Black Panther - Wakanda Forever - November 2022

[NecroMorrius]

You know you’re bored of Marvel when you’re bored of talking about being bored of Marvel. After watching this for what felt like an eternity, I couldn’t tell if it was going on forever or taking an age to get going, so I hit pause to discover I wasn’t even half way through. Christ. Life is just too short for these incredibly flabby and poorly constructed children’s cartoons. 

[jonamok]

It’s amazing how poor this phase has been. So much mediocrity. I could happily rewatch 80% of everything in Phases 1-3. I can’t think of much in Phase 4 to date (films not TV*) that I’ll ever rewatch: Panther 2, Thor L&T, Eternals, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Strange 2. Christ, what a shower. Okay, Thor’s decent.

 

But it’s really only Spidey: No Way Home that’s genuinely good, assuming that counts.
 

* Phase 4 telly has been mostly ace: She Hulk, Ms Marvel, WandaVision and Hawkeye were legit great. Moon Knight, What If? and Loki were pretty good. Only Falcon was a bust.

[Festoon]

4 hours ago, jonamok said:

It’s amazing how poor this phase has been. So much mediocrity. I could happily rewatch 80% of everything in Phases 1-3. I can’t think of much in Phase 4 to date (films not TV*) that I’ll ever rewatch: Panther 2, Thor L&T, Eternals, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Strange 2. Christ, what a shower. Okay, Thor’s decent.

 

But it’s really only Spidey: No Way Home that’s genuinely good, assuming that counts.
 

* Phase 4 telly has been mostly ace: She Hulk, Ms Marvel, WandaVision and Hawkeye were legit great. Moon Knight, What If? and Loki were pretty good. Only Falcon was a bust.

 

This, except Thor and Spiderman were also poor, as was 90% of the tv shows.

[Garwoofoo]

I'll take Shang-Chi, Spider-Man, WandaVision and She-Hulk - I'm indifferent at best to the rest of it.

[BitterToad]

Thor was an outright disgrace. One of the worse films I've ever seen and I once cut a trailer for the third best Hansel and Gretel film released in 2013. 

[jonamok]

I must be broken, because bar the goats, I enjoyed Thor quite a bit.

[Uncle Mike]

The goats were the best part.

[Sexton Hardcastle]

Thor 4 only saving grace is that it isnt as bad as Eternals. I have no idea what all this "phase" nonsense is supposed to relate to, but they are definitely churning out garbage since Endgame wrapped up in an effort to get more characters on screen so they can market more IP merchandise sales. As much as I enjoyed She-Hulk, theres not a chance any of those movies or series would have been passed as acceptable for release a few years ago. They now have a fanbase of people who will watch any old shite & they will make millions of dollars from it - Thor 4 made over $700 million!! As long as it is two hours long and fills a slot in the release schedule to allow the PR team to work on getting paid from the merch licencees then everyone at Disney is happy.

[Festoon]

I'm not sure why Thor 4 gets such a kicking when No Way Home was every bit as disjointed and poor.

[Protocol Penguin]

The only phase 4 TV series I thought was any good was Hawkeye, and that was flawed.* Shang-Chi was my favourite of the phase 4 films, even if I was a fairly vanilla origin film (could’ve done without Kingsley, though).
 

* benefit of the doubt to Wandavision and Captain Falcon though, given the pandemic issues. They feel like they could and should have been better.

[Festoon]

1 hour ago, Protocol Penguin said:

The only phase 4 TV series I thought was any good was Hawkeye, and that was flawed.* Shang-Chi was my favourite of the phase 4 films, even if I was a fairly vanilla origin film (could’ve done without Kingsley, though).
 

* benefit of the doubt to Wandavision and Captain Falcon though, given the pandemic issues. They feel like they could and should have been better.

 

Lol. Captain Falcon.

[Thor]

As a massive Thor fan (er, hello, check out my name and avatar) Thor Love & Thunder is absolute fucking shite. It's the worst of all the Thor films, arguably the worst of all the Marvel films (and I really hate Iron Man 3). What a fucking atrocity, not to mention such a fucking disappointment. 

 

On the flip side, I just watched Wakanda Forever, and rather enjoyed it. It's too long, and Iron Man girl or whatever she was could have been cut completely, but it was pretty good. Also, Lupita Nyong'o

[NecroMorrius]

Also, what's with the awful depth of field/focus issues throughout? Characters centre-screen who are clearly the subject of focus are out of focus frequently, even in what you'd consider some of the defining shots of the film, and there's this awful chromatic blur which kind-of makes sense in the water sequences but is used elsewhere to horrid effect. It gives most of the film this really queasy soft look. Sure, some of it is down to lens choice but all the CG elements look like someone's cranked the motion blur up to 3000% even when it's barely moving.

 

Edit: https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/black-panther-wakanda-forever-cinematography Ah, interesting.

[Steve McQueef]

I would watch The Eternals a thousand times over, before visiting this pish again.

 

 

 

And I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated The Eternals.

