Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Review

Ryan Coogler’s followup to the much praised and highly popular Black Panther does not come close to reaching the same heights due to a bland screenplay lacking sympathetic characters who are faced with unsubstantial obstacles that fail to create any real sense of tension or suspense throughout the movie’s extended runtime. I recently watched Black Panther for the first time and was nervous that the film would not live up to the wave of positive reviews I had heard about but was pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed the movie and I gave it an 8/10. The best part of Black Panther was its world building and by that I mean the way in which the movie explains how Wakanda, the country the movie is based in, operates and the culture of the people that live there. By developing this world so well it helped to ensure that the audience understood the stakes of certain events throughout the film and the impact they would have on the larger Wakanda society and other factions that neighbour them. Furthermore, the original Black Panther has a much better cast of diverse characters with varying viewpoints who all bring something different to the table which was something surely lacking in this film though much of that cannot be blamed on the filmmakers since the main character of the first film passed away and another, Daniel Kaluuya, had scheduling conflicts. The absence of several main characters from the first film was felt heavily in this movie especially given that much of the sequel is spent developing secondary characters from the first film as opposed to getting a running start picking up where the first film ended. Letitia Wright, who plays Boseman's sister, is good here at taking over as the lead in this film but it takes a long time for her character to get to a point where she is truly the protagonist of the film which undermined my investment in her since much of the movie is a slog up to the point at which we can truly gain some perspective on how she feels and what it is she must accomplish in this movie. Danai Gurira is the standout in this movie playing Okoye a strong no nonsense military woman although her character is mostly absent in the second half of the movie which I thought was a mistake. Angela Bassett, who plays Chadwick Boseman’s mother, received an Oscar nomination for this movie which may have influenced why I felt her big scene here where she yells at Okoye for her seeming betrayals felt like Oscar bait meant to be played in a montage of moments at the Oscars rather than an honest moment of emotion. The biggest problem with this movie is the main villain played by Tenoch Huerta who is anything but memorable and comes off as a ripoff of the “fish people” in Pirates of the Caribbean rather than a unique movie antagonist. The movie is also incredibly slow and convoluted with scene after scene of boring characters talking in circles about things that do not seem important which culminate in one large and unremarkable action sequence. Best demonstrating this was the awful storyline involving Martin Freeman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s forgettable characters who bicker about a past relationship the viewer has no memory of and later interrogate one another over their loyalty to the United States which tested my patience as this was all incredibly boring and had a very unsatisfying conclusion. On a positive note the movie does do a good job of handling the real world passing of Chadwick Boseman especially in an opening montage dedicated to him which is played in silence adding to its emotional weight. Another thing I thought was well done in this movie was the music especially when the underwater city is first introduced and again during a lab montage later in the film. In conclusion, the movie does not work as a proper sequel to Black Panther having abandoned much of what made the first movie great, that being the amazing world building, and instead becomes a muddled action film with no clear direction that proves to be a deeply unsatisfying watch which is a shame given the cultural impact the first film had. I gave this film a 2/10 which may seem harsh but in looking back at the film I found it hard to think of anything that I really enjoyed or found memorable about this movie.

One last thing I noticed about the Black Panther films was their similarities to Star Wars the Phantom Menace. Specifically, I found the battle sequence at the conclusion of the first film to be similar to the Battle of Naboo which I will show in some pictures here with Black Panther on the top and Phantom Menace on the bottom.

Furthermore, the underwater city in the second Black Panther movie reminded me of the one found in the Phantom Menace and in both films the inhabitants of these places consider aligning themselves with those visiting them. I do not think this was a stolen idea but I simply wanted to make mention of how these movies reminded me of my favourite Star Wars film.