Short Summary is an original series in which I write brief reviews of movies, TV shows, video games, books, and more. DEFINITELY SPOILERS!

Black Panther joins Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier in breaking out of the standard Marvel mold. These are some of the better movies in the MCU because they can stand on their own, they blend other genres with the usual superhero story, and they have unique aspects that differentiate them from the rest.

Black Panther and Ant-Man get the benefit of being origin stories, so they stand on their own much easier. But even Ragnarok and The Winter Soldier, the third and second installments, respectively, for their central heroes, somehow feel original and don’t rely heavily on the events of previous films. Black Panther is firstly a character drama, just as Ant-Man is firstly a heist film, Ragnarok a buddy-cop comedy, and The Winter Soldier a spy thriller. Then, they are superhero films. All of these movies have great and different storylines, soundtracks, themes, and characters that make them MCU highlights.

I enjoyed a lot about Black Panther. I think it has a strong story, especially when it stays focused on T’Challa’s struggles with becoming king of Wakanda. The soundtrack is absolutely beautiful and has some great parallels. The African music is wonderful, and it plays off of the rap music really well. Each type of music represents the duality between T’Challa and Erik Stevens, and it’s interesting to have character beats pushed forward simply with a soundtrack. The only problem here is that the Marvel stamp–that generic, heroic, orchestral swell–gets put on certain spots unnecessarily.

As for the themes of Black Panther, there are truly too many to write about here. One of them that stood out to me was, actually, the consequences of living without a father. I think much of the sympathy I felt for Erik came from the fact that his father, N’Jobu, died when he was a child. It obviously affects Erik and fuels his rage, shaping his twisted worldview and igniting his evil plan. At the same time, though, T’Challa has to deal with fatherlessness, except as an adult and as the new king. He’s conflicted with living up to the good man and king that his father was, while also learning that T’Chaka has kept dark secrets and made severe mistakes. So that affects T’Challa as well, yet he ultimately uses his new knowledge and even Erik’s ideas to reveal Wakanda as it really is and assist those in need around the world.

So for the characters, T’Challa and Erik are both the best examples in Black Panther. They have extremely opposing childhoods, personalities, and ideologies. T’Challa ends up growing as a character when he understands what Erik went through and what Wakanda could be doing better. Erik, unfortunately, doesn’t change much as a character; his flame burns brightly and burns out quickly. He just doesn’t get enough screen time to develop much further, and that’s such a shame.

This gets me to my biggest beef with Black Panther: there’s not enough of Erik and too much of Ulysses Klaue. Erik shows up briefly and disappears too often, and the final act of the movie, when Erik is involved the most, speeds through to the end and doesn’t linger on him until the moments leading up to his death. By then, I felt that it was too late to see him redeemed in any way. And as much as I love Andy Serkis and his work on the whole, even as Klaue, the movie followed him for way too long, only for him to be betrayed by Erik and go out in dismal fashion.

In the end, Marvel can still do no wrong. Black Panther is clearly another well-done addition to the MCU collection.