Starting with the good, the cast is just aces, top to bottom. Bassett is beastly, obviously, but Winston Duke is just *electric,* man. Every time he steps on screen-- really in anything-- the movie just absolutely roars to life. He just knows how to read a line and use his physicality to create something so distinctive in this universe.

And Coogler, while given a completely impossible task here, manages to still create some interesting dynamics her. The movie is absolutely at its best when the characters are just sitting and talking, because that's where Coogler's gift for dialogue and injecting more complicated themes than most superhero movies bother tackling comes into play.

That said, there's just too much movie here, and the pacing/engagement really lags as a result. Like, I get that part of this is having to rewrite the movie from starring your magnetic leading man to eulogizing him, and that's just... really fucking hard to make work in terms of keeping a movie's narrative together. But part of it is also the usual Marvel stuff. You have Shuri's personal story, you have the death of T'Challa, you have everything with Namor, you have the geopolitical thriller stuff, you have RiRi Williams, you have Allegra and the American CIA-- there's just too much movie here for the movie to maintain anything resembling momentum.

Also, I hate to say it, but Marvel continues to have its issues with special effects and action. Some shots here really work, other shots really, really, really don't. Some of the green screen is fairly appalling, and some of the CGI looks like the FX artists weren't given nearly enough time (which we know, via reporting, that they don't) to make it look coherent. And the action... look, there were a few moments that made me smile, but much of it is completely cut to shreds in editing. There's an early action sequence that's so choppily edited and poorly lit that it easily ranks among the worst, most unintelligible action of the MCU.

And the lighting-- look, I think the loss of Rachel Morrison as DP here really can't be understated. The first Black Panther is one of the best, if not the best looking movie in the MCU. And this one absolutely looks like a Disney+ show for much of its runtime-- flat, dimly lit, muddy digital visuals. (I wasn't surprised to find the cinematographer's last big project... was shooting a Disney+ Marvel show.)

Look, the things that don't work here, most of it deserves a pass, because I simply can't imagine planning an entire movie around one of the most charismatic actors in the franchise, having him die and publicly mourned, and then having to figure out how to re-work everything. It's... just such a daunting task. I don't think that the usual Marvel baggage (too much seed-sowing for future movies/TV shows, inconsistent FX/lighting) helped Coogler here-- but Coogler's script, the quieter scenes in particular, come across very well. I can't imagine he'll be back for Black Panther 3 (unless Disney suddenly decides to start giving more control over to their more talented filmmakers), but he'll be missed if he goes.

It's *probably* the best movie of Phase 4-- I liked the majority of Shang-Chi more than this, but the big CGI finale of Shang-Chi is so bad that it left a sour taste in my mouth. It's not as good as the first Black Panther, but it's also, again, an impossible task to make that happen. Chadwick Boseman is just a titanic loss for the franchise-- he's so much of what made the first one great, and while the eulogizing of him here is emotional and very nice, his absence is absolutely felt. I've no clue what they're going to do going forward with Black Panther 3-- the mid-credits scene certainly makes an interesting suggestion of what might happen-- but hopefully they keep most of this cast together, as this ensemble cast is easily the best of the MCU imo.

(Also, big shout out to Coogler and a character I won't spoil for having an absolutely *fantastic* one-liner near the very end of the movie. Love when a movie manages to have perhaps its best/funniest line as damn near the button to the film. A great example of Coogler finding ways to let the movie shine.)