[Cecil Terwilliger]

Good but not great. 2nd best comic book movie of the year, behind only The Batman. It really could have been an 8 or 8.5 out of 10 but ultimately it got a bit messy. Not terrible though. I'll give it a 7/10.

Would have been great if not for a few warts. Big, ugly warts.

Some thoughts:

- The scientist student character was horrendous. Unspeakably bad. Without question the worst MCU character ever and one of the worst characters in an action movie since Jar Jar Binks. Both the character and the actress were terrible. Every time she was on screen I was praying Namor would jump out of the water and cut her head off. She served no purpose at all to the plot and every scene she was in should have been cut from the movie. She was awful. Singlehandedly lowered this from an 8/10 to a 7/10.

- Everything to do with flying suits for both the Dora Milaje and for the above mentioned MIT girl were so friggin dumb. Reeks of studio interference to sell toys.

- Angela Bassett was excellent. A tour de force. She had such gravitas in every scene she was in. Lititia Wright is serviceable but really got overshadowed by Bassett.

- M'Baku was great. That is all.

- They totally and completely butchered Namor compared to his comic book counterpart. This Namor has basically nothing in common with the comic version except he lives in water, has wings on his feet and hates surface dwellers. His personality was basically totally wrong and he had none of the arrogance and stubbornness that defines the character.

- That being said, I really liked him, his back story and the whole Mayan thing. They made it work. He also seemed kinda badass despite having nothing in common with comic book namor. More of a quiet power and motivation as opposed to tantrum comic book namor.

- Why was Julia Louise Dryfus in this movie? Seriously? She served no purpose.

- The entire battle on the ship idea was poorly done and made little sense for the plot. Similar to the first movie, they kind of dropped the ball for the final battle.

- but I did like the whole Shuri/Namor battle, albeit a little short, and I, for the most part, liked Shuri's character arc with revenge and loss. I actually feel like they could have done more with it. I wanted to see her go off the rails a bit. But as it is, it was reasonably well done.

- It felt like the Dora Milaje storylines didn't go anywhere. Especially when Okoye got kicked out and then it was never mentioned again. There was also a bit of an idiot plot there considering Shuri asked to go to Atlantis (or whatever they called it).

- Loved the N'Jadaka cameo. I was hoping we'd get to see Bast a la Ta Nehisi Coates' BP run.