The King is Dead, long live the Queen.
Okay, finally, let’s get to Black
Panther: Wakanda Forever. Sorry this took so long. Real life got real
complicated for me during the end of November and all of December, so making
this post was just not in the cards. And when we got to the end of January and
I heard it’d be coming to Disney+, well, it just seemed like a good idea to
wait and refresh myself. Wakanda Forever is the long await sequel to the
2018 film Black Panther. The film was delayed a few times, due to the
tragic untimely passing of T’Challa’s actor, Chadwick Boseman, in 2020 of colon
cancer. It was further delayed due to the script rewrites, as they’d decided
not to recast T’Challa, and due to the Covid pandemic and actress Leticia
Wright aka Shuri being an Anti-Vaxxer. I am so furious that Word recognized
that word without me having to add it to the dictionary. This film is a tribute
to the late Mr. Boseman and T’Challa, as we watch how the nation of Wakanda
mourns its king in the face of a new threat. Let’s get to it, shall we?
 |
| Wakada Forever |
The film opens with Shuri
frantically working on a synthetic version of the Heart-shape herb. She prays
to the Panther god Bast for the ability to heal her brother. She says she’ll
never question Bast’s existence again if this can work. T’Challa is dying of an
unspecified illness, but it’s heavily implied to be cancer. Believing the herb
could save him, but not having any of the stuff on hand after her cousin
Killmonger’s coup attempt, she’s attempting to 3D print a suitable replacement.
She’s able to make some with only a 29.1% chance of working… only to have her
mother, Queen Ramonda, come in and inform her of T’Challa’s death. A large
funeral is held for the passing of King T’Challa. His coffin, furnished with
his Black Panther mask, is carried off by the Dora Milaje as pall bearers
through the city before being taken to one of their air ships and flown out for
burial.
I give Marvel massive props for
changing the usual Marvel Studios Logo, where they show a ton of clips from
their previous films, to a ton of clips of Chadwick Boseman. Rest in Peace,
Chadwick Boseman. You were taken far, far too soon.
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| Hail the King. |
We jump forward one year. Queen
Ramonda is in a UN meeting to discuss the distribution of Vibranium. The world
governments want more, she tells them no, they’ll keep getting what she gives
them. She makes it clear that she’s only doing the trade as is due to her late
son’s wishes. We jump between this scene and a research facility just outside
the Wakandan borders, where several soldiers burst in and demand Vibranium. A
researcher points them towards a vault where the Vibranium tools are kept. Back
meeting hall, Ramonda accuses the UN leaders of playing nice in public but in
private whispering that Wakanda is weak now that the Black Panther is dead and
no one is able to replace them. She assures them this is not the case. In the
lab, the Vault is revealed to have several Dora Milaje inside, led by Okoye
because of course she is there, and one of the researchers pulls off her wig to
reveal she is also a Dora Milaje. Leave it to Marvel to make a Black woman
reaching for her hairline a terrifying precursor to what is about to happen.
The Milaje beat the ever loving hell out of the soldiers, using their Vibranium
weapons to disarm and disable all the guards with slashes and shocks from their
spears.
At the meeting hall, Ramonda has
Okoye and the Dora Milaje bring in the captured French soldiers, as proof of
what happened. She’s willing to let this one go, but warns them that another
attack will not be treated as kindly. She knows that other countries are trying
to find Vibranium deposits outside of Wakanda and wishes them luck.
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| Attuma's coming to get you. |
We jump to the Atlantic Ocean where
a research facility is looking for Vibranium in the deep sea. A pair of divers
are dispatched at a potential deposit. They find a deposit, a big one, that
chewed up the drill head. They’re ordered to bring up the Vibranium detector as
it’s a prototype and the only one they have. The rig loses power, though, as
security starts hearing an odd singing. The divers are attacked and taken out
by something in the ocean. The facility is attacked, the crew jumping into the
ocean seemingly at the behest of a Siren like song. The chief researcher and
guard put in earplugs. They ask for a strike team to arrive and prep the
chopper for launch. They make it to the helicopter just as a group of blue
humans in clothes similar to what the Mayans wore. The researcher runs for it
as the blue people swarm the base. She makes it onto the copter and it takes
off. They only fly off a short way before they’re attacked by something that
grabs the copter, swings it around and throws it into the water. Hi Namor.
