61
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/movies/best-movies-21st-century.html
96. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)
There’s so much to love. It’s a superhero spectacle that actually has something important to say, about how identity, history and responsibility intersect. Wakanda, the Afrofuturistic world where the story takes place, is a visual wonder. The women (played by Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o and Letitia Wright — all excellent) aren’t just sidekicks or love interests. Michael B. Jordan, as the tragically villainous Killmonger, has never been more swoon worthy. And, of course, Chadwick Boseman shines in the title role, sadly one of his last before dying of cancer.
For me, the awful fight at the end tanked it for me. Other than that, it was the typical Marvel formula, nothing really remarkable other than being set in Africa.
Spider-Man: No Way Home was a better movie, so was Into The Spider-Verse for that matter.
Oh, shit, Logan doesn't rank?
I think it was notable for being the first instance of Afrofuturism to make it to the American mass market. So much of American media has the average salt of the earth type thinking Africa is made entirely of mud huts that just throwing that out as an option even in fiction can be eye opening.
On the other hand... Yeah Logan and Spiderverse are obviously better.
District 9 and Chappie were both before it.
Know what words mean before you have an opinion on them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrofuturism
Sure.
https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2009/08/district_9_part_two_out_of_afr.html
District 9 was so good too. Chappie less so...
We've been waiting for the "3 Years Later..." sequel now for 16 years now. :(
Agreed.
Imo, the movie's popularity among mainstream critics derives primarily from virtue signaling.
I'm not the kind of person who watches superhero movies. They started feeling boring and formulaic around the time I graduated high school. But when Black Panther came out, I heard some chatter, and then later a friend invited me to watch it on the front lawn of New Belgium Brewing as part of an event they were hosting. So we rode our bikes to the brewery to join one or two hundred other middle class, college educated, socially conscious white people to watch a movie. And I proceeded to be bored and somewhat annoyed when it turned out to be a formulaic, slightly worse than average superhero movie.
The way I picture it is that a room full of movie studio execs were brainstorming how to appeal to kids these days, and their wokeness, and said to themselves "what if black people!" So they greenlit "What If Black People: The Movie", found a superhero from the comics to shove in the spotlight, nabbed a bunch of idealistic people who wanted to make a great movie that would change the world, let them shoot their dream movie, then chopped it up in post to make it appeal to the braindead average moviegoer.
I will say, the casino scene was fantastic! :)
I soured on it when a guy shows up to this hyper advanced, futuristic, utopian society and goes, "I challenge the king to combat, and you have to let me do it, and then when I win, you have to make me king." And everyone just shrugs like "Welp, thems the rules. Nothing we can do about it."
That was the thing that bothered me most as well. It's supposed to be the most advanced society on Earth, and they use a kind of trial by combat to decide their leader.
Not to mention how clichéd it was in The Avengers for them to be running around with spears (or weapons that looked like spears), as if they had a particular fondness for a stone age motif.
Hyper advanced hidden society... might makes right rulership challenge. Yeah the two don't seem to go very well together do they?
Have you been paying attention to real world politics lately
It's weird, Black Panther doesn’t scratch my top 5 MCU movies. It wasn't even the best black lead superhero movie of the same year. Into the Spider-Verse is probably in my top 10 movies.
But BP was undoubtedly one of the more culturally impactful movies in the MCU.
But then again, Deadpool 1 and 2 are great movies that have been culturally impactful. But critics don't want to admit that.
Into the Spider-verse absolutely deserves a spot on this list.
The only animated films on this list are Spirited Away, Wall-e, Up & Ratatouille.
Ratatouille definitely doesn't deserve a spot, it's good but it's so far below many other films. Wall-e I'm onboard with but Up, while having an excellent intro, both immediately and setup, is just ok in the second half.
Inside out? Incredibles? That's what I would have expected for Pixar films.
Plus, I know it's memed to death but Shrek should absolutely be on the list.
But, going back, if I get one animated films, Spider-verse is where I go. Hell I'd probably put both Spider-verse films on this list.
Inside Out absolutely deserves a spot. It's my favorite Disney (+Pixar) movie and also in my top 10, and I grew up on the '90s Disney movies.
Speaking of, if there were 2 Disney movies I'd put on the list, it would probably be Inside Out and The Lion King.
How? A good movie needs to be more than 'member berries.
It breaks out of the typical Marvel formula, Black Panther doesn't.
Marvel formula:
Main character shares a tragic backstory with the villain who turns into a bigger, badder version of the hero.
Iron Man - Iron Monger
Hulk - Abomination
Iron Man - Whiplash
Thor - Loki
Captain America - Red Skull
Iron Man - Extremis
Thor - Malekith
Captain America - Winter Soldier
Avengers - Ultron
Ant-Man - Yellowjacket
Avengers - Avengers (Civil War)
Doctor Strange - Kaecilius
Star Lord - The Living Planet (his dad!)
Spider-Man - Vulture
Thor - Hela
Black Panther - Killmonger
I mean, you can't exactly fault Marvel for running the formula over and over again when every time they run it, it makes a billion dollars.
But by the time Black Panther came out, you could count on one hand the times they didn't run the formula:
The Avengers
Guardians of the Galaxy
How is T'Challa's backstory like Erik's?
Sons of Wakanda, powered by the Heart Shaped Herb.
That's it?
All it takes, Killmonger is a dark mirror of T'Challa, same as any of the others listed, from Obidiah Stane onward.
But one of the criteria is "they're from the same country". That's grasping.
It's not grasping, they have the same power set from the same source.
Yeah, the same power set isn't grasping. But is Darren Cross a shadowy reflection of Steve Rogers because they're both American? The nationality part is grasping.
And so the same power set MIGHT mean that Killmonger's a shadowy reflection of T'Challa (and I say "MIGHT" because is Captain Love a shadowy reflection of Zorro just because they're both good with swords? Would making him a fellow Californian make him one? Is every boxer that Rocky fights a "shadowy reflection" of him, just because they're fellow boxers?), but does that mean that Black Panther is the same movie as all other Marvel movies? Not really. "The hero and villain have similar abilities" is ultimately a very small part of the overall movie. This entire line of criticism of the movie is a stretch, and seems more like a post-facto rationalization for dislike of the movie that comes from somewhere else.
spoiler
The choice Peter makes to sacrifice his relationships is unique and works better due to the previous movies. Same with Aunt May dying, it works better when you've gotten to know her.The member berries help though.