I took the kids to see Black Panther; kids are ages 16, 12, 12, and 10. I am going to be doing a review with “parental spoilers”—that is, I will mention some potential upsetting things that happened, but with an attempt not to give away any plot. Before hearing my review, you should know:
1. I don’t really like superhero movies
2. I hate to watch people fighting
2b. especially ritual hand-to-hand combat
2c. especially-especially war breaking out among characters we’ve grown to love
3. and I’m pretty spooked by plots about evil political takeovers
So! Not exactly a match made in heaven, this movie and Swistle! But the children wanted to see it, and actually I did too, but I was aware that I was not going to enjoy all of it no matter what. And I did not enjoy all of it: there are a LOT of big action fight scenes, basically the fighting is about 75% of the movie as anyone would reasonably expect, and there are several rather brutal ritual fights for the kingship (WHY WOULD THAT BE A GOOD INDICATOR OF WHO SHOULD BE IN CHARGE), with rising tension and scary edge-of-waterfall danger that I just wanted to be DONE WITH.
However, the movie is rated PG-13, so I expected not to be too upset, and I was right. In the big fight scenes, there are guns and punches and bodies go flying, but that’s about all you see; it’s what I think I’ve seen described as comic book violence, which would be apt. Overall I can’t remember seeing blood or gore or anything upsetting or sad beyond the explosive POW POW POW BODIES FLINGING EVERYWHERE type of fighting.
There are three scenes that come to mind where the violence was more upsetting, and I asked the kids afterward about the violence and they mentioned the same three scenes. Twice we see a spear/stick-type implement stabbing into a person’s bare torso and later being pulled out; it’s not very very graphic but it’s disturbing and I looked away. (On at least two other occasions, someone is stabbed, but it is through clothing.) The worst one is more shocking/upsetting than it is graphic: a good person’s throat is cut very abruptly by a bad person; we don’t see any blood/wound that I remember, but we see the disturbing rapid cutting motion and then the body dropping, and there was gasping in the theater, and someone, very possibly me, gave a little cry. Less upsetting but still notable: a couple of times someone gets a quick cut on the face during a fight, or we see them talking later while sporting a face wound. Oh, and we see a bullet wound, and I NOPED OUT when someone prepared to press a metal healing ball into the wound, so I don’t know how gross that ended up being.
I think the movie was fine for my 10-year-old, but he is almost 11, and also he really likes fighting/shooting stuff, and he’s seen a fair amount of it in videos and movies and video games. It was fine for the twins, but Elizabeth had to have about half of the plot explained to her on the way home.
I thought the characters were great, the plot was interesting enough, and there was some good comic relief but I wish there’d been even more of it. I thought it was awesome to see women being tough and doing a lot of fighting, though I don’t personally want to do any fighting and so I wasn’t identifying with the characters the way I understand many men identify with superhero movies: imagining themselves doing the glorious heroic fighting and having bullets bouncing off their pecs and so forth. I was more “worrying about their safety, while feeling extremely pleased in principle that women were tough and fighting.”
I think a legit reason to go see it is “wanting to have seen it”: I think the movie and Wakanda are going to come up a lot in future years, and it’s nice to know what people are talking about. It was 2 hours 15 minutes, and you should stay through the credits because there’s more stuff. I wish movies would make their credits more visually interesting (like the credits of Wall-E), if they want people to stay through them.
I saw the movie, i enjoyed the movie, and I have no idea what scenes you are talking about. I think I might sensor myself by not watching the most violent bits? Maybe?
Ha ha, this is the review I need because that’s exactly how I feel about superhero movies. My eyes glaze over in the fighty bits and I lose the plot. The plot of fighting. Thank you!
I enjoy action movies (though not especially the violence — though I don’t DISlike the violence) and I absolutely loved this movie. I found it thoughtful, exciting, and visually stunning, with (as you said) so many parts for strong women, who are frequently an afterthought in action films. So well done.
We said no to our eleven-almost-twelve year old, but we tend to be strict about violent media and I expect to be in the minority of commenters. Actually my wife said no and I was so grateful because it usually falls to me to be the heavy so it was nice not to have to do it this time.
The metal healing ball in the wound scene was ok. There was not much blood, if any, and no squishing noise. The tough Wakanda army ladies gave me the same feeling I had when I saw Wonder Woman and my 14 year old daughter said the same. I am generally not a huge Superhero movie person, but this one was great!
I agree- I totally got the same Wonder Woman feeling. I mean, I’m not interested in walking into a club in a slinky red dress and then fighting like a BOSS in it and throwing my wig in a bad guy’s face, but I cannot get over how much I loved watching her do it.
That wig bit was hilarious considering the actress’ other major wig-wearing role. :)
Super hero movies don’t interest me either. It seems like there are so many more of those kind of movie vs when I was growing up. Then it was like ET and Jaws and Muppets and Star Wars. This movie sure has gotten a lot of hype. Thanks for the review.
Thanks for the helpful review, Swistle.
My 10 (almost 11 year old) saw it with friends as part of a birthday party. It was a borderline kind of decision for us. He would not have wanted to go to that movie but it was a good friend’s party and he didn’t want to miss out. He enjoyed everything about the party (pizza, sleepover) except for the movie (which he tolerated. He doesn’t love going to the movies at the best of times and probably wouldn’t say this about himself but he is sensitive to sad plots and violence). On the balance of things, I think it would have been worse for him to miss the party so I’m okay with him seeing it – but it was a close call, given his personality.
I have no plans to watch the movie (just not my preferred genre).
I was just listening to a podcast that talked about the movie ratings and learned a few interesting things. Movies rated PG-13 make the most money over all other ratings combined. And while some movies need to cut content to get a PG-13 rating, many others add edgier content to get that same rating — generally violence. They later explained that PG-13 movies are now more than 3 times more violent than it was just 2 decades ago. Eye-opening when you think about what we put in content for kids.
We own a movie theater (and a small one – 4 screens so we often have to decide between movies). PG family movies do the best for us, and yes R does the worst. If we are deciding between 2 horror movies for instance, we almost always will go with the PG-13 one. But A LOT of movies fall in that Pg-13 rating. From something like Ant-Man which was fairly benign to something like Insidious which was NOT benign at all. It is hard to get a PG rating nowadays, and most movies don’t want to be there unless they are marketed to kids. :)
This was helpful since I share your opinions about movies like this and I do plan to see the movie just in order to have seen it. Thank you!
My 67 yr old mom, who hates action movies, violent movies, superhero movies, and comic book movies, went to and enjoyed Black Panther! She said the worst part by far was the 30 minutes of previews for other action / violent / superhero / comic book movies she had to sit through first, ha.
I am with your mom on this one. My husband and I rarely go to movies (we watch them at home) and it mostly has to do with sitting through the previews
Ha. Yes! Even my 10-year old son, who usually LOVES previews and is thrilled when he gets to see a movie in a theatre, a rare occurrence, in part because of the previews, asked impatiently several times during the Black Panther previews when the movie was going to start.
I am also not a big superhero movie person but I loved Black Panther. We are usually very strict on movies but we did let my 9-almost-10 year old see it (after we watched it first to check gore level) because we thought the cultural significance and representation aspects outweighed the violence. We ended up having some good conversations about colonialism and African identity after that were more than worth the price of admissions.
Also? I have a giant crush on M’baku. All 6 foot 4 inches of him. (*fans self*)
There is a website called After The Credits that tells you if there’s anything worth staying in the theatre for. So often we will be the only ones left.