Sometime later, we travel back to
Wakanda. Ramonda’s ship flies into Wakanda through its river boarder. There’s a
neat visual of the guards tapping a rhythm onto a control panel full of water
to disengage the shield to let them in. We find Shuri in her lab, working hard
on solutions to unknown threats, as Ramonda comes in. Her main project is
working on an exo-suit for their army. Ramonda asks if Shuri has made any
progress on recreating the Heart-shaped herb, but before Shuri can answer she
gets a call from Nakia. Shuri tells her AI Griot to ignore the call. Shuri
tells her mother they don’t need the herb or the Black Panther, they need new
technology. Ramonda reminds Shuri that this is the anniversary of T’Challa’s
death and that she wants Shuri to come worth her on a trip. Oh, and no tech, so
no Komoyo beads.
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| The Queen vs. the Sea King. |
They travel to the outskirts of
Wakanda, watching some elephants pass. Ramonda tells her that this is a ritual
to process their grief. Basically, they need to sit with their thoughts, to
feel the spirit of T’Challa in the world around them. Shuri tells Ramonda that
T’Challa wasn’t “there” like Ramonda thinks, but a construct that her mind
created for comfort. She asks Ramonda if her construct brings her
comfort or torment. They continue the ritual, which is to burn their funeral
garments to end their mourning period. Shuri says she can’t sit and think about
T’Challa too long or she’ll burn the world and everyone in it instead of her funeral
clothes. Ramonda is about to tell Shuri something, but is interrupted by the
elephants freaking out. A moment later, Namor raises from the water on his
little winged feet. He compliments the two on Wakanda’s air, but asks why they
would ruin it by revealing themselves. Ramonda demands to know who he is. Namor
introduces himself with the name his people gave him K’uk’ulkan. For mythology
fans, this is the name of a Mesoamerican deity, the winged serpent. He's a big
deal. He also gives them his usual name of Namor. He tells them that the US
used a machine to find Vibranium in the ocean, that they repelled the invasion
into his ocean but he needs Wakanda’s help to stop them from looking again. He
tells them that because T’Challa revealed Vibranium’s power to the world, it’s
only fair that they help him deal with this problem. He tells them to get the
scientist and bring them to him, or he’ll… retaliate. He gives them a shell,
telling them to blow into it and place it into the ocean to summon him. He says
to not mention him to anyone outside off Wakanda and walks off. Ramonda grabs
the shell, and in the brief time they looked away, Namor dropped the scanner by
their campsite. Damn. Ramonda says they need to gather the council.
Later, M’Baku comes in and immediately
starts picking fights with everyone. That’s my favorite vegetarian. He’s told
to be quite and they begin the meeting. They learn that Namor swam underwater,
not tripping any sensors, for 100 kilometers. The council wants to do what he
says, as they have no Black Panther to protect them. M’Baku, still a dick but a
correct dick, points out that they’re only Panther-less because the council backed
Killmonger and let him burn all the Heart-shaped herbs. He suggests finding the
”fish man” and killing him, as if they do what he says now, there’s nothing to
stop him from coming back and asking for more.
Ramonda enters Shuri’s lab. Shuri
has gotten the tracker working, it can detect Vibranium through heavy metals,
water, anything. She goes on to explain the device uses a combination of custom
parts and, weirdly, stuff that looks like it was scavenged from a junkyard.
When Okoye, who came with Ramonda, expresses disbelief that Vibranium could
exist outside of Wakanda, Shuri sets her straight. 70% of the planet is covered
in water, so it’s actually extremely likely that other Vibranium meteor impacts
would be in the ocean. Okoye wants to go find the scientist, but wants Shuri’s
help. Ramonda is very worried about letting Shuri out, but Okoye insists that
she’ll keep her safe. Shuri, who’d overheard everything, asks when they’ll
leave so she can see her favorite colonizer.
