Sometimes you look at a movie and say "Wow, I can't tell if that was real or CGI". Black Panther was not one of those times. Not only does this movie use CGI way too much, it doesn't even hold up to the Marvel standard for special effects. Don't get me wrong, the effects in Marvel movies are nothing to write home about but they do a decent job and aren't jarringly bad enough to rip you out of the immersion of the movie. So what went wrong with Black Panther?
Let me start out by targeting the elephant in the room, Wakanda itself. All of the unnecessary CGI backdrops and buildings really boggle my mind. Why? Could the Black Panther team just not be bothered to build sets? It would not be such a big thing if they actually took the time to do it right, but they totally half-assed the whole thing. Backgrounds contrast sharply with the actors, shadows have that horrible uncanny valley effect and some of the background crowds look like people out of the crowd in a WWE or Madden game. This was particularly jarring during the waterfall arena fight scene where some of the crowd looked ripped from a PS2 game and the ending fight with Killmonger that was prequel level CGI.(Example included at the end).
Now on to the Black Panther himself. His "nanite" suit just does not look good in transition. What I mean is when he transforms from regular old T'challa to the Black Panther nanites stream from his necklace build his suit on his body as he moves. Sounds cool right? It would have been if they took a little time to clean up the effect, it's times like this that I have to quote my father "Wow, that CGI looks just like CGI!". There is an art to blending CGI together with live actors and making it look good. Take the latest Jungle Book movie as an example of CGI done right. 95% of the environment and 100% of the animals interacting with Mowgli are CGI but you feel like they are really there. The CGI blends seamlessly together with a human actor to make a living, breathing world. It just feels like whoever got the CGI assignment for Black Panther thought they could phone it in and no one would notice. I honestly can't believe that of all the hundreds of people I am sure worked on the special effects no one said "hey guys, these effects kind of suck, maybe we should clean this up a little?".
Now on to the moment that made me laugh out loud, the charge of the battle rhinos. First of all, I'm supposed to believe a super advanced civilization, reportedly the most advanced, keeps a stable of trained battle rhinos as part of the army? If that wasn't funny enough these rhinos just looked awful. Jungle Book proved you can do great photo-realistic animals, what the hell happened? Again these things looked ripped from a mid 2000's video game. The texture stretch on the legs and in the joints is just terrible and whoever rigged the animations really needed to have another cup of coffee or something. There just really is no excuse other than laziness. We can animate them, we have the technology, and they damn sure had the budget. Honestly I just can't think of a reason for this low quality other than shear apathy.
As for the actual content of the movie, drum roll please, it was another mediocre Marvel movie! Actually I would put this more on the low end of Marvel movies. Still mediocre but more on the Ironman 3 or Thor Darkworld side of things than the Age of Ultron or Guardians 2 side. It is by no means the worst thing I have ever seen but I have no desire to see it again. Killing off Klaue and bringing in Killmonger was a big mistake in my opinion. A Marvel movie almost had an interesting villain for a second but nope, got to go back to the old standby of "I must conquer the world because it's not the way I want it" cliche. They could have at least had Man-Ape, the greatest Black Panther villain step in after his humiliation in the challenge. This movie just felt like a low-effort assembly line(more than usual) production that was hyped with race-baiting to make sure it made all the money. I really hope this doesn't become a trend but I think it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
All in all I say don't bother, if you are curious wait for the Blu-ray. Let my suffering spare you from the hollow feeling you get from watching these soulless cash grabs. Thanks for reading and have a good weekend.
