'Black Panther' loses its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score - Irish Independent's Ed Power scores it 3/5, "rotten".

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Kind of a powerleveling, but I'd like to share an opinion from a friend of mine (that happens to be an afroamerican):

"As a black man, it's kinda funny seeing people act as though Black Panther is a revolutionary piece of film. It was, by most accounts, mediocre in terms of plot development and other standards. Unfortunately, the reviewers have left out many of the classic criteria for critiquing a film, instead choosing to focus on the fact that it's a minority dominated cast. The people that don't give it 5 stars for having a lot of black people are labelled racists, simply for being colourblind and judging a movie off of its merits instead of its cast. Wakanda is a long understood part of the MCU, and it's hilarious that the people that are giving it so much praise haven't cared to look at the long history of Wakanda in the comics. There is not a single country in the world that has thrived from isolationism, yet here is Wakanda, a country that is apparently thousands of years in the future without any explanation of how it got there besides "Vibranium", aka magic. White supremacists are endorsing black panther because, as they see it, Wakanda is a prime example of how racist and isolationist policies can create a thriving country. The majority of Wakanda's population is as poor and undeveloped as most of Sub-Saharan Africa is, it's the capital city that's the only one that has received any benefit from the magic... Sorry, I mean Vibranium"
 
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Super Collie said:
A lot more reviews of Black Panther have rolled in over the past day or so. The movie now has 5 "rotten" reviews (two more), however a lot more positive ones also came in so rather than go down any further percentage points the movie's actually gone back up to 98%. People don't seem to really care about these after-the-fact negative reviews though, they only got up in arms over the person who posted the first one and "ruined" its perfect score.

Black Panther opens in theaters tomorrow so I guess within the next few days we're going to get a better idea of where this movie sits among the rest of the Marvel cinematic universe.
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We're half-way through Black Panther's theatrical debut day and as of this post the movie has accrued four more negative reviews which have brought the film back to 97%. Chances are after this weekend my estimate is that Black Panther is probably going to dip further down to 95% where it will end up remaining. Straggling reviews that trickle in a few days from now aren't going to have much of an effect on the score. The film will stay ahead of Iron Man as the highest scoring Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes.

Since it's been discussed and speculated previously in this thread, Armond "I Also Hated Toy Story 3" White has finally chimed in and provided Black Panther with a negative review.

Also of note, however, are the small number of what are clearly negative reviews of the film whose authors -- one of whom is a "Top Critic" -- don't dare issue the film a "rotten" rating despite offering up scores that are demonstrably unfavorable and review bylines that don't put the movie in a positive light.

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When this thread was first started and the only person on the Twitter chopping block was Ed Power, people cried foul that his score (3/5) fell on the borderline between "fresh" and "rotten" and that Power only gave the film a rotten score to be the first person to snub the film. Well here's a positive 3/5 rating courtesy of Don Clarke -- also an Irishman -- who matched the score but gave it a "fresh" rating... even though his byline basically states the film is as mediocre as it gets.

Now that we've established 3/5 as being the oft battled over "middle ground", take a look at our friend from the San Diego Reader who gave the film an even lower score but still said it was "fresh". 2/5 is certifiably bad, that's 40%. At no place anywhere on this planet is a score of 40% acceptable in anything. Steve Crum also gave the movie a letter grade of C+, which technically also falls into that weird gray area of being either good or bad, yet his byline reveals that he didn't personally enjoy the film yet still gave it a thumbs up. For obvious reasons.

And ultimately this is going to be the reason why Black Panther's score on Rotten Tomatoes is going to remain higher than Iron Man, not because it's provably a "better" movie, because in this current political climate nobody is willing to actually give the movie a negative mark due to fears of falling out of lock-step and being perceived as "racist" even if the text of their review specifically states that they did not actually like the movie. At some point in the future when this ongoing witch hunt has finally lost its steam people will probably look back on this film and realize it was not as good as critics initially claimed.

The major takeaway, going by the content of the reviews of critics unafraid to be frank and tell it like it is, is that Black Panther isn't a bad movie. It's just "okay". It's decent. It's got a great cast and the practical effects and costumes look sharp, but the movie is lacking the action you'd expect from a "superhero" style movie and its plot gets muddled with confusing worldbuilding and exposition. It's not the best movie but it's not the worst; if you're an avid movie-goer or a fan of comic book movies then it's worth seeing in the theater, otherwise if you're looking to kill time then it's obviously at least worth a rental instead. In the grand scheme of things, nobody is going to give a shit about this movie after its theatrical run and it'll end up as a bullet point on the Wikipedia page for "Movies in the Marvel cinematic universe".

tl;dr - Rotten Tomatoes is a retarded website and the only people taking it legitimately seriously are lolcows.
 