In Alexandria, Virginia, Shuri uses
a robotic bug to draw Everett Ross’s attention and lead him to them while he’s
on a run. They ask about the Vibranium detector scientist. They confirm that
they have no idea about the attack on the rig to Ross. They want to tell him
what happened, but can’t… because Namor. Ross, because he owes both Shuri and
T’Challa’s memory, agrees to help them, even though it’s his head if anyone
finds out he’d helped them. He warns them they must be careful as well as fast
as the US needs another machine and this kid is the only one who knows how to
make one.
It's revealed the person who built
the detector is none other than Riri Williams, a MIT student. We join her as
she shakes down a fellow student for the money he owes her for helping him with
a robotics project under the table. Shuri and Okoye report in and inform
Ramonda that the “scientist” is a student at MIT. Ramonda tells them to bring
her in. Okoye and Shuri argue for a bit on who is going to grab Riri, Okoye
agreeing to send Shuri in first. She has five minutes.
Shuri goes in and Riri immediately
geeks out about meeting the Princess of Wakanda. She reveals that she built the
machine for a metallurgy class more or less because he said she couldn’t do it.
The professor must have turned it over to the CIA after she turned it. Shuri
tells Riri she’s in danger, and that she needs to come with her right now. Riri
tries to pull the “I’m just going to use the bathroom and escape out the
window” trick, but Okoye, expecting this, was waiting in there already. That
woman is so scary, but also weirdly hot. Riri tries to resist, but Okoye is not
taking no for an answer. They convince her to leave.
They head out to Riri’s workspace.
She fixes trucks for the Sanitation department and is allowed to use the garage
for her work. She has to get her work laptop. Okoye is surprised that she’d
just leave that sort of thing laying around, but Riri tells her that her
encryption is extremely complicated. She locked herself out once and it took a
whole semester and building a quantum computer to get in. Shuri looks at some
off her schematics and asks if she’s building Stark Tech, just as she gets an
alert that police are on their way. Okoye sends out a bead that implants itself
on the hood of their truck. They bicker for a minute while they plan an escape.
It ends up with Okoye taking Riri’s car, Shuri taking her bike, and Riri
suiting up. The FBI break in just as Riri finishes getting into her Iron Man
suit frame and she stuns them with a couple shots from her cannon. The women
lead the Police and FBI on a chase across the whole city.
They head for an extraction point
on the other side of the river. A surveillance drone is tracking them, but Riri
finds it and flies up to shoot it down. She passes out a second later because
she didn’t have an oxygen mask or helmet. She almost crashes into the river but
recovers. They make it to the bridge, but Riri gets harpooned from someone in
the water and Okoye and Shuri get hit with a water bomb that causes them to
crash. Shuri uses an energy shield to soften her landing but she still hits
hard. Okoye recovers first, makes sure Shuri is okay and stopping the blue
people from stealing Riri. A squad off them arrive, having been dropped off by
whales. One, Namora, goes to kill the witnesses, the cops, while the big guy, Attuma,
goes to fight Okoye. Well, he sends his three guards to fight her, but she
takes them down. Attuma orders his team to help Namora and the fight is on.
Okoye is, well, Okoye, so she fights well, but Attuma has super strength. He
knocks her to the ground but lets her back up to keep fighting. He ends up
slamming her against his planed ax, dislocating her shoulder. She distracts him
with a shock from her spear, and pops her shoulder back. She tries to keep
fighting but is ultimately defeated when Namora walks over and throws water
bombs at her, knocking her into the water.
Shuri, having awoken, demands to
speak with Namor. Attuma and Namora agree to take her, giving her Attuma’s
breathing mask to help her breathe. Okoye raises just in time to see Shuri
taken away by whale. Damn.
Ross arrives at the bridge, and
learns that his boss, Valentina De Fontaine, is also on the case. Oh no. De
Fontaine chats with one of the cops on scene and Ross finds Shuri’s Kimoyo
beads. He pockets them as De Fontaine tells him to give her a ride to Langley
Falls, an 8-hour drive, but that’ll give them time to talk about the case and
for her to apologize about some of the things she said when they were married.