 

 

[cubik]

1 hour ago, Moz said:

Also, what's with the awful depth of field/focus issues throughout? Characters centre-screen who are clearly the subject of focus are out of focus frequently, even in what you'd consider some of the defining shots of the film, and there's this awful chromatic blur which kind-of makes sense in the water sequences but is used elsewhere to horrid effect. It gives most of the film this really queasy soft look. Sure, some of it is down to lens choice but all the CG elements look like someone's cranked the motion blur up to 3000% even when it's barely moving.

 

Edit: https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/black-panther-wakanda-forever-cinematography Ah, interesting.

I thought it was my glasses at first. I wear varifocals so if I tilt my head too far up or down I can lose focus on the bottom or top half of what I'm looking at - Then I realised the boundaries of the screen had that weird blur, especially in the funeral scenes at the start of the film.

 

Also, what's with the overused and extremely badly timed slo-mo shots? After the first one or two they feel really out of place.

 

As with others, I found a lot to dislike about this film so don't need to reiterate what's been said about Ross, Riri and Shuri.

I could happily watch more of Okoye, Nakia, M'Baku and the Queen though, they've got real screen presence, even if Okoye's strength and skill was masked by a random suit for some reason in the final section of the film.

[HarryBizzle]

Did the budget for this not include a trainer to make Namor look vaguely like a superhero? 

[NecroMorrius]

He looked terrible! Moreso the costume than the actor. I was picturing the actor being shown his costume and going "haha good one".

[jonamok]

His heel wings were a true low, but perfectly encapsulated the desperation of the MCU’s recent storytelling.

 

Namorgoodideas.

[Alex W.]

“How is less important than why.”

 

(10 minute flashback scene about how, and no why.)

 

Another big miss, and a bloated and impersonal one to boot. The wheels have come off the MCU entirely haven’t they?

[SeanR]

Was this edited down from a longer tv series where we were shown why we were supposed to care about anything? Or even how…

 

circumstances made for an amazing start, but after that…

[Festoon]

On 03/02/2023 at 21:57, BubbleDragon said:

Just finished. Is it just me or was this really depressing.  

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BP being dead, the world turning on Wakanda, two nations who were kind fighting for the same thing killing each other, more deaths, 

 Phase 4 has been poor.

 

Phase 4 has been flabby, boring, meandering, and in the case of Namor, silly.

 

Oh and the mid-credits sequence was just insulting.

 

Time for Kevin Feige to get the boot, I reckon. Cunt has decided every film needs to be Iron Man 2, with 70% irrelevant content.

[Alex W.]

Amazing how they managed to make it look really expensive and really cheap at the same time too. There’s a lot of it but it all looks like either The Matrix Reloaded or a bunch of guys fighting in a swimming pool/sand pit/metal patio in front of a green screen. 
 

If Marvel have supposedly consolidated their VFX behind a house style, whoever is directing that needs sacking. I suspect it’s nobody in particular.

[Alex W.]

31 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

Phase 4 has been flabby, boring, meandering, and in the case of Namor, silly.

 

Oh and the mid-credits sequence was just insulting.

 

Time for Kevin Feige to get the boot, I reckon. Cunt has decided every film needs to be Iron Man 2, with 70% irrelevant content.

Didn’t Feige back off for phase 4? Or am I misremembering something, maybe the Russos going off to do their own thing?

[Festoon]

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

Didn’t Feige back off for phase 4? Or am I misremembering something, maybe the Russos going off to do their own thing?

 

Definitely not him, anyway. Russos are off making their own terrible stuff.

[Festoon]

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

Amazing how they managed to make it look really expensive and really cheap at the same time too. There’s a lot of it but it all looks like either The Matrix Reloaded or a bunch of guys fighting in a swimming pool/sand pit/metal patio in front of a green screen. 
 

If Marvel have supposedly consolidated their VFX behind a house style, whoever is directing that needs sacking. I suspect it’s nobody in particular.

 

There are about 8 vfx firms in the credits. Impossible to coordinate that consistently.

[ryanm]

Well this film successfully describes the stupidest possible response to aggression from the US government, and doubles down on the first film's premise that it's absolutely intolerable to have world-ending national armouries controlled on a who-punches-hardest basis.

Amazingly it's somehow really earnest and boring about it too!

[monkeydog]

1 minute ago, Festoon said:

 

Definitely not him, anyway. Russos are off making their own terrible stuff.

 

The thing they produced with Chadwick that was on  Amazon was alright. Can't remember the name of it though, it was that level alright.

[Alex W.]

9 minutes ago, Festoon said:

 

There are about 8 vfx firms in the credits. Impossible to coordinate that consistently.

I thought it was very consistent, the all-CG scenes and the composited live action always had the same specific issues.
 

They’ve still not figured out how to properly CGI faces on to suits after they lost the dark knowledge during Infinity War.

[Festoon]

8 minutes ago, monkeydog said:

 

The thing they produced with Chadwick that was on  Amazon was alright. Can't remember the name of it though, it was that level alright.

 

21 Bridges 16 Blocks

 

And 5 ran.

[Festoon]

2 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

I thought it was very consistent, the all-CG scenes and the composited live action always had the same specific issues.
 

They’ve still not figured out how to properly CGI faces on to suits after they lost the dark knowledge during Infinity War.

 

The secret ingredient is money.