Main cast: Letitia Wright (Shuri/Black Panther), Lupita Nyong’o (Nakia), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Winston Duke (M’Baku), Florence Kasumba (Ayo), Dominique Thorne (Riri Williams), Michaela Coel (Aneka), Mabel Cadena (Namora), Lake Bell (Dr Graham), Alex Livinalli (Attuma), Robert John Burke (Smitty), Daniel Sapani (Border Tribe Elder), Isaach De Bankolé (River Tribe Elder), Connie Chiume (Zawavari), Tenoch Huerta Mejía (Namor), Martin Freeman (Everett K Ross), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Valentina Allegra de Fontaine), and Angela Bassett (Queen Ramonda)
Director: Ryan Coogler
The opening scene of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is in many ways representative of the quality of the whole movie.
With Chadwick Boseman gone, it is inevitable that the movie begins with a scene of Black Panther passing on from a terminal illness. Shuri tries desperately to create a synthetic version of the blue heart-shaped herb, the last of which was destroyed in the previous movie, to save him, but she couldn’t do it, and so T’Challa has departed the MCU.
During the supposedly moving funeral scene, however, I am distracted by the sight of the extras dancing and what not with huge grins on their faces, which contrasts sharply with the tearful faces of Shuri, Queen Ramonda, and others. Then I laugh when I see the goofy-looking coffin, and the laugh becomes a howl when I see the coffin getting sucked up into the Wakandan UFO above in the sky.
The rest of the movie, like this scene, is so messily put together than I find myself often reacting in ways that are far different than the people behind the movie would like me to react.
A year into T’Challa’s passing, Shuri has thrown herself into her work, using technology and AI to come up with solutions that will beef up the defenses of Wakanda. She doesn’t want to continue her efforts to recreate the blue heart-shaped herb, as this only reminds her of her failure of save her brother—she rather let it and Black Panther be in the past. She also isolates herself from everyone else around her.
This is where I should say that, while in the past I couldn’t stand Shuri’s bratty know-it-all personality, here she finally becomes tolerable, even worth cheering on as T’Challa’s passing forces a metamorphosis of the character into a more mature, bitter character with actual vulnerabilities. Letitia Wright finally gets some materials to work on that will show off her acting chops, and I feel that she goes above the call of duty to humanize Shuri into a character that deserves the lead billing.
If anything, I give the people behind this movie the side eye for not calling this movie Shuri.
Angela Bassett plays the stereotypical wise old broad role here, but she slays the role as expected. Indeed, her chemistry with Ms Wright makes the dynamics between daughter and mother here fraught with layers of feels that can hit the heart hard.
Naturally, this movie does its best to take out that bond, that would have given this movie some much needed heart and soul, for cheap sentimentality, because T’Challa’s passing isn’t enough.
This annoying misstep is just one of the many in this movie, the biggest of which is the plot itself.
Anyway, Ramonda reverses T’Challa’s decision to share the vibranium with the rest of the world, and basically Wakanda becomes once again an isolationist nation. It doesn’t matter, though as icky white men—it’s always those icky white men, isn’t it?—discover vibranium anyway in the sea using the imaginatively-called vibranium detector.
This enrages Kookookachoo or whatever his name is, and fortunately, he also goes by the easier-to-remember name of Namor. Wait, is it Nah-more, Nay-more, or Nah-moorrrr? That depends on which character in this movie that one asks, as it seems like the memo on how his name should be pronounced may have been misplaced.
Anyway, Namor rules an undersea vibranium kingdom, Waterkanda Talokan, and he has Ramonda beat to the whole isolationist thing. His people, blue-skinned Na’vi-wannabes but minus the pacifism, murder the hell out of the American vibranium-hunting expedition, and now he wants Wakanda to track down the person that created the vibranium detector or he’d wage war on Wakanda, whom he blames for the whole “my kingdom is about to get discovered, pout” thing.
