The Single Biggest Mistake Each MCU Film Has Made
13. Black Panther: Allowing The Hero To Be One Of The Least-Interesting Characters
The Movie:
Despite all the excessive hyperbole written about this - it is Not the best superhero movie of all time nor is it deserving of a Best Picture nomination - if you take away all the unfortunate over-hyping this is an undeniably terrific superhero blockbuster with a thought-provoking political undercurrent.
In many superhero films, the hero might be overshadowed by other characters (The Dark Knight is a good example), but with Black Panther it felt especially damaging. T'Challa works thanks to Chadwick Boseman's great performance, but he's not actually a very memorable character. We've seen a royal struggling with their duty too many times now and this arc simply isn't interesting anymore.
To be brutally honest, T'Challa can be somewhat boring and since he's the main character, this is distracting and prevents Black Panther from going above the 8/10 level. Compared to Michael B. Jordan's exceptional antagonist, Letitia Wright's hysterically funny Shuri, Danai Gurira's terrific head of Wakanda's special forces and even Andy Serkis' excellent and underrated secondary villain, T'Challa cannot hold a candle to any of them.
Out of the MCU headliners, T'Challa is definitely one of the weakest. He's an average character rescued by a great performance, which was also the case in Captain America: Civil War.
Black Panther might be the title character, but the real stars of the show here are the supporting players.
Fix:
Give T'Challa a more interesting character arc.