And again in all fairness, Black Panther is a superhero movie, an action subgenre. That means that we EXPECT there to be action. Would there even be a Die Hard franchise if John McClane has successfully negotiated the peaceful surrender of the terrorists in the first movie?
I think you misunderstand me.
I don't think anyone denies that 'Black Panther' takes on a serious issue, and that it has at its heart and intellectual disagreement that has echoes of serious real world intellectual disagreements. The fighting is how the movie works on a superficial level, but the things that elevate the movie from just being another superhero movie are its willingness to take on deep and important real world issues through the medium of the comic book superheroes. One of the things that have made the Marvel movies so successful is that, at their best, they work on multiple levels and involve problems that leave their heroes deeply and emotionally conflicted.
In the context of the movie, 'Black Panther' takes on its own setting, and introspectively inquires into Wakanda's isolationism. Is it right and proper for Wakanda to take a sort of 'Prime Directive' approach to the rest of the world, observing it, but prioritizing its own safety and perceived moral purity over its opportunity to intervene in the world with the attendant ugliness that getting involved in world politics would entail. It also has a question over the proper response to injustice, which echoes debates within the African American community (and within the African community). One take that I think works on 'Black Panther' is to see T'Challa and Eric as divided over how to respond to injustice in the same way that W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were divided, or more recently in a way similar to how Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were divided.
This ethical dilemma and not whether Eric Killmonger is a better warrior than T'Challa is at the real heart of the movie, and for 2/3rds of the movie it carries the story very well - in part because however you come down on this argument, it's easy up to some point to have some sympathy for anyone whose anger is motivated by a sense of compassion for those that are victims of injustice. Actually, I personally wish that Killmonger had been presented as a more nuanced villain, as I really think that they missed a toss by showing Killmonger being completely ruthless up to that point. By doing so, they eliminate much need to be thoughtful about the problem.
But in any event, when Killmonger challenges T'Challa in the throne room, he first does it in the intellectual sphere. He first tosses in the face of the assembled 'wise folk' of the Kingdom that they are immoral, indifferent, self-centered and slothful. To these accusations, they have no response. Neither does T'Challa. T'Challa only sits back and acts stunned, before barking out that he will accept the challenge to physical combat. But there are plenty of things that T'Challa could have said, using only the knowledge he has at that moment that would have saved lives.
For example, he could have noted Killmonger's deception. Killmonger only has the political support he needs to plunge the nation into civil war because he's lying to T'Challa's best friend. T'Challa could easily counter that the only reason T'Challa did not succeed in bringing the criminal to justice, is that Killmonger rescued him. Further, he knows now because the CIA told him so that this is the son of the man who killed his father's best friend by working with that same criminal, and further the son Eric has himself been working with that criminal for some time.
Nor does he challenge any of Killmonger's assumptions. Nor does the movie challenge his assumptions. One of the worst of these is the assumption that everyone with dark skin would rise up immediately and kill his neighbors if only he were sufficiently armed. Eric renders everyone with dark skin into a very ugly stereotype that harkens back to the notion that oppressing Africans is justified because of their inherent violent natures. But rather than overturning this stereotype, it becomes critical to a major plot point of the story. When Eric becomes king, he orders that Wakandan intelligence cells be armed with high tech weaponry to distribute to the African diaspora. At no point does the story question whether the African diaspora actually wants high tech weaponry to commit murder with. So engrained is the assumption that they do to the movie, that the 'good guys' order the White ally to shoot down the airships that are delivering these weapons (along with any innocent pilots that might be aboard) before they leave Wakandan airspace as if it was hugely important that these devices not reach their destinations. A good third of the final act is absorbed with this problem, and it's left to the one White ally in the story to make the one truly counter-instinctual decision allowed the heroes, namely ignoring the risk to his own life which he might otherwise save without suffering shame, to complete his mission. And it's all bogus to begin with, because it would you would normally expect take time to recruit violent followers, train them, and plan operations. The movie leaves us with the sense that masses of violent Africans will riot as soon as they get their super-weapons.
I'm not trying to say a villain like Eric Killmonger could be talked down with diplomacy. I am trying to say that T'Challa doesn't attack Killmonger's assumptions, leaving the audience with some sort of nebulous sense that Killmonger was basically right, just not the right man for the job, rather than being fundamentally wrong about almost everything.
One example of how this really rang wrong for me is Killmonger's death speech where he says, "Bury me at sea, with my ancestors who jumped overboard rather than accepting bondage." Powerful defiant words... and also as completely and utterly wrong as they could be. T'Challa misses the response: "Your ancestors were not the ones that jumped overboard and died. They were the ones that choose to live. You have chosen the broad and easy path, cousin, and you have left me the harder one."
I offer up in comparison the best scene of a movie I liked less well: "The Dark Night". Again, the real core of this movie is a philosophical question being offered up by the Joker - is humanity worth saving. And the Joker tests humanity by setting up a trial wherein two passenger ships must choose whether to blow one another up, or be blown up themselves. Consider how much weaker this super hero story would have been had The Batman resolved the problem purely in the physical realm, rather than first showing how the passengers resolves the philosophical dilemma in the intellectual realm. The Joker is actually defeated by the passengers. The Batman at that point is merely cleaning up loose ends.