[8.1/10] *Black Panther* doesn’t have the aura of a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Yes, it has the allies and enemies we’ve met in prior movies like *Age of Ultron* and *Civil War*. It has the jovial vibe among its main cast. And it has the mandatory, climactic third act battle, draped in CGI and the usual fanfare.

But it also stands apart from the rest of the MCU’s offerings. It is unabashedly Afrocentric in its focus and its approach. It is a plainly political film, meditating on the legacy of colonialism, the oppression of people of color around the world, and the push and pull of isolationism vs. global activism. Though squeezed into the standard, three act superhero structure, *Black Panther* takes its audience to a different space, one untouched by the rest of the world and, in some ways, untouched by the broader cinematic universe the film acts in concert with.

It is a uniquely, profoundly black take on the modern superhero film, one long overdue, if for no other reason than how it breathes new life into the familiar formula. There’s nothing wrong with comic book movies hitting certain standard notes of uncertainty, challenge, and self-realization. But *Black Panther* is a cinematic argument for broadening the franchise, showing the renewed, distinctive character these common stories take on, when they’re told from a fully-formed, confident, and different perspective.

That distinct atmosphere is the best thing about the film, alongside the clear camaraderie among its cast and characters. No hero is an island these days, and while the title character has a notable arc that’s done well, the most enjoyable portions of the movie emerge when the plot mechanics of that arc are set aside for Black Panther to chat, spark, and laugh with his tech-wiz sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), his altruistic ex Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), and his fierce, principled guard Okoye (Danai Gurira). So much of these films depends on the chemistry and connection between the people the audience is asked to spend two hours with, and *Black Panther* soars on that front, building a rapport among those core characters that carries the day.

At the same time, Chadwick Boseman gives one of the best dramatic performances to grace a Marvel film. Thematically, the film centers on the notion of whether someone with a kind heart but also uncertainty about how and where to guide his people can be a good leader, and Boseman brings the inherent decency and heft to make these ideas land.

*Black Panther* constantly puts its title character between conflicting choices and impulses. T’Challa has to balance his inherent sense of mercy, shown to the leader of a challenging tribe, with his desire to deliver swift justice, shown when he threatens enemy of the state Ulysses Klaue in public. He has to reconcile his deep love for his father and his deep respect for his people’s traditions with his growing realizations that his forebears were men, not gods, who made mistakes, and that his homeland may need to change and evolve. He must square his country’s tradition of isolation, with the competing calls to share the nation’s wealth and knowledge in order to help those in need, or to use those resources to bring down the oppressors around the world who keep them in that state.

If there’s one area where *Black Panther* excels, it’s in creating a central character who’s pulled in multiple directions, on multiple dimensions, leaving him unsure what path to take and what sort of man to be, until the right direction is forged in fires of challenge and hardship. The film is a political story, a cultural story, a family story, and a personal story.

It’s just that Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole seem not particularly interested in it being a superhero story. That’s not necessarily a problem. Films as tonally diverse as *Logan* and *Deadpool* have shown you can use the superhero framework to craft a multitude of different films with different approaches within the superhero framework. But there’s a sense in *Black Panther* that the comic book-y elements are perfunctory, that Coogler and Cole had a compelling story to tell about legacy, power, and obligation, couldn’t tell it without including the de jure superhero fireworks.

*Black Panther* is at its best when it shows its title character confronting his responsibilities as a citizen, son, and leader, or finding strength, challenge, and affection among his friends and family. And it’s at its weakest when it shows him punching and kicking those things in comic book movies that inevitably must be punched and kicked.

At times, Coogler and director of photography Rachel Morrison capture the same sort of raw intensity of combat that hews close to a boxing match from *Creed*. The close quarters combat of the challenges for leadership are tight and visceral, giving an immediate sense of the personalities clashing at the same time bodies are, and a digitally-stitched but nominally unbroken action sequence early in the film has the energy and fluidity of a splash page. But too often, the film’s fight sequences are a big jumble, edited to bits and nigh-impossible to follow from one blow to the next. Worse yet, the CGI is especially in these sequence -- digital characters move without weight, animated creatures and vehicles disrupt the immersion of a scene, and climactic fights between fully computer-generated figures in a computer-generated world feel like gameplay clips pulled from *Mortal Kombat*.

Despite the strength of the story that ends in that skirmish, the film ostensibly breaks little new ground in terms of its narrative. Notably, Marvel’s own *Thor* trilogy covers much of the same territory, from the prince questioning his place as king, to far off lands debating the appropriate level of engagement with the outside world, to unruly yet sympathetic relatives with an appetite to conquer angling for the throne.

But what makes *Black Panther* so refreshing is the perspective from which it approaches this material. There is a richness to the cultural wellspring that Coogler and his team draw from, one underutilized in big budget filmmaking. The film is rife with different hues, different pleasures and sore sports, that inform the movie’s sensibilities even as it applies them to the smash-and-then-find-yourself routine that the Marvel origin movies have nigh-perfected at this point.

It’s the critic’s crutch to see a film’s story as a metaphor for the film itself. And yet it’s hard not to see parallels between the story of T’Challa deciding to bring Wakanda into the rest of the world, and Coogler deciding to bring his *Black Panther* into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One of the wonderful things about the MCU is the way that it can create a cohesive sense of place among different films, and foster the sense, through minor easter eggs and the occasional team-up, that all of these events are taking place in the same world.

But despite having a few of those continuity nods and connections, *Black Panther* feels like it occupies a world all its own, one full of its own color, character, and vibrancy. At the end of the movie, T’Challa opts for outreach, he decides to open Wakanda’s borders, and share his nation’s knowledge and culture with the world. With this film, Ryan Coogler & Co. do the same for Marvel, telling their own story in their own, but also bringing such a distinctiveness and a specificity to it that makes the world of these films a deeper, richer, better place for *Black Panther*’s presence within it.