c/o Marvel Studios
Director Ryan Coogler had a lot on his shoulders in 2020. After the tragic passing of “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman, he and co-writer Joe Robert Cole were forced to rewrite the script they had already finished. Instead of taking the easy route and just recasting Boseman, or, even worse, using CGI to remake his face, they instead rewrote the entire movie from scratch. Going into this project, I knew it would be important to give Coogler and his team the benefit of the doubt.
The final product, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is a notable anomaly. On one hand, it is vital to acknowledge the circumstances behind the scenes that fundamentally affected the final product. On the other, I want to be consistent in criticizing this film as I am with everything else I see. With that said, this review will be as fair as possible, while acknowledging that the crew behind it put every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears into their effort.
The moment the opening logos begin, the usual Marvel Studios intro is replaced entirely with pictures and clips of Boseman as T’Challa in previous Marvel films. It was a relief to have no music accompanying these images, and I’m pleased to report that the film’s opening explanation of Prince T’Challa’s absence is done with the utmost respect and civility for Boseman himself. The characters from the previous film, Shuri and Queen Ramonda (played by Letitia Wright and Angela Bassett respectively) open the sequel with continuously hard-hitting performances. Considering the movie basically rests on their shoulders, they make sure to take that responsibility with full force. Bassett especially puts every fiber of her being into her role, delivering some genuinely heart-wrenching monologues.
Tenoch Huerta brings an interesting dynamic to the story as the villain K’uk’ulkan, or as he is known to his enemies, Namor. Coogler and Cole again display their ability to write a sympathetic and somewhat interesting superhero movie antagonist, as opposed to taking the easy “wants to destroy the world for power” route. In Namor’s case, though the character actually does want to wage war on the world, his desire and reasons for doing so are completely understandable. His people have been permanently scarred by the colonizers that ravaged their land with disease and slavery hundreds of years ago, and the modern world only continues to exploit their isolated underwater society for resources.
Thankfully, he doesn’t suffer from the “kill a baby” trope I’ve noticed in big-budget action movies. Sometimes, the script for a big action movie will involve a villain whose entire motivation is understandable and in many cases agreeable to the audience. However, in order to beat us over the head that the character is, in fact, a bad guy, the script has them do something morally irredeemable, such as killing a baby. It acts as a convenient crutch that in practice erases complexity from an antagonist. The villains of the first “Black Panther” in 2018 and “The Batman,” released earlier this year, did suffer from this very issue.
Even though Namor does do certain things in the movie that could be considered irredeemable, his actions never veer from his established goals. His subsequent behavior after the introduction of his character never falls out of line with what he believes, and he is shown to be an honorable man of his word. Of course, much of this is possible due to Huerta’s performance, and while it was not the highlight of the film’s acting (that title goes to Bassett) it still goes above what is expected of a superhero villain.
The other big positive has to be the visuals. Everyone who’s seen the first “Black Panther” will remember the climactic fight scene on the train tracks, and, well, it wasn’t great. During that scene from the original, actors Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan were rendered entirely as CGI, with no weight whatsoever to their movements. Needless to say, it was incredibly distracting. Thankfully, “Wakanda Forever” does not exhibit this flaw to a distracting degree. The visuals experience a massive upgrade, both with better composition and fight choreography than its predecessor and other Marvel films. It also doesn’t suffer from the usual gray color palette Marvel is known for, instead bringing back the vibrancy of Wakanda and introducing Namor’s home, a beautiful underwater city known as Talokan.
Unfortunately, despite all this, there are some glaring issues. For one, the film can feel like a slog to get through. The pacing is all over the place, never finding a way to land on its own two feet in the long run. There were scenes that felt like they went on for 20 minutes, despite only being five. There’s nothing wrong with a slow burn, of course, but the unintentional bore is very noticeable. It’s very clear that Coogler did not know what to do with certain characters in smaller scenes where the boring and trite Marvel humor plagues them. Again, it’s certainly possible that these characters would have been better served in the previous iteration of the story, but this is how they are in the version we got.
And as a general rule of thumb, having Julia Louis-Dreyfus in your movie does not automatically make it funny if you have little to no substance for her to work off of. I am sick and tired of this quippy, self-referential (“He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”) humor in blockbuster movies. They’re officially on my pet peeve list and have no purpose aside from making middle-aged men in the audience yell “I understood that reference!” out loud. This may be an “old man yells at cloud” scenario for me, but I am well aware that many others share this sentiment. It got to the point where the guys sitting behind me in the theater audibly groaned at certain lines. I hope people writing superhero and blockbuster movies in general realize that they don’t have to keep doing this as time goes on.
There’s also a character introduced in this movie that is clearly meant to serve as a set-up for future projects. While I won’t spoil any of the details, I will say that their inclusion in this particular narrative made little sense to me. I understood why the script told me they were in the movie, but beyond their initial scenes, they have no reason to be in this story. By all means, give them their own movie or Disney+ series. But why have them all over a story that would barely change without their inclusion? There is literally a moment in the film where Namor says that the character is irrelevant at this point. I’m all for including new and good characters, but why have them in the movie if they serve no purpose?
It may start to sound like I hate this movie, but trust me, I don’t. I acknowledge the fact that the screenwriters were stuck in a corner with certain aspects of this project. It makes complete sense that there were several aspects I did not like, and if I’m being honest, it probably wouldn’t have gone any other way. If this is the best result—and it certainly seems that way—from the movie’s team, with all their hard work and effort, then I gladly accept it. The endeavor absolutely shows, all the way from the special effects to the character writing. In the end, I do believe everyone who worked on “Wakanda Forever” deserves a huge congratulations for their work. They’ve more than earned it.
Nate Wheeler can be reached at nwheeler@wesleyan.edu.