By Eean Garcia

With ticket sales of over $700 million, Black Panther is without a doubt the biggest film of the year thus far. The film brought in big name actors such as Michael B. Jordan who plays Erik Killmonger, Chadwick Boseman who plays the Black Panther, and Forest Whitaker who plays the Black Panther’s uncle Zuri.

The film does a great job of capturing the beauty of Wakanda, and its natural resource vibranium—the two main objects of the Black Panther’s protection. This resource is the basis of the movie, giving Wakanda the advanced technological and intellectual power that drives the plot and gives the Black Panther his super suit.

The story telling aspect of the story did a decent job, as I would have like to see a more detailed backstory of the prior black panther when Killmonger and T’Challa were still children. This doesn’t really contribute to the plot of the story, although I feel it would have been interesting to see both of the characters rise to power and how they were built to be put in the situation to obtain power. Yet another thing I would have liked to see would be the creation of the iconic black panther suit.

In comparison to other Marvel films I do feel that Marvel Studios did create a box office hit with Black Panther but I do feel for myself that the film did not live up to the hype and my expectations. Recognizing that this is the first film on Black Panther and a storyline needs to be built, I wanted more action. After all, it is a superhero movie which usually would mean a plethora of fighting scenes and action. I will admit that I did have high expectations going into the movie as I myself heard plenty of comments about it being “THE BEST MARVEL MOVIE EVER!”, and although it is the fastest growing in terms of popularity, I don’t feel the film was better than any of the Avengers movies, nor did it do a better job of combing action and story telling better that any of the Iron Man movies.

Overall on a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate the movie at an 8.5, due to the fact that it was a great movie although for myself, it didn’t live up to the hype.