Every day until the Oscars ceremony we’ll be highlighting a different category or movie here on the LAMB! Here’s a link to all the posts written so far:
Today, Jason Soto from The Lair of the Unwanted is here to look at one of the Best Picture nominees this year – Black Panther.
Tnx Jason!
BEST PICTURE – BLACK PANTHER
Hi, 2019 class of The LAMB! My name is Jason and you probably don’t know me. I haven’t been on an episode of the LAMBcast for a long time. The LAMB affliated podcast I hosted is now over. And I don’t really have a movie site, although I do have a blog (jasonsototheblog.blogspot.com) where I sometimes talk about movies. But I been around since the beginning, since the dawn of time you might say. I was friends with the creator of the LAMB, Dylan Fields, before he even created the LAMB, which is probably amazing to a lot of you. Now that you know who I am, let’s talk about Black Panther.
Holy shit, Black Panther managed to get nominated for an Oscar. And not even for one of those lame awards that happen in the middle of the show that no one watches like Best Sound Editing or Best Use Of Latex On A Buff Guy, it got nominated for BEST PICTURE! Best Picture! Fancy movies get nominated for Best Picture, with titles like The Black Grey Night or A Picture of The Moon directed by guys named Denton or Phillip-Haskell. A superhero movie doesn’t get nominated for BEST FUCKING PICTURE!
So how did that happen? Why this one? Out of all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or as I like to call it the MCU) why did Black Panther get this nomination? You know what I thought was better? Avengers: Infinity War. I liked that one way better than Black Panther, and I liked Black Panther. Black Panther is a good movie.
It’s also an important movie. I’m glad it got made, I’m glad the right people made it, I’m glad it stars amazing actors. I’m glad it exists. I’m also surprised none of the actors got nominated cause Michael B. Jordan was amazing. Lupita Nyong’o was awesome! Everyone was awesome! So was James Earl Jones! He-
Wait…was he in it? He was, right? Why am I thinking he was? Lemme scan the list…
….
Hm.
Well, Forest Whitaker did an amazing James Earl Jones impression.
Anyway, I’m really, really, really, REALLY hoping this didn’t get nominated because of the whole race thing. Just ’cause it’s a superhero movie that primarily stars black people and made 9 gazillion dollars (adjusted for inflation) doesn’t mean it should be nominated for Best Picture.
Truth is, we’ll never know WHY it got the nomination. There’s been 10 years of MCU movies and if you said 10 years ago that a movie in this series would be nominated, for BEST PICTURE, you’d have every 4 Chan troll blowing up your comment section telling you to kill yourself.
What is the movie about anyway? It’s about a super hero named Black Panther who comes from the African nation of Wakanda and he kicks all kinds of ass with the help of his friends, body guards, and sister. But deep down, it’s about being left out and finding where you belong. Michael B. Jordan’s character, Erik Killmonger, finds out that his father was killed by his uncle, who was king of Wakanda but he never got a chance to be part of the family and maybe take a stab at this ruling thing.
Instead, he bullies his way into the country, challenges the current king T’Challa who’s also the Black Panther, and manages to take control of the country, which he uses as a way to get back at the world for being left out.
There’s also a bunch of awesome fight scenes and a very brilliant chase scene involving a hologram car. I guess there’s one thing that I don’t understand about the movie: Why is Martin Freeman, a British guy, playing an American? Marvel can pretty much ask anybody to be in these movies now and they’ll accept, so why Freeman? Did he say “pretty pretty please, let me be in a MCU movie” or something? It’s really distracting since a lot of us know him from all kinds of movies where he’s British and he’s talking in a weird vague American accent here.
Now, I should mention that I’m a huge fan of the MCU movies. I love them all. Some more than others. And I’m happy one of them finally got recognized to be considered a Best Picture nominee. I’m not even going to add “but why this one?” ’cause I do understand why this one got the nom. I just hope maybe the people at the academy take notice of the trend and will be more inclusive with their Best Picture nominations in the future. Why didn’t Hereditary get nominated? Cause it’s a horror movie? Why didn’t Blockers get nominated? Cause it’s a sex comedy? Why didn’t Mandy get nominated? Cause it’s a modern day Nicolas Cage film? Maybe this is the time to not be so god damn stodgy all the damn time and pick something that wasn’t filmed in black and white and named after a city in Italy.
Also, I’m amazed I got to to this movie before Bubbawheat at Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights did. See, he reviews superhero movies and movies based on graphic novels or comics and when I agreed to write SOMETHING for this Oscar thing, I asked for like 3 other categories, which were all taken. So I threw this out as a shot in the dark, expecting this to be taken and much to my surprise, it was open. So hopefully this made some kind of sense.
And maybe you young whippersnappers learned a thing or two from an old-timey LAMB member.