A Review of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)”

 

I enjoyed the first Black Panther film and loved Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa. I was looking forward to seeing him more in the MCU which is why his passing was heartbreaking. The sequel then had a tough choice on whether to recast T'Challa or not. Marvel Studios decided to go down the route of not recasting him which I understand but was a little disappointed by. I love the character of T'Challa and having his journey in the MCU end so prematurely was slightly saddening. Did Ryan Coogler make the right choice, or was this an unfortunate misstep?

I have to say that this is indeed one of the most emotional and mature Marvel films in a long time. The choice to have T'Challa killed off is handled with the utmost respect and care within the story. Shuri is the main central character and the emotional core is about her grief with her brother’s death. The story does a phenomenal job of illustrating her emotional journey which is deep and compelling. We also get to see how other characters handle the passing such as Ramonda and their way of handling grief which is different from Shuri. I appreciated that as people do indeed handle grief differently. One issue with MCU movies lately is the overabundance of comedy. Thankfully, this movie does not do that and for the most part, is a very serious movie. The beginning and ending are wonderfully done as well and are not typical of Marvel.

It is clear that Chadwick’s passing affected the actors as their performance is stunning. Letitia Wright gives a vastly different performance as Shuri that shows the pain and anger of her loss. Danai Gurira also delivers a great performance as Okoye and Lupita Nyong'o as Nakia respectively. Winston Duke returns as M'Baku and is still more or less the funny character but there are some great moments of serious from him that I love. Tenoch Huerta Mejía is the antagonist Namor, King of the underwater country Talokan, and I think he does a great job. He is fearsome and royal but his performance is quite charming with some heart. The biggest performance standout comes from Angela Bassett as Ramonda. Her performance is phenomenal! I am not surprised she got the best supporting actress because it is that good.

On that note, I really like that Talokan does not look like Atlantis from Aquaman (2019). The design is more traditional and inspired by Mesoamerican which is a great choice. Ludwig Göransson returns to compose the soundtrack and he just continues to do a brilliant job. There is a scene where it is about exploring Talokan which sticks in my mind because of the great design and the amazing music score. In terms of action scenes, there is a pretty enjoyable car chase near the beginning that I liked.

However, that is the only action scene I enjoyed. One thing this film does not do as well is the action scenes. The first issue is that there aren’t a lot of action scenes and the second is that every action scene after the car chase is not entertaining. The choreography is not as well done and the final fight is just dull. The final fight is also logically baffling tactically as it felt like an incredibly silly and dumb plan. The movie just lacked a lot of triumphant moments that would make you cheer. It doesn’t help that this movie is an incredibly slow burner with it taking a while for things to happen. The movie is really long at 160 minutes as well and it didn’t even need to be. The movie could cut 20 minutes of its runtime and most of the core story stays the same.

In terms of story, they try to incorporate the idea of other countries going for Vibranium ever since T'Challa opened Wakanda to the world. I don’t think they do a good job at this as it felt distracting from the main conflict. Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) returns from the first film and Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) returns from other Marvel projects. However, their incorporation into the plot is forced and doesn’t add to the main narrative. One issue I have with Phase 4 of MCU is this running theme of kids being hunted down by bad guys. It happened in Doctor Strange 2 and Hawkeye but also here in Wakanda forever with Riri Williams being hunted by Namor. It’s it flame as it feels like it was done to give Riri a TV series rather than being an integral character plot-wise. I also don’t think the film does a good job of showing how Talokan is a huge threat. Their tech feels minimal compared to Wakanda so it is hard to believe that Wakanda would struggle against them.

Overall, Ryan Coogler handled this wonderfully. He treated the passing of Chadwick with the utmost respect, and I got to admire that. I don’t think this movie is as good as the first one but it is definitely one of the more emotional ones. I’m not sure what direction Black Panther can go in now but whatever it is, I hope it retains the mature take of Wakanda Forever.