Because Waterkanda and Wakanda relations are noteworthy to pursue due to how they are both xenophobic no-whities-please kingdoms that heavily rely on a crutch to become advanced, Shuri and Okoye head over the US to star in the commercial for the upcoming Ironheart Disney+ series.
That’s right, the vibranium detector is the invention of the obligatory girl genius that every Disney MCU movie or show must have these days: MIT savant Riri Williams that just happens to be smarter than everyone because, you know, vagina. Oh, and she also does the obligatory “women and black people are oppressed and sidelined in STEM because white men are so threatened by melanin XX supremacy” nonsense because that too is compulsory these days.
On the bright side, Riri in this movie is at least nowhere as obnoxious as the comic book counterpart, although this means that she is just another one of the many, many sarcastic girl genius clones already running rampant in the MCU.
Oh, and Okoye murders the hell out of cops, because it’s now vogue for rich Hollywood people with armed security to tell the middle class folks of the world that they don’t need the police anymore, and because why not. It’s not like the American folks can tell imported-from-Wakanda peaceful protests from the weekly ones in Portland, I suppose, so the Wakanda-US diplomatic ties should still be fine.
The whole really falls apart after the tribute to Chadwick Boseman in the first 30 minutes, because the stupidity piles up like a massive traffic car crash with more and more vehicles crashing and catching fire as time progresses.
Nobody here seems to remember what they said just a while earlier. A most memorable example is how Namor wants Shuri and Okoye to go to America to bring him Riri, but he then sends his people over to kidnap Riri anyway, making his initial demand pointless. He also blames them when one of his men got killed, and sends his entire army against Wakanda. What is this?
The show tries to make Namor some kind of sympathetic villain, but he is no Killmonger: this guy comes off instead an immature, petty pipsqueak in ugly green shorts that do not flatter his physique at all, and there is nothing frightening or charismatic about him.
Speaking of petty, I have to ask: why did Tenoch Huerta Mejía not make more of an effort to get some nice muscles when he’s going to be shirtless all the time? If he were expecting Disney to paste some CGI muscles on him, that never happened as maybe the CGI people overlooked that in the unreasonable deadlines and crunches that Disney allegedly put on these poor people.
Those ugly green shorts are not flattering when he’s just going to be sporting a kind of physique that makes the overall outfit look like a budget Halloween costume. Those shorts also make him look flat down there in the front and back, the poor guy. They should have given him a full body suit like they did to Namora.
Also, while I like Shuri in this movie, the movie does her dirty. Not as dirty as they did to Namor’s sex appeal, but it’s still pretty bad as once the plot takes over, Shuri’s character development goes from A straight to Z without showing me how or why she can get to that end point.
Indeed, once the plot kicks into gear, the current MCU-isms take over, and not in a good way: it has to juggle between setting up future shows, throwing in the explosions, and running through the laundry list of MCU must-haves that fundamentals such as character development, strong story, and more are pretty much abandoned.
Still, the cringe one-liners are nowhere as bad as the rest of the MCU that has been Rick and Morty-ed, so that’s a small win, for what that is worth.
Anyway, the biggest issue I have with this one though is how dull it ends up being. The action scenes are kind of a snooze, and all the dream spirit thing that shows up at convenient moments to give our good guys their epiphany is straight out of amateur storytelling hour 101. Everything about this movie feels like a rehash of the first movie, but on a cheaper budget, worse script, and inferior everything else.
They should have just concentrated on Shuri moving past her brother’s death and becoming the new Black Panther here, I feel, and keep the Namor stuff to the next movie, perhaps. That would have made this one a more focused film that gives people a chance to appreciate Shuri’s ascendancy to relevance at a more comfortable pace, as well as to allow Ms Wright and Ms Bassett to get viewers to care about these two characters more.
No, instead it’s all about shoving as many new shiny things at my face, to get me to watch more MCU, and in the process loses me more and more with each mounting ineptitude. Sigh, indeed.
