5Q Movie Review: Black Panther

This time, I am going to do this a little differently and give the questions but not the answers. Yes, I will let you the reader do the work!

OK, now that I drove off all of my readership, I think Black Panther is a good movie that I place in the top tier of modern Marvel Comics movies. I enjoyed it much more than I did the last two Avengers joints.

These are 5 questions the movie makes me ponder. It feels like I was the last person to see this, so why bother attempting a straight review?

Q: Isn't it great that the setting and tone was so distinct from other recent Marvel movies? Shouldn't Marvel mix it up a little more going forward? (OK, that's two, but they're related)

Q: While the movie feels like it is about something and like it considers ideas and principles in a way unlike recent Marvel movies (Captain America: Civil War should have had some amount of depth), would it have been even more provocative by making Killmonger less of a cartoonish villain?

At points in the movie, mainly the beginning and end of Killmonger's arc, there is some sympathy for his character, but in between he goes over the top and lets characters and viewers off the hook a bit. You could argue that some of his ideas are worth considering, but he ultimately is just a selfish super villain with less credibility than, say, Magneto in the recent X-Men movies. I understand why the movie didn't go this direction, but presenting him as a legit  counterpoint to T'Challa would have made a fascinating alternate movie.

Q: In "real life" how would the United Nations react to a high-minded speech about making the world better and leading the right way from a country that determines its leader in part through MMA-style brawls to the death? What would the reaction be if a country of white-skinned people had a succession ritual that involved such a practice? Wouldn't people call it barbaric? Is there a difference if it is put forth as an African "tradition"?

Q: Isn't the idea of rule by monarch kind of outdated in today's world? Wouldn't it be interesting to learn more about  the inner workings of Wakanda and see why intelligent people with such sophisticated technology still go by the old tradition of rule by King? I for one hope we see more of Wakanda in the sequel. I don't really care about how it interacts with the outside world, at least not yet when there is so much more to go with here. And by the way, the notion that the country could keep such secrets hidden for so long strikes me as a thin one, so it's cool that the movie ditches it by the end.

Q: Why in the world would I buy a regular popcorn for $1 less than the large popcorn when the latter is about 3 times as big? (It had been a while since I bought food at a movie theater)