Ouf, the info dump.
Okoye returned to Wakanda to give
her report. She asks to be sent out immediately to save Shuri, but instead,
Ramonda fires her. Okoye begs to be allowed to make it right, but Ramonda
refuses. She has a very public breakdown about how her entire family has been
taken from her and how she won’t give up anything else. This is clearly something
that Ramonda has been bottling up for years, just saying. Okoye is stripped of
her rank, she plants her spear and walks off.
Ramonda goes into Shuri’s lab. She
calls out to Griot and asks what he knows, she has him reach out to her Komoyo
beads. Ross plays off the beads going off as his new ringtone to get De
Fontaine to leave and asks what the hell is going on. Ramonda tells him a new
power is at play, but that’s all she can say. He wants to help, however he can
and Ramonda says she’ll keep him in the loop. She as Griot if he can track
Shuri’s Komoyo earrings. He admits he lost track of her in the North Atlantic,
but has discovered they were speaking Yucatec Mayan.
Ramonda travels to Haiti. Why?
That’s where Nakia has set up shop since the Blip. She asks the former War Dog
and her son’s former lover to help getting Shuri back. Well, first she guilts
Nakia a little for not being at T’Challa’s funeral, but then onto Shuri. She
asks who on earth would risk war with Wakanda.
Shuri and Riri wake up in an
undersea cavern. Guards come in and tells Shuri to put on the royal robes they
prepared for her. Shuri takes them, despite Riri’s fears, and departs with
Namora.
Meanwhile, Nakia made it to the
Yucatan Peninsula. She pretends to be an anthropology student looking into strange
happenings. The woman she talks to is defensive but agrees to talk to her when
she says she saw “him” too. The old woman tells her about a beach where
K’uk’ulkan has been seen raising from, but warns Nakia not to seek him out as
he’s existed for long than either of them. Other who have looked for him have
been lost to the depths forever.
Shuri is lead to Namor’s chamber.
He has some lovely Mayan style art painted on the walls and other artifacts. Shuri
deduces that everything is in the style of 16th century Mesoamerica and asks if he’s been
alive for that long. Namor confirms that yep, he’s over 500 years old. She asks
how, and he says “How is never as important as why.”
He explains his backstory. His
mother and her people from their homes by conquistadors and disease. They
turned to Chaac, their god of abundance and rain, for help. A shaman got a
vision of an underwater herb, spouted from Vibranium, that when taken
transformed their into people that could survive their new world. Namor’s mom
was pregnant and didn’t want to take the potion for fear of what it’d do to her
baby. The Shaman convinced her by promising that Namor would lead them as the
first of their new people. The potion took away their ability to breathe air
but gave them the ability to breath water. They settled underwater away from
everyone. Namor’s mother birthed him, and he became the first born son of
Talokan. See, you were probably wondering why I wasn’t calling the Blue People Atlanteans
the whole time. That’s because Atlantis is just a myth here, as it is in the
real world. Instead, we have the Mesoamerican themed secret underwater
civilization, Talokan and the Talokanil. He describes himself as a Mutant, with
the ability to breathe air like the ancestors, and to fly with his little ankle
wings. When his mother died, Namor agreed to take her to be buried in her
homeland. He found a plantation and Spanish slavers there. He had his people
burn the plantation to the ground and they buried her on the grounds. That’s
where he got his non-Talokan name, as a dying priest called him “The Child
without Love,” “El Nino sin Amor.” If you think that’s a silly way to get his
name, remember that Namor got his name specifically because it’s Roman
backwards.
Shuri asks that Riri be turned over
to her, offering to take Riri’s place as an insurance policy and send Riri to
Wakanda. She admits to wanting to see Talokan. Namor, after faking her out
about how she’d die in the ocean depths if she tried, outfitted her in one of
the diver suits they stole and she gets brought to Talokan. Talokan is a
beautifully lit underwater city. They use glowing stones to light the place and
build their city in three dimensions, with basically every inch of space being
put to some kind of use. They have a salute like Wakanda, too. While the
Wakanda salute is to cross your arms over your chest, the Talokan salute is to
hold their hands open like an open clam shell. Their city is lit primarily by a
giant chunk of Vibranium that they use as an artificial sun.
