My mixed, mixed feelings about Black Panther (not a lot of spoilers)

Everything I didn't like about Black Panther is also something I think you couldn't change. It all had to be there. It's a movie based on a comic book character who was created back when "black panther" meant only one thing to most Americans: a militant civil rights movement that some white Americans viewed as illegal and dangerous. Coming at a time in American racial history that is no less complicated and divisive, the movie couldn't avoid every frame bearing political significance. The movie, much to my delight, accepted this, and didn't shy away from it. It said, "Okay, this is Black Panther, right? So let's really make it Black Fucking Panther." It is black to its core. It is beautifully, energetically black. It is back-to-mother-Africa black. Yet somehow, its message is one that white conservatives ought to embrace: black people have a lot to give. Black people do not have to see themselves as a poor beggars in need of welfare; they are rich in resources--incredibly rich, actually.

The best part of the movie, though, is also what made it a fairly dull ride at times for a super-hero flick. The movie pays due homage to Ta-Nehisi Coates' vision of the series, in which the enemy is as much infighting factions as the enemy outside of mythical Wakanda. In fact, Wakanda's main external enemy is dispatched with more than an hour to go in the film. From there, it's one vision of Wakanda against another. It's a highly militarized vision of what the black panther and Wakandan technology should do in the world against another, more balanced approach. The final version is something of a blend of the two visions: the non-violent wins out, but not without deciding to be more active in the world. There is a sweet homage from T'Challa, who honors the dying wish of his rival to be buried in the sea, with the slaves who jumped ship to die rather than live in chains. It never denigrates the militant vision; it merely proposes other solutions.

But this internal fighting is also what makes the movie at times a little dull. It's serious and expositional, much like a D.C. movie, rather than the rapid-fire of joke-joke-smash-smash we've come to expect from Marvel. I am glad this wasn't just another Marvel movie. It couldn't be. It was Black Panther. You can't name a hero for a revolutionary group (see edit below), have the movie seriously take on issues of the African diaspora, and then have Paul Rudd deliver a bunch of jokes. But in making not a Marvel movie, they made it well, not a Marvel movie. It was slow. It followed the old super-hero model of making the movie an origin story--even though the character had already been introduced in an earlier Avengers film.

I felt almost a responsibility to like this movie. I see idiots trolling the film, wanting it to fail, ridiculing anyone who is happy to see a black super hero, anyone who might find Black Panther encouraging and a role model. That makes me want to like the movie. I want it to be great. I want it to be the greatest super-hero movie of all time. But it isn't. And it shouldn't be. It should be exactly what it was.

Like this meme, not everyone is going to get the movie. And that's how it should be. 

Edit: A reader tells me the character came before the movement in the 60s. Interesting. I guess my understanding is still mostly correct for the purposes of this review, in that the two are closely linked, even if my understanding of the causality was backwards.