off by rescuing his ex-girlfriend Nakia and a bunch of female prisoners for some kind of militant group. She’s on an undercover mission to do something but Black Panther Blues recover by serving her. So she’s mad at him. And then they move on. So they get back to the capital city where Tischler meets up with Shourie, his 15 year old sister. Surya’s responsible for overseeing all of Wauconda technological development. Like everything, it’d be like if Elon Musk was in charge of all US infrastructure, military development, the space program, Facebook and Family Guy. And he was 15 years old. What the fuck am I watching? So when he became a Black Panther in Civil War, Takala took some magical bullshit Horeb that made him super strong and fast and stuff. But to become king, he has to win a fair fight against any challengers. So it takes a different magical bullshit, Horeb to make his powers go away, because that’s how herbs and drugs work, right? Like the permanent like if you smoked a joint, you’d just be permanently stoned until you took something else to sober you up.

Anyway, Winsor’s for any guest current king, what do you do if he takes the magical bullshit herb again to get its powers back? Well, that was a lot of wheelspin. And right there, what the actual fucking Christ is this place? So it’s a super advanced technological utopia that decides its leaders based on who can punch the hardest. Really, this is the best thing you can come up with. So we flash over to London where Adonis Creed is fucking around and some old museum somewhere. He throws a few insults at the nice, polite tourguide because we need to be reminded about colonialism or something, I guess. Oh, and he’s got Golomb with them and they kill everyone and then they steal some artifact thing. So Tarcoola finds out the Golem is planning to sell the artifact to Bilbo Baggins in South Korea because that’s a really convenient meeting place when one person’s in London and the others in North America. So T’Challa and Machon go there to fight a bunch of people in the capture GOLOMB. But then Crete shows up and he rescues Golomb and injures Bilboa in the crossfire. So T’Challa shoves his magical balls into Bilboa and they take him to Wakanda to heal him. And sure, he does it because she can also do complex spinal surgery, apparently because. Yeah, why not? Right. So a bunch of people give the tower some shit because he failed in his mission. And T’Challa worries that he’s not badass enough to be Black Panther again.

Circles, remember, then Crede murders Golomb and he brings his body to a canvas so you can get an audience with Toucha here. He explains that he’s the son of the his uncle or something and challenges him to ritual combat, even though the child has now been Chrom King. So he doesn’t have to do it. But because the plot needs it to happen, he goes along with it anyway. He takes the magical bullshit herbed to remove his powers again and he promptly gets his ass kicked. He falls over a waterfall and he gets drowned. Critics over his king takes the magical bullshit Arab to make himself even stronger. And everyone just kind of goes along with it because the plot needs it to happen. So to show his family run away to the mountains, were T’Challa apparently washed up because rivers flow uphill? Don’t you know physics? He’s on ice. I mean, literally, he’s on a big block of ice, which apparently stops you dying instead of giving you hypothermia and, you know, killing you, I don’t fucking know anymore. So they give to each other the last of the magical bullshit and it brings him back to life. And he plans to go back to Wakanda to kick his ass and become king again. This is never going to end, is it? Meanwhile, Crede is mad because black people are oppressed everywhere. So he’s planning to ship Wauconda weapons to them so they can start revolutions all over the world and take over Christ.

I don’t know where to start with this one. The world has already seen off threats like alien invasions, interdimensional portals and literal gods. And you really think a bunch of gang bangers with laser guns is going to overthrow all of the world’s military and take on The Avengers. So Chala shows up and he starts his insurrection and everyone’s fighting because their loyalties are kind of split between the two men. Creedmore just the magical spaceships to start delivering the laser guns to the gang bangers and Bilbo goes after them with a radio-controlled magic spaceship. Everyone has a big battle and some asshole orders really bad CGI rhinos to charge and fuck everything up. What the fuck is happening to Charlie gets his hands on a spear Black Panther suit and Creed puts on another. You’ve basically got two Black Panthers who look almost identical fighting each other, except they can actually hurt each other because their suits are made of magical bullshit metal that absorbs all impacts. The only thing they can really fight on is a magical train track, which disrupts their suits and allows to shower to get the upper hand. And he stabs Chris in the fire. But Chris doesn’t die yet because he has more bullshit to say. So they go for a walk and they watch the sunset. And then Crete says more anticolonial stuff and then he dies. The movie ends with Mackinder, open itself up to the world and Techo is all happy because he’s opened up a community center in Auckland.

It’s OK. We won’t talk about all the African countries right next to a candidate are literally dying from famine, disease and war. That community centre will make all the difference, and that’s it. That’s literally the movie’s plot. There are so many things wrong with this movie that I could spend about an hour breaking them all down. But fundamentally, I think it comes down to wanting to have your cake and eat it. The writers want it to come there to be a super advanced technological utopia, but they try to mesh this with traditional African tribal. Culture and the two things go together about as well as chili sauce and black forest gateau, they needed to explain how it stayed hidden for all this time. So they invented a magical bullshit shield. But how does that explain how it stayed hidden for the past few thousand years before the shield even existed? They wanted to show it to go on the hero’s journey, but he’d already been on it in civil war. So they just kind of did it again and hoped he wouldn’t notice. They wanted a finale that place the world in jeopardy. But it was totally contrived and unrealistic because their actual military capabilities of Wakanda were not up to the task at all. They kept writing themselves into corners because they were useless fucking hacks. So they used the magical bullshit vibranium stuff to get themselves out of it. And lastly, they wanted to make an important statement about black identity and the conflict between American reality and African heritage.

But they don’t really seem to know what they want to say about what Kandace just a magically simplistic, idealized solution to far more complex issues. And I really don’t think a superhero movie is the kind of platform to try to deal with themes like this. And yet here we are. You know, when I think about the obscene amount of praise that got heaped on this movie, I’m reminded of the Soviet Union when Stalin would go to make a speech about something and everyone would stand up to applaud him. But nobody wanted to be the one to stop clapping first, because that might mean you weren’t as loyal as everyone else. So it just went on for like five minutes straight until Stalin himself got pissed off and had to tell them to stop. That feels a bit like what we’re living through right now. Progressive politics is the Joseph Stalin of our times, and everyone’s so terrified of attracting it’s anger that they just kind of go along with the crowd and keep clapping because it’s easier to clap until your hands are red rather than be the one who dares to sit down first. And that concludes my video for today. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. Please consider him like and subscribe and feel free to share your comments below. And as always, thanks for your time and have a great day.