Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

★★★1/2

Before I proceed with my assessment, there are two things that need to be mentioned.

One, with the passing of Chadwick Boseman, the Black Panther 2 team, led by returning director Ryan Coogler, has an unenviable task of continuing the franchise without their star lead. Should they recast, and if not, how are they going to explain the absence of such a popular character as King T’Challa, the Black Panther? For that, I’m truly grateful of the work and effort they have done here, to honour Boseman in a movie that also needed to be popcorn entertainment.

Two, that many of us are still mourning two years after. Boseman’s friends and colleagues were probably already working on the sequel when it happened. They needed an outlet for their grief, and the film needed to reflect that in some ways, and it did. The tone of the film was more sombre and darker than the first. Grieving fans would also be expecting and appreciative of an acknowledgement of his loss in the film. The film was successful on this part.

These two components should be enough to make a great Black Panther sequel, taking into consideration the circumstances, and it has been for many people. I was saddened by what has happened, and I do feel with the rest of you. The movie is a great tribute to the star, and I am glad that everyone is loving it immensely.

So it might be irksome to hear any criticisms about the film. And I do have a few, despite my admiration and appreciation of what they have attempted to do. Apart from the great craftsmanship and work done by the crew behind the camera, the actors have all done exceptionally in front of it. Angela Bassett, Tenoch Huerta, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Lupita Nyong’o, Florence Kasumba and many others did amazing work here. It seemed unfair that Letitia Wright had to shoulder the burden of the lead role and all the expectations and responsibilities that come with it. She is a real champ for pushing herself the way she did in this film.

But I wished Marvel would have given the team more time to come up with a tighter and more coherent story, because the end product felt like a patchwork of mismatching tones and intentions. It started off promisingly; it looked like we were getting a character exploration on Shuri, that we get to understand her as a character of her own, what makes her tick and what drives her. But then Marvel has to Marvel, so several new characters needed to be introduced and set up for future use, including comic book favorite Namor, who even got a lengthy flashback while Shuri only had brief wordless cutscenes from earlier films. Then we have Riri Williams here to promote her upcoming Ironheart series, and the return of (or a dropped-in-out-of-nowhere character if you’ve never seen The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Disney+ series) CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine because they needed people to remember who she was when the Thunderbolts movie rolls out. There are some character moments for Shuri during the Talokan scenes, but it wasn’t enough. She has always been a peripheral character in all the films she has appeared in. Wright and Boseman did a great job establishing their relationships, but it was still surface-level stuff. Shuri desperately needed a Wandavision-like backstory, or like a flashback to her childhood with T’Challa to flesh out her relationship with her brother a little more, so that her grief would be a little more understandable, relatable and impactful when it culminated close to the finale. I find it puzzling that her arc was painted in quick and broad strokes, while the fish guy got more time for nuances.

I could be wrong about this. I was wrong about films like The Batman, The Dark Knight, and a few others, where my feelings changed for the better upon second viewing. But as it stands right now, and as much as I appreciate the work of these wonderful people who poured their hearts into this film, the movie still felt bloated and uneven at least to me, and I wished they had tightened the story a little more, and find a more coherent way to inject in all the future project tie-ins, if that is even possible.

But of course, the real burning question on everybody’s mind is:

Is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever better than Thor: Love and Thunder?

Yes.

And thus ends Phase IV of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.