hashtag months behind
May. 20th, 2018 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eleanorjaneI ... still haven't seen Infinity War? I think I'm going to go see it today, if the housemate and I can coordinate our windows of having-enough-spoons. Mostly at this stage I want to see it just so I've seen it, and can read the fic and peoples' reaction posts with proper understanding.
I have come to the conclusion that it's not that I'm over the MCU, it's that my ideas of sense and good storytelling diverges wildly from the PTB, who meddle with the ensemble movies in a way that they don't seem to with the single-character movies.
I've enjoyed basically all the standalone movies - some I merely enjoyed, through to some I adored - whereas the ensemble movies have been largely a hot mess. (Though I did enjoy the first Avengers at the time, I think it holds up less well under scrutiny, particularly once you're already disenchanted.)
The up side of missing the release of Infinity War, though, was that I finally got to watch Black Panther now it's out on iTunes (it being the first MCU movie I missed at the cinema). I have to admit, I was a lot less impressed than I expected to be, though that may be because of people talking it up before I saw it. I mean, I did enjoy it, but...
* I did indeed think that T'Challa was pretty awesome, and the ladies in his life were amazing; Nakia was predictably great, Shuri was amazing and awesome, and Okoye's fond exasperation was tremendous.
* I loved that Shuri, Okoye, and Nakia basically won the nascent civil war while T'Challa was off fighting Killmonger.
* M'Baku was also great, although I did think they could have done a lot more with Angela Bassett. (Ramonda got basically three lines IIRC, all of which were pep talks.)
* And for a movie with several awesome women in it, I ... don't think it actually passed the Bechdel Test? At all?
* I am not gonna lie, I squeed when Shuri raised her hand in the challenges and would have loved to see the reign of Queen Shuri. (She wouldn't have accepted Killmonger's stupid challenge for the throne.)
* I was frustrated by the fact that so much of the plot hinged on poor communication and stupidity. W'Kabi supports Killmonger over the Klaue issue - but T'Challa never says (to a man who's meant to be his closest friend) "hey, you know how I disappointed you by not bringing Klaue back? This asshole is the one who attacked us and stole him from our justice process, and evidently just shot him in a field somewhere instead of allowing Wakanda to get justice and closure." I feel that is something you would say, to your closest friend?
* Equally, I felt like Killmonger knew way too much about Wakanda - they did provide that handy journal to justify how he knew a bunch of it, but he knew a lot of stuff that I can't buy N'Jobu having written down in his Homesickness Diary.
* The car chase scene was a lot of fun, but a lot of the rest of the action was pretty ho-hum; the final fight between T'Challa and Killmonger was actually boring.
The entire movie was very formulaic - which is true of most MCU movies, but with the good ones I am engrossed enough that I don't notice the formula playing out. And, too, T'Challa did some really dumb stuff - like accepting Killmonger's challenge - which was credible for the personal emotional journey he was on, but was still frustrating enough to watch that it threw me out of the story because I was annoyed at him, and then I started noticing the weak joins you can't help but see when you're not engrossed.
So... *shrug* I enjoyed it overall and loved bits of it? But I definitely didn't adore it the way most people seem to have. I wish I had!
I have come to the conclusion that it's not that I'm over the MCU, it's that my ideas of sense and good storytelling diverges wildly from the PTB, who meddle with the ensemble movies in a way that they don't seem to with the single-character movies.
I've enjoyed basically all the standalone movies - some I merely enjoyed, through to some I adored - whereas the ensemble movies have been largely a hot mess. (Though I did enjoy the first Avengers at the time, I think it holds up less well under scrutiny, particularly once you're already disenchanted.)
The up side of missing the release of Infinity War, though, was that I finally got to watch Black Panther now it's out on iTunes (it being the first MCU movie I missed at the cinema). I have to admit, I was a lot less impressed than I expected to be, though that may be because of people talking it up before I saw it. I mean, I did enjoy it, but...
* I did indeed think that T'Challa was pretty awesome, and the ladies in his life were amazing; Nakia was predictably great, Shuri was amazing and awesome, and Okoye's fond exasperation was tremendous.
* I loved that Shuri, Okoye, and Nakia basically won the nascent civil war while T'Challa was off fighting Killmonger.
* M'Baku was also great, although I did think they could have done a lot more with Angela Bassett. (Ramonda got basically three lines IIRC, all of which were pep talks.)
* And for a movie with several awesome women in it, I ... don't think it actually passed the Bechdel Test? At all?
* I am not gonna lie, I squeed when Shuri raised her hand in the challenges and would have loved to see the reign of Queen Shuri. (She wouldn't have accepted Killmonger's stupid challenge for the throne.)
* I was frustrated by the fact that so much of the plot hinged on poor communication and stupidity. W'Kabi supports Killmonger over the Klaue issue - but T'Challa never says (to a man who's meant to be his closest friend) "hey, you know how I disappointed you by not bringing Klaue back? This asshole is the one who attacked us and stole him from our justice process, and evidently just shot him in a field somewhere instead of allowing Wakanda to get justice and closure." I feel that is something you would say, to your closest friend?
* Equally, I felt like Killmonger knew way too much about Wakanda - they did provide that handy journal to justify how he knew a bunch of it, but he knew a lot of stuff that I can't buy N'Jobu having written down in his Homesickness Diary.
* The car chase scene was a lot of fun, but a lot of the rest of the action was pretty ho-hum; the final fight between T'Challa and Killmonger was actually boring.
The entire movie was very formulaic - which is true of most MCU movies, but with the good ones I am engrossed enough that I don't notice the formula playing out. And, too, T'Challa did some really dumb stuff - like accepting Killmonger's challenge - which was credible for the personal emotional journey he was on, but was still frustrating enough to watch that it threw me out of the story because I was annoyed at him, and then I started noticing the weak joins you can't help but see when you're not engrossed.
So... *shrug* I enjoyed it overall and loved bits of it? But I definitely didn't adore it the way most people seem to have. I wish I had!