In Review - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

 I was going to sleep on Black Panther 2, but a friend invited me to go see it. I am glad she did, because I was surprised with how much I enjoyed it. This is because I did not like the first Black Panther movie. Actually, I rate it as one of my least favorites.

Now, hear me. The first Black Panther was a culturally significant film. It earned its accolades for sound and costume design. However, I found the plot to be weak. Wakanda is built up as an amazing place...except the entire plot revolves around them having one of the worst governing systems imaginable. While Chadwick Boseman is good in the role of T'challa, the character does not have a very good character arc. He was actually a better character in Civil War than his own film.

But this review is about Black Panther 2. I just wanted to set the ground work for why it hit me so much harder.

The only place to start is with the tribute to Chadwick Boseman/T'challa. It really is presented in a way that is beautiful and dignified. They do a great job of paying homage to both the character and the actor. They did not just stop there, however. They made his legacy part of this film. It is not just a funeral for an opening scene. His influence is felt through the film in the way characters think about who he was and what he meant.

The film does a great job of focusing across multiple characters. I almost felt like I was watching an ensamble the way it explored multiple characters in ways that felt organic and reasonable. The titular superhero is actually playing second fiddle to other characters for a good chunk of the film. Angela Basset made the Queen Mother come alive. She was heroic and hard, but also nurturing. You could feel her love, anger, and desperation. She does a great job of presenting a mother figure as a protector. 

Shuri was the biggest surprise. In the previous film she was a bratty kid sister. This time, she comes off more human. She is smart, but grieving. Indeed her grief and need to find a way to come to grips motivates her throughout the film. They manage to draw some amazing parilels between her and her brother, as well as some other characters. We get a classic will they or won't they fall to the darkside story. However, it feels particularly real here, a real choice to be made not just about the battle for her soul, but for how she will go forward dealing with the world. 

I was skeptical of the character Riri Williams at first. I am not familiar with her in the comics, and have been tepid about her because she struck me as a replacement character that got pushed in after the fact rather than someone that organically fell into the role. However, the film gives her a lot of personality and a solid backstory. She isn't Stark's handpicked successor (because that's Spider-man apparently). Instead, she is a genius in her own right. She has a lot of very believable reactions that helped her feel grounded. Her armor was an ok design, though it did not work for me personally. 

M'baku is just the best. He is still, hands down, my favorite Wakandan character. He has a big personallity to go along with the big arms. They did give him a chance for much more character growth in this film. Him and Nebula are great examples of how the MCU has been able to grow beyond the comics cannon. Once villains now enjoyable heroes with more emotional input. 

And of course I cannot leave out the villain. Tenoch Huerta does well in the role of Namor. Unfortunately, I feel like Namor is a character that just works better in the comics. Why? Because of the ancle wings. I was really hoping they would come up with some other way of explaining it. Levitation boots with wing symbols on the side, or just some magic power that lets him fly. Don't get me wrong, the character was still good, but I really hated that. He manages to be noble and threatening. Namor has always had a romantic quality to him that they brought out. The origin story they give him does some great world building. Unfortunately, he saw one of the biggest ball drops in the writing. While his over all motivation is understandable, the approach he goes about it really does not make a lot of sense. Apparently he thinks he can threaten people into being his friends. 

I could go on about other characters, but I am trying to avoid spoilers. 

The movie does a great job of building an emotional core. Characters are still dealing with their grief over T'challa. None more than Shuri. She cannot let go because she feels she has failed her brother. On top of that, she has dived into her science, forsaking her belief in her ancestors. This leaves her with a deep disconect from her mother and a deep seated anger that can only grow. In this film we see people make terrible mistakes, and pay heavy prices for it. And with Namor we see a desperate determination to protect his people. This makes him a great contrast to our heroine as he is a choice between the path of Black Panther and Killmonger. 

It is good that it tells such a great story, because frankly it comes up pretty lax in a lot of the action. Okoyo gets some good fight scenes. However, a lot of the rest has a mix of being to dark to really see or being a mess of CGI shapes flying around. The fight on the Wakandan boat was particularly bad for this. You could tell when they had filmed the climbing by just turning the camera sideways and having people crawl on the floor. I will give props, however, to the final fight between Shuri and Namor. It was probably one of the most brutal fights in the MCU. It was nothing spectacular, or memorable, but it had a certain realism in the way some of the injuries happen. Characters were being hurt, and it showed.

This is easily one of the most visually cinimatic of the MCU films. They made great use of location. Most MCU films are in citties or starships. But with Wakanda they get a chance to utilize some amazing shots of Africa. They did some great set peieces. Except fo the Wakandan ship. That was terrible, and someone needs to loose their job over it. 

One of the most striking parts of design was the decision to give Namor and his people a Mesoamerican origin and aesthic. It was a bold decision to move them away from Atlantis. It was a great way to make them more unique while building on why they are secretive. It fits with the general themes of anti-colonialism, and frankly does it much better than Wakanda itself does. 

Unfortunately, theme was another area where they clearly wanted to make a statement, but it did not really line up with the story. This was a problem with the first Black Panther as well. The film starts with a pretty obvious jab at Western powers intering in other countries and sending in millitary forces to get what they want. We are presented with Wakanda standing up to the Western powers. Then 10 minutes later they are doing litterally the same thing. Seriously, they send a millitary force into a soverign nation on a secret mission to kidnap or kill a foreign citizen that has not even done anything against them. I suppose you could read something about hypocracy into that, but I don't think the film was self-aware about it. 

Oh, and the colonizer joke wasn't that great to begin with. Stop trying to make it a running gag. 

Despite my critisizms, I highly recomend this film. It tells a good story that feels engaging. It is different from a lot of MCU films that rely on snappy dialogue and dazzling action sequences. Instead, this has more of a slow build up as you see characters strugle to find out who they are in a changing world. Where the first Black Panther was about creating an identity of Afro-futurism, Black Panther 2 is about loss and coping, something that everyone has to deal with. Wakanda Forever!