Nakia arrived at the beach and got
a signal from Shuri’s earrings. She finds the entrance into Talokan and sends a
remote control sub to track Shuri. Nakia reports to Ramonda, who tells her to
get Shuri out any way she can, and that she will try to draw Namor out. Nakia
seals her helmet, dives in and gets into her underwater vehicle.
Namor, trying to earn Shuri’s
favor, gives her his mother’s bracelet. They bond a little over the deaths of
their loved ones. He tells her that a saying from his ancestors is “only the
most broken people make great leaders.” Shuri tells Namor that she won’t leave
without Riri and won’t allow her to be killed. They need to find a peaceful
solution. Namor, instead, thinks that they a war with the surface world is
inevitable and that he wants to know if Wakanda is friend or foe. He promises
her that if they aren’t friends, they’ll be the first nation to fall. They’re
interrupted by Namora telling Namor that he’d been summoned. He offers to burn
the world together with her as he leaves.
At CIA headquarters, Ross is trying
to put out fires with Riri’s disappearance. Ross is informed that the president
wants to begin retaliate, to destabilizing their government. And I laugh to
myself at that plan. Ross wants to buy time and then informs Wakanda what’s
happening.
Namor goes to meet with Ramonda.
She asks if Shuri is alive. Namor tells her she is and Ramonda asks what she
can do to get Shuri and Riri back. She threats to tell the Americans about them
if they aren’t turned over to her. Namor promises to kill Shuri and Ramonda if
she tries.
Shuri returns to Riri and lets her
know what happened. Shortly thereafter, Nakia arrives and start taking people
out. She is so cool. Shuri wants to save the Talokan guard, but Nakia tells her
it’s now or never. They escape, despite this meaning war with Talokan. They hit
the surface and are picked up by Ramonda’s ship. Mother and daughter hug and
they head home.
Namor arrives and gets told by the
dying guard what happened. She dies and Namor vows revenge. He gets into his
full sea king regalia and descends into his shark tooth throne. He preps his
people for the war to come.
Shuri arrives back at Wakanda and
begins prepping for the assault. Aneka, one of the Dora Milaje from earlier,
arrives to greet her. They discuss what happened to her. Shuri says that their
underwater empire is beautiful but the Talokanil are dangerous. Ships fly out
to do sweeps, and Talokanil are already in the river waiting.
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| Attack! |
Everyone enjoys the moments
breather. Riri is shown around Wakanda by Ramonda, and Nakia meets with Okoye,
who is living out in the city. They hug and go to talk. Okoye admits that her
leaving after Thanos’ attack hurt, and Nakia admits that she had to stay away
because losing T’Challa wasn’t just her king, he was her everything. Their
conversation is interrupted by sudden flooding followed by a tidal wave. Ramonda
tells Shuri to stay in the lab, but she… hangs up on her and she and Aneka get
into one of their ships to provide air support. The Talokanil attack, being
drawn in by their attack whales. While the city is being flooded, Talokanil use
their hypnotic voices to make EMT’s jump into the river. Ayo, the current
captain of the Dora Milaje, gets her people to plug their ears and save a few
of the EMTs. M’Baku starts fighting Talokanil soldiers, easily beating one and
doing his gorilla chest beating. Meanwhile, Ramonda and Riri use the throne
room controls to send the relief ships.
Namor arrives, and we learn that
they intentionally drew defenses away from the palace to give Namor an opening
to attack it directly. M’Baku, having spotted Namor coming to shore, goes to
attack him. The Jabari breaks his club on Namor’s arm, and Namor shatters his
breastplate with a punch, knocking him into a building and out. The ships
arrive and start shooting at Namor but he leaps into the air and slashes at
them with his Vibranium spear. I love how they animate his movements in the
air. It’s less like flying and more like he’s leaping around on invisible
walls. Shir and Aneka arrive and she shotos at Namor. He dives into the water
and rockets away underwater. He gets under the ship and stabs the cockpit,
causing it to crash.
