BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B-

I’m not going to blame director and co-writer Ryan Coogler for the clear shortfalls of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, particularly when compared to 2018’s original Black Panther. That film is easily one of the best superhero films ever made, and in my view the best of the plethora of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, so to be fair, it’s a high bar. That said, superhero franchises have a long history of the second entry of a series being equal to or surpassing the first (Superman II; Batman Returns; Spider-Man 2; X2), and the truth of the matter is, Wakanda Forever does not meet that particular tradition.

To be clear, there is much to love about Wakanda Forever, notably its performers, its production design, even its wonderful soundtrack—not to mention the deeply poignant and effective way it manages to honor the memory of both the actor Chadwick Boseman and the character King T'Challa alike. In the opening sequence, we learn that T'Challa has been afflicted with an unnamed illness, which his genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) scrambles, but ultimately fails, to cure. There follows a national Wakandan funeral steeped in ceremony and tradition, not to mention emotion—for both the characters grieving their king, and the actors themselves, along with us as viewers, grieving the loss of a cultural figure the likes of which we see once an era.

And although it serves as a memorial and is very downbeat, these opening scenes are both beautiful and the high point of Wakanda Forever, which is very entertaining otherwise but ultimately sags a bit under the weight of yet another MCU film’s obligations to feature narrative tentacles reaching across the connective tissue of what are now thirty films. The 2018 Black Panther served the same function, but managed it much more seamlessly, I would argue for two reasons: first, at that time there were barely more than half as many films and “the snap” (ugh, I’m so sick of The Snap) had not yet happened; second, and far more importantly, that film was not forced into the double duty of acknowledging and participating in the grief of losing the very character it introduced.

On top of all this, Wakanda Forever must also introduce another supervillain for our reluctant heroes to battle. Coogler, along with co-writer Joe Robert Cole, imbue the Aztecan character Namor with moral ambiguity tied to the global history of colonialism the same way they did with Killmonger previously (side note: we get a nice, brief appearance from Michael B. Jordan in a dream sequence). That said, I found his backstory—something having to do with plants infused with deep-sea vibranium discovered to exist outside of Wakanda resulting in his having lived since the time of the Aztecs—convoluted and difficult to follow.

Namor is played by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, who is of Mexican, Aztecan and Purépechan descent—a nice bit of clearly conscientious casting. That said, it does feel slightly tricky to have a movie made by non-Latino or non-Indigenous people in which they are, in one way or another, speaking to Indigenous history. Black Panther worked so perfectly in large part because of the filmmakers’ fluent understanding of their own history, and while colonialism as a theme has clear crossover between communities, bringing Western Indigenous historical threads into the mix involves a separate, distinct lineage of people. Not that I am any expert here because I am just another white guy slinging opinions across the internet, but I won’t say the fictional “Talocan” people are portrayed poorly per se—only that they aren’t woven into the narrative anywhere near as neatly as the heavy weight of Killmonger’s ancetral history had been in the previous film.

That said, I do have other nitpicks about Namor and his secret underwater society that I just can’t get past. I love science fiction when it’s done well, and get really hung up when it’s done badly. You can even introduce nonexistent technology and make suspension of disbelief easy, as with Wakandan vibranium. I have a harder time accepting science fiction that creates fictions that would never work in any universe, completely ignoring funamental laws of physics. This was the biggest reason I avoided Aquaman like the plague: the trailer alone made it clear that characters would speak like normal humans under water, something that literally cannot be done without breathing air as opposed to liquid, no matter how much oxygen it contains. Wakanda Forever contains far less of this, but it’s still there, with one brief scene featuring Namor giving a loud speech to his vast underwater army. I see that shit and all I can think is, This is unbearably stupid.

I had a similar, if less passionate, reaction to Namor’s ability to fly, using only tiny wings, no larger than his feet, grown from his ankles—somehow these little wings allow him to fly through the air upright, like an inverted helicopter drone? No. What’s worse is the agility with which he does this, darting large distances back and forth through the air like a hummingbird, these shots being a good example of Wakanda Forever’s disappointing quality of CGI effects, putting it in league with far too many other blockbuster movies coasting on the profits of mediocrity.

And this is a big part of Wakanda Forever’s problem of commitment to far too many obligations. You can just hear the production meetings in which Coogler was told this movie has to fit into the broader narrative of all MCU movies in all these ways: X, Y, Z and et cetera—non-negotiable, clearly. The thing is, other MCU movies don’t have the gravitas of these films, which Coogler expertly weaves in. This is why I don’t blame him for this movie’s shortcomings; rather, I blame that on Marvel Studios—and give Coogler (and Cole) credit for the parts of it that are still great.

In 2018, Black Panther had been a tightly polished 134 minutes—some of it still containing the typical battle chaos of an MCU climax, but impressively reigned in. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever clocks in at a whopping, and wholly unnecessary, 161 minutes. The first half or so of that runs at an effectively slow burn—in a relative sense, anyway—albeit one that introduces characters that feel unnecessary (I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but the inclusion of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine feels far more obligatory than vital). We get to spend time with Wakandan characters we already love: Ramonda (Angela Basset); Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o); Okoye (Danai Gurira); M’Baku (Winston Duke); it’s even delightful to see I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel as new character Aneka, another one of Wakanda’s fabled women warriors (and it should not be downplayed that this movie puts its women in charge). We also see Martin Freeman return as agent Everett Ross (Valentina’s ex-husband, apparently), but he never felt vital, his existence effectively being the “token white guy” just more amusing than anything.

In other words, and this really cannot be overstated, Wakanda Forever has a stellar cast, which goes a long way toward making it worth your time, especially if you loved the previous film. The difference is that this movie is overlong and its plot construction is comparatively clunky, and much of the time this stellar cast is utilized only in unnecessarily long, CGI-heavy battle sequences. To be fair, even the quality of the action sequences vary; a car chase through Cambridge is genuinely exciting, whereas a battle between Wakandan and Talocan armies on a huge ship at sea proves mind numbing.

Thankfully, Wakanda Forever comes back to ground level at its end, creating poignant bookends to its story that honor the original Black Panther character in different ways—by looking back at the beginning, and looking forward at the end, particularly in a stinger after title credits that only come at the end of the film. Spoiler alert! That one stinger is all this movie offers, bucking the trend of a truly post-credits scene with no more after that; I stayed until the very end of the credits for nothing, apparently so you don’t have to. It was the last of this movie’s sprinkling of small disappointments. At least those disappointments are indeed small, and outweighed by the net effect of an entertaining night out at the movies. Just don’t expect anything approaching the greatness of what came before.

It takes a long time before we see the successive “Black Panther” … and it works.

Overall: B