Super Collie said:
We're half-way through Black Panther's theatrical debut day and as of this post the movie has accrued four more negative reviews which have brought the film back to 97%. Chances are after this weekend my estimate is that Black Panther is probably going to dip further down to 95% where it will end up remaining. Straggling reviews that trickle in a few days from now aren't going to have much of an effect on the score. The film will stay ahead of Iron Man as the highest scoring Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes.

Since it's been discussed and speculated previously in this thread, Armond "I Also Hated Toy Story 3" White has finally chimed in and provided Black Panther with a negative review.

Also of note, however, are the small number of what are clearly negative reviews of the film whose authors -- one of whom is a "Top Critic" -- don't dare issue the film a "rotten" rating despite offering up scores that are demonstrably unfavorable and review bylines that don't put the movie in a positive light.

View attachment 384439

When this thread was first started and the only person on the Twitter chopping block was Ed Power, people cried foul that his score (3/5) fell on the borderline between "fresh" and "rotten" and that Power only gave the film a rotten score to be the first person to snub the film. Well here's a positive 3/5 rating courtesy of Don Clarke -- also an Irishman -- who matched the score but gave it a "fresh" rating... even though his byline basically states the film is as mediocre as it gets.

Now that we've established 3/5 as being the oft battled over "middle ground", take a look at our friend from the San Diego Reader who gave the film an even lower score but still said it was "fresh". 2/5 is certifiably bad, that's 40%. At no place anywhere on this planet is a score of 40% acceptable in anything. Steve Crum also gave the movie a letter grade of C+, which technically also falls into that weird gray area of being either good or bad, yet his byline reveals that he didn't personally enjoy the film yet still gave it a thumbs up. For obvious reasons.

And ultimately this is going to be the reason why Black Panther's score on Rotten Tomatoes is going to remain higher than Iron Man, not because it's provably a "better" movie, because in this current political climate nobody is willing to actually give the movie a negative mark due to fears of falling out of lock-step and being perceived as "racist" even if the text of their review specifically states that they did not actually like the movie. At some point in the future when this ongoing witch hunt has finally lost its steam people will probably look back on this film and realize it was not as good as critics initially claimed.

The major takeaway, going by the content of the reviews of critics unafraid to be frank and tell it like it is, is that Black Panther isn't a bad movie. It's just "okay". It's decent. It's got a great cast and the practical effects and costumes look sharp, but the movie is lacking the action you'd expect from a "superhero" style movie and its plot gets muddled with confusing worldbuilding and exposition. It's not the best movie but it's not the worst; if you're an avid movie-goer or a fan of comic book movies then it's worth seeing in the theater, otherwise if you're looking to kill time then it's obviously at least worth a rental instead. In the grand scheme of things, nobody is going to give a shit about this movie after its theatrical run and it'll end up as a bullet point on the Wikipedia page for "Movies in the Marvel cinematic universe".

tl;dr - Rotten Tomatoes is a exceptional website and the only people taking it legitimately seriously are lolcows.
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While the general fan discussion around Black Panther has been abjectly retarded, even for your standard capeshit movie drama, this isn't just because of Black Panther's politics. Critics in general are extremely cautious about going against internet nerd opinion when it comes to geek culture stuff, I'm guessing because they don't want to deal with fanbase backlash or hitpieces from clickbait/activist media sites.

Look at most reviews for Game of Thrones season 7, and if you read the content of the review, it'll come across as extremely mixed to downright critical but end the whole thing with something like "yeah it's dumb but it's still the best thing on TV!!" and give the episode an 8/10.
 
Having read the synopsis of the film (i wasn't allowed to see it bc im white) I'm amazed how much more 'racially empowering' the original version that had a guy dress in a white gorilla suit and call himself 'Man Ape' is.

In the source material (which the animated series that I watched around a decade ago was based upon) the Wakanda people were already a very dominant force in Africa even before vibranium, and throughout the centuries they keep trying again and again to share vibranium with THE WHITE MAN but since that despite their peaceful efforts they keep trying to steal all of it for themselves, they keep taking their ball and going home.

In this movie, it's pretty much the sole reason they're any good to begin with and they only retain power through hording it.
 
RockVolnutt said:
In the MCU, Wakanda was the result of raiding the corpse of a dead Celestial and in the comics they had a vibranium meteorite so it's really dumb luck and could've happened anywhere. "Africa could be great if alien robot gods crashed there" isn't an achievement.
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So they'd only be KANGZ if alien robots gave them the gibs? I guess they know their audience then, seeing as "black people just need more welfare!" is a common line of thought.
 
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