Namor arrives at the palace and stabs
at Ramonda through the glass. Nakia and Okoye find and retrieve Shuri and
Aneka. Ramonda tells Shuri to run, just before Namor flies back and lobs water
bombs at them. Ramonda wakes up first, swims down and saves Riri. Nakia and
Okoye arrive in time to pull Riri and Ramonda out of the water. He tells them
that he’ll return in a week. They can either fight with him or die. He tells
Shuri to bury their dead and mourn their losses. They’re able to revive Shuri,
but Ramonda is dead. M’Baku is the only think keeping Shuri from running to her
and getting in the way as they tried to revive Ramonda.
They hold a funeral for the queen.
M’Baku goes to speak with Shuri in private. He reveals that T’Challa asked him
to try to advise and protect Shuri before he passed. He asks her for her
advice, though, revealing that the elders asked that the capital be evacuated
to Jabariilands. Shuri sarcastically responds that he’s coming for the advice
of a child, and he tells her life has taken too much from her to be a child. He
leaves her to think.
Shuri returns to her lab and take’s
Namor’s mother’s bracelet.
Ross, meanwhile, has La Fontaine in
his kitchen. She reveals that she’d had the Kimoyo beads bugged and she knows
everything. He tries to stick up for the Wakandans but he ends up arrested.
Riri and Shuri try to think of a
way to defeat Namor. They know they have to find a way to weaken him. Shuri
takes the bracelet and has Griot analyze it and compares it to their artificial
Heart-Shaped herb. At the same time, she and Riri examine Namor and realize
that he’s physiologically different from the other Talokanil. They theorize
that rather than gills, he gets oxygen directly from his skin. They theorize
that, because he had to dive back into the water before attacking again, that
he needs to hydrate to stay strong. She sends Riri to build a device to
dehydrate Namor. Okoye is tasked to wear Shuri’s new armor, the Midnight Angel.
Okoye hates the name and the look but is willing to help. She learns that two
suits were made, so she grabs Aneka to wear the other one. Riri also takes time
to build armor for her exosuit, finishing her first Iron Heart armor. Shuri
finally gets the formula right, or 97% right.
Nakia goes to speak with her. She’s
impressed that Shuri has figure out how to return Wakanda’s protector. They
hold hands a Griot prints the herb. He does and it starts to glow, the sign
that it works. Shuri takes the herb with Nakia and Riri watching her. Shuri
wakes up in the throne room underwater. She swims up, and finds someone sitting
in the throne. She hopes its T’Challa, but instead… it’s N’Jadaka, Killmonger
waiting for her. He tells her that he’s
hear because she wanted him to be. She wants vengeance, and he’s the ancestor
that best represents it. She calls him the Unworthy king. He responds that he’s
the only King that actually did something. All the kings before him, and he
admits T’Challa, stood apart from the world and were thus cowards. The throne
room starts to burn as Shuri gets angry at the wraith of her cousin. She
accuses him of causing all that. Killmonger asks her if she’ll be noble like
T’Challa, or take care of business, like him.
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| A new Panther. |
Shuri wakes up and claims to have
not seen anyone in the Ancestral Plane. Shuri feels abandoned by her family and
angrily punches a dummy, revealing she does in act have the strength of the
Black Panther. Shuri suits up. She arrives in Jabariiland and presents herself
as the Black Panther. So it’s going to be the Black Panther, the Midnight
Angels, Iron Heart, and Wakanda vs. Namor and the Talokanil. Watch to see how
the fight goes.
…
…
…
In the end, Shuri flies out to Haiti
to visit Nakia. She is able to burn her funeral garb from T’Challa’s funeral.
Finally willing to step forward, she’s introduced to Nakia’s son. He introduces
himself as Toussaint, but then tells Shuri that’s just his Haitian name. His
real name… Prince T’Challa, son of King T’Challa.
