The first 2/3 of Black Panther is one of the best superhero movies ever made. The last 1/3 is rough. How to balance that out in an overall assessment is a tricky balance that's largely dependent on your personal preferences. For me, it's an upper middle of the pack mcu film. Maybe a bit overrated but nowhere near the most overrated while movies like Thor Ragnarok and Antman and the Wasp exist.
My all-time favorites at this point would be:
1. Werewolf by Night - The most awesome atmosphere and flair any Mcu story has ever had, plus one of the best performances from Bernal Garcia.
2. Shang-Chi - My favorite action comedy of all time (Simu and Awkwafina work brilliantly together), gorgeous choreography, gorgeous cgi, beautiful character work.
3. Multiverse of Madness - By far the best mcu film when it comes to making magic feel actually magical, a fantastically unique character arc for Strange and a tour de force villain performance from Olsen.
4. Spider-man Homecoming - My previous favorite action comedy of all time, the perfect blend of Superhero movie and High School movie, a great ending and one of the best villain scenes of all time.
5. Avengers Endgame - Arguably not the best Avengers movie but the most perfect encapsulation of the Avengers series. Really nothing can ever truly compare to the scale and satisfaction of the closure this movie is able to create because of its completely unique circumstances.
6. Wakanda Forever - Sad and beautiful, equal of the first Black Panther but with a much stronger third act.
7. Captain America Civil War - The best individual movie out of Marvel's best individual series, amazing action, incredible character work between Steve, Tony and Bucky as well as for T'Challa and Zemo is still one of the best villains in the genre.
8. Captain Marvel - I didn't actually love this one at first but it has gotten better for me every time I watch it. It has an almost Bolero like narrative structure which feels very strange and unorthodox and definitely doesn't shine on a first viewing but has really grown on me over time. It makes the moment of Carol's ultimate triumph so deeply satisfying when you can fully emotionally share in her realization that this power was hers all along and she just had to break through all those different layers of mental and emotional manipulation to finally unlock it.
9. Captain America The Winter Soldier - This seems to be the one mcu film that just about everyone really loves, so it hardly even needs explanation. But I love it for the action, the depth it adds to Steve's character and what is clearly the best use of Captain America as a symbol in the mcu. It's also probably the best role Nat/Scarjo has had in the mcu.
10. Deadpool and Wolverine - This one is almost neck and neck with eleven and twelve. There's just something about the way Jackman plays his character arc of regaining his animus and genuinely falling in platonic love with Wade that really elevates the film. So much so that the two of them sacrificing themselves together to the strains of Like a Prayer while their shirts explode - despite being one of the dumbest ideas imaginable on paper - somehow becomes one of the most emotionally moving climaxes in the mcu.
Honorable mentions:
11. Guardians Vol III - This suffers a bit from the soundtrack failing to achieve the same flawless integration of the first two films, but it's easily the most mature and nuanced of the three and it takes a series defined by its incredible emotion and dials that up even further than before while perfectly landing one of the best multi-film character arcs in the mcu with Rocket.
12. Thunderbolts - A great and unique film and a surprisingly decent adaption of the Thunderbolts despite not actually including any classic TBolt characters or stories. Definitely one of the best MCU films narratively. The only reason it's not higher is because the action, visuals and cinematography don't really live up to the strength of the narrative and just feel very basic and work-a-day.
13. Guardians Vol I - A definite milestone in the MCU, one of the best integrated soundtracks in movie history and one of the most stylish superhero movies around but still with great emotion at its core.
14. Captain America The First Avenger - A fantastic period piece and possibly the best film we've ever gotten of a fully traditional superhero origin story.
15. Fantastic Four First Steps - A movie that did the seemingly impossible by making me actually love the F4 (all of them, all at the same time) as characters, while also creating a beautiful alternate history world and some of the most awesome space travel scenes in sci-fi history.
