Review of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) by Jonesybad1 — 15 Nov 2022

Surprisingly unemotional film, well there was a ton of intended racism to overcome, or just fall asleep in your seat. Black Panther 2 without the Black Panther is Disney Marvel's dumbest folly yet. Delay and recast were the way to go with this sequel.

Way too long running time to sit through a plot so boring and incoherent. Disney so focused on identity politics and virtue signalling forgot to put the brakes on the director and writers throwing everything up the wall and using what sticks.

The Namor character was so far removed from the classic origins of the old Marvel comics, he just came across like a big joke with that ludicrous backstory. The Shuri character is less annoying in this one than she was in the 1st Black Panther film but nevertheless, unable to carry the weight of the film on her tiny narrow shoulders.

Angela Bassett was acting like...Angela Bassett as she's been doing for the past 10 years. A fantastic actress that was given a stupid plot and reasoning to go against the wishes of Namor that sparked the tensions and war.

The Dora Milaje female warriors were even more insufferable this time round than ever before, quite frankly on this evidence, they'd beat the old Avengers and Thanos in one afternoon the way the director has amped them up with nothing more than carry shields and extendable staffs.

That leaves the worst character in the film - Riri Williams aka "Ironheart", the teenage 19-year-old genius from the age of 3 first built her own powered Iron suit??? Yeah ok Disney. More Z-list characters to contend with and roll your eyes at as the world awaits yet another Disney+ content tv show starring Ironheart in 2023.

In this film she yet another Disney heroine with a sulky bad attitude that knows everything and is the key to everything - a well-used and tired Disney trope at this point. The two scenes dedicated to the late great star Chadwick Boseman were exploitive at best, ill-advised at worst.

Of course, I understand the cast and crew wishing to pay tribute to their former cast member, but what was served just didn't hit me in the feels the way the film wishes it did. Everyone has said it already, they should've recast the Black Panther role instead of killing him off, what a dumb decision.

Now the franchise has blackballed itself behind the glaring fact that T'Challa is no more, again a choice that just didn't work. A very poor and disappointing film. Black Panther 2 is a mess of a film that ultimately dishonours the late star.