Black Panther Wakanda Forever is the new Marvel Studios film and is again directed and co-written by Ryan Coogler and this time the kingdom of Wakanda is mourning the loss of their King and Black Panther T’Challa reflecting the sad passing of Chadwick Boseman in real life in 2020 due to Colon Cancer but as Wakanda mourns a new enemy Namor (Tenoch Huerta) of the underwater kingdom Talokan and his harnessing of the Oceans makes him a powerful enemy especially without the Black Panther to help defend against it.
Black Panther Wakanda Forever has a lot going for it and it is a good film for these reasons:
- Firstly the way the film pays tribute to Boseman and his legacy as T’Challa is very moving and effective and watching those moments in the cinema really got me in terms of the emotional response and Coogler and everyone involved deserves huge kudos for how hard they have worked to weave this real life sad tragedy into the fabric of this films storytelling.
- Secondly Huerta as Namor is a great villain and it has been a long long time since the MCU gave us a great villain as they’ve only had Loki and Thanos on that front until now, Huerta plays the role with a great grace and dignity but when the film lets him be a proper villain he also rises to that challenge and creates a very memorable threat the likes of which the MCU has not had in so many of their films and to their detriment.
- And lastly the returning cast members are excellent, Angela Bassett deserves to be nominated for an Academy Award for her work in this film as she has 2 key scenes where you really feel everything that character is going through in this story and they really land with you emotionally, Letita Wright is also very good as Shuri while Winston Duke, Danai Gurira and Lupita N’Yongo are good in their scenes but don’t get as much to do as compared to the first film.
But this film sadly has 2 big problems:
- Firstly the film is simply too long, at 2 hours and 40 minutes there are times where you feel this film drag under the weight of that runtime and there is one character in particular who I feel should not have been in this movie and removing them would have shaved off a good 10 to 15 minutes off of the runtime and it would’ve helped this movie a fair bit.
- And secondly as great as this movie and everyone involved in it pays tribute to Chadwick Boseman so wonderfully well you do feel his absence on screen as much as the characters do and try as Wright/Bassett/Duke/Gurira and N’Yongo might and they really do give it their absolute very level best they just cannot fill the hole left behind by Boseman’s passing and this not a knock in any conceivable way on them at all.
They like Coogler were stuck either way, if they had recast the role that person would’ve had an impossible set of boots to fill and they probably wouldn’t have been able to fill it or at best just felt like a pale shadow of Boseman’s portrayal so I think everyone involved made the right choice to go in the direction they have gone in.
And so that was Black Panther Wakanda Forever and it is the first MCU film since Avengers Endgame that I have enjoyed and it does its job very well even if like its characters you feel that absence of T’Challa and the Black Panther, 3 and a half out of 5.
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