Review of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) by Jaramide — 12 Nov 2022

I really feel that there was the potential for a really good movie here but it's never realized because, well Disney is Disney.

Firstly I will say that overall the emotional scenes in this movie are very good and feel impactful. Letitia Wright is a good actress and with the rest of the talented cast they do a good job of continuing the story of Wakanda while being respectful to the passing of Chadwick Boseman.

However there are definite problems with the script which severely impacted my enjoyment of the movie.

The whole Riri/Ironheart plot is very obviously a last minute addition. It feels forced and unnecessary and could very easily have been cut with only small changes to the overall story.

Secondly even though this is close to a three hour movie Namor and the nation of Talokan doesn't get fleshed out enough and the whole plot as to why they would attack Wakanda is paper thin.

They also feel very underwhelming and even though the movie really tries to present them as a credible threat it frankly feels strange that they should be this dangerous to a nation with the technology and military capability of Wakanda even with their super strength and water bombs.

Also while I'm not opposed to Shuri becoming the Black Panther I really feel more time should have been spent on her transition into the role instead of cramming it into the last third. Shuri was always a scientist and the most we ever saw her fight before was using the sonic(?) arm cannons in a handful of scenes in the previous movies. I really would have liked to see her grow more into the role before just jumping in to the final fight with Namor.

Overall this was ok. It was fine for an evenings entertainment and definitely not the worst Marvel has produced but compared to what they were making a few years ago this isn't close to their best and the sad thing is that it really feels like it could have been if they had tightened up the script and made the antagonist more believable.