Okay, good first. Despite my
feelings toward her vaccine stance, Leticia Wright is quite impressive as
Shuri. Strong but conflicted, smart but angry, and just trying to fill the hole
in her heart where her family were. Angela Basset is AMAZING as Queen Ramonda.
She has two modes in this, Queen Ramonda, leader of Wakanda (Hat on), and
Ramonda, the tired mother that is still grieving for her recently deceased son
(hat off). She got award nominations for this performance and damnit she
deserves it. I especially liked her breakdown in the throne room. So often, the
plot of a film is largely self-contained. Getting acknowledgement that Ramonda
remembered that most of her allies backed Killmonger and this very well could
have been the first domino in her son’s untimely death, was a powerful moment.
I especially liked that her last act was telling Riri to run and ultimately
saving Riri at the cost of her own life. Ramonda was a warrior, (literally, she
was a Dora Milaje) and she was smart enough to know that Riri would be too
important to risk dying. Tenoch Huerta Mejia is great as Namor. He’s powerful, cunning,
and absolutely ruthless. I think changing Namor and his people from citizens of
Atlantis to Talokan was a very smart call. It gave the sea king and his people
a look distinct from the usually vaguely Greek undersea kingdoms we’ve seen
before. Plus, giving him the bracelets and Vibranium collar around his neck is
way better than classic Namor’s look, which is just the speedo. I also
appreciate that the whole movie is a love letter and goodbye to
T’Challa/Chadwick. They did their best to honor both the character and man in
the best way they could given the circumstances. I liked that they didn’t try
to CGI him in or use a body double. No, T’Challa is dead but not forgotten.
The bad is minimal, but there.
Ross’s whole plot seemed to just be there to give Shuri and Wakanda one clue
and then to ex-patriate him. Look, I get Martin Freeman is a probably
expensive, so they wanted to give him plenty of scenes, but they could have
just cut him. I also think the film suffers a little from basically being a
retread of Black Panther. I think they want Shuri in a similar place,
mentally, that T’Challa was in so they can continue doing whatever stories they
had planed for him but with her in his place. So, we have the conflicted ruler
that has to decided between the traditional isolationist movement or the
progressive inclusion movement. She needs to be angry with a deceased parent
that she feels like she failed, and she needs to constantly be questioning if
Wakanda part of the world is better than Wakanda alone. The design for the
Midnight Angels suits is pretty bad. Okoye is 100% correct on that. And the
final battle is underwhelming. Not Shuri v. Namor, that’s cool. The battle on
the Sea Leopard was just kind of so-so to me.
Oh, and I totally guessed that
Nakia had had T’Challa and her son in secret during the Blip with the first
scene that mentioned her. Of all the reasons for an MC’s woman love interest to
disappear for several years, secret baby is on the tippy top of that list. I’m
glad that they made it canon that T’Challa got some time with little T’Challa
before he passed.
Overall, I like Wakanda Forever.
It was a nice way to say goodbye to T’Challa and Chadwick Boseman, honoring
them and leaving the door open for the story to continue. My money is on them
having Prince T’Challa taking over as Black Panther in a few years and that
he’ll be the T’Challa to have a romance with Storm and some of the other T’Challa
plots in the MCU. Namor was an excellent antagonist, cunning, powerful, and
fully capable of growing beyond those negative traits if they want him to be
more heroic going forward. A key character trait of Namor is being a dick,
though, so don’t expect a full heel-face turn. Shuri being forced to deal with
her grief and learning a little spirituality so she can be the Black Panther
was a nice story to follow, even if the original sounded better. The story, had
Chadwick Boseman not died, would have centered around T’Challa the Elder doing
his best to bond with T’Challa the younger while dealing with the king beneath
the sea. I like father and son stories, so sue me. It has me excited to see
where Wakanda will go from here, where Iron Heart will go from here and Namor,
too. Solid movie overall, just dragged down a little by a feeling of retreading
old ground and a few unnecessary plots.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/79079297?pr=true
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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