11/10/22 - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) - 6/10

While never rising to the lofty and impressive heights of its predecessor, I must say that this is near the top of the recent run of Marvel films. It is a film that feels rushed in near every aspect; its tenderly resonating mourning of Chadwick Boseman, its invested character building of Shuri, the revelation, interpretation and relevant antagonist genesis of Namor, the introduction & entire character of Riri Williams, and the injection of plot machinations and story synthesizations. The threads of a film are laid bare here seeing that another film was intended but had to be scrapped and retooled once their main character passed, and I sympathize their hardship, but it does hold the film back from being great - its need to retool the plot to accommodate the sentimentality while still pushing the corporate MCU ongoing story. This doesn’t make for a bad final product, just a noticeably compromised one.

The reimagining of Namor worked well for me. The Mezoamerican spin was fresh and gave it all a welcome injection of multicultural representative excitement. Its a cool reinvention with Huerta holding it down adeptly. The designs of their characters & world were also fabulous.

Similarly, the costume design as out of this world spectacular. Ruth E. Carter is getting another Oscar with this one.

I also think that they did justice to the memory of Boseman, choosing to focus on his missing presence and the gravitas of such a loss. It is touching mourning made manifest as bookends of the feature.

The short shrift  of so many other elements also stands out. Riri is posited as too important and special of a personality to get about 10 min of screen time, especially with her creation and utilization of things it took other characters whole films/series of films to accomplish. This tact was done for so many storylines, character implications, and plot tech - so often it magically comes off and is so dominant that it makes you wonder, as long term fans of the entire MCU, why was any of this difficult or defeatable before this? (Side note: there is a specific underlying ‘mysticism vs. science’ debate throughout this film that is nigh-completely swept away for plot convenience and undercuts character arcs).

It moves too quickly, not letting things breathe or marinate, and struggles with decipherability in some of the action scenes. I would have preferred a slightly tighter narrative and more character focus. All that said, it doesn’t have huge distracting negatives like more recent Marvel fair (Spider-Man No Way Home & Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, for example). The design and production of the world was gorgeous and Coogler does a strong job of accenting that beauty.

It was a sad situation that this film was put into, but they were able to craft a reasonably adept ode to their fallen brethren while concocting an engaging superhero narrative as well. Not perfect but pretty solid.