Nicolás Marroquín

I went into this movie with high expectations, I was ready for an exploration in grief and loss, an exploration within a character and also how the grieving sister and effective succesor and leader for Wakanda (Shuri, played by Letitia Wright) navigated an unexpected leadership position out of tragedy. And now I understand that because of those expectations this movie could never deliver, it's just too Marvel. And the reason is not necessarily having to do with it being a superhero movie, The Batman earlier this year delivered an incredibly effective visual exploration into deeper themes and struggles making it a fantastic movie. The Marvel in this movie prevented it from going as far as necessary to make it an emotional impact, there are lightness in the characters, comedic lines and a mixbag of emotional undertones throught the movie trying to appeal to a "broad audience". It's not all bad however. One particular cool thing Marvel movies do as a consequence of their enourmous budgets is a richness in CGI and imaning of fantasy, which this movie delighfully bringed to the table for the "badies" which are surprisingly to me, the remanents of Maya culture. Giving this community and with it in a sense of redemption as a utopic society for all precolonial cultures in America was something that director Coogler did beatifully, sharing the pie of cultural reclamation in imagination that he did with Wakanda itself. And it is perhaps because of this great excecution that the rest of the movie in contrast seem so flawed, as the potential to reach to the moral conclussion of the movie could be done in a manner that wasn't so predictable. Overall however, for the standards of the MCU, this movie reaches far enough in emotional thematic exploration that makes a good adition to the bunch.

The connected stories trope, perfected in my opinion by Iñárritu in Amores Perros and taken to Hollywood in Babel is admittedly, a very attractive concept and one that lends itself perfectly to very inventive filmmaking. This movie attempts a version of this narrative structure, but you very quickly into the movie you find that it got lost in the concept, rather than in the stories it attempted to tell. The weakest part of the movie is the begging, or it’s first two chapters led by Issac and Wilde, that is immediately obvious with a bizarre attempt at dark comedy with the appearance of Samuel Jackson, followed by loosely connected stories of a marriage that ends tragically, but fails spectacularly in a very graphic episode, which created a great distraction for the movie onwards. The movie tried changing course with its second story, the tale of a Spanish family with an asymmetrical class dynamic with the father and his boss, and by changing the pace of the movie and giving it time to breathe and letting it’s actors to carry the story created the more compelling arc in the movie and one that could’ve been better as a stand-alone feature, rather than embroiled in the previous mess. That second story it’s really the only saving grace of this otherwise mess of a movie, evident by the fact the emotional landing of its resolution actually hit with me, and why it became really unfortunate to have such a weak first half. The highlights are definitely the performances by the Spanish unit, Antonio Banderas, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Lorenza Izzo, while the talents of Isaac, Wilde and the “American” unit got betrayed by a case of wanting to do too much while delivering none of it, in short, bad writing.