Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2022

I’m honestly a little bit surprised that I have continued my return to writing for this site after having written only 5 reviews in 3 years and now this is my fifth review in just over 1 month. I’m actually quite happy getting back into the rhythm and hope to continue where my aim is to not go more than 2 weeks without a review. Though that may be questionable once I catch up with all the heavy hitters from Marvel and DC. I still have 2 more MCU films to catch up with, a few Sony Marvel films, and many DC films though I imagine I’ll mix in an ultra low budget film here and there though the next 2 will definitely be Brave New World and Thunderbolts*. But getting back to the topic at hand, I’ve finally managed to catch up with Wakanda Forever from back in 2022. At the time I chose to watch and review Black Adam and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special instead which in hindsight, was likely a mistake. I did enjoy Black Adam more than most, but Wakanda Forever is a much better film overall, with a touching tribute to Chadwick Boseman both at the beginning and the end of the film. It’s also a celebration of culture with almost zero time spent with white American characters, and besides the African culture represented through the Wakandan lens, there’s also the South American Mayan culture influenced in the Talokan underwater race along with a little bit of time spent in Haiti.

This film does a lot of restructuring Wakanda after the real life death of Chadwick Boseman, and in a controversial decision it was decided to retire his character of T’Chala and have his character die in the MCU continuity as well, though in the end credits of the movie they do open the door to recast the role in the near future by introducing his son who is also named T’Chala, although it’s presented as a secret name. And considering Marvel already has a slate of movies for the next 5 movies, he could easily be introduced as a young adult shortly after that. The film does a good job at handling the character’s death, allowing Angela Bassett’s Ramonda to become Queen in a powerhouse performance, while Letitia Wright’s Shuri retracts into her work echoing Tony Stark in Iron Man 3. She becomes angry at her brother’s death and the fact that she was powerless to stop it, and when Namor comes into play and kills her Mother on top of that, it sends her over the edge. It was a great surprise to see the return of Michael B Jordan’s Killmonger appear to Shuri when she manages to recreate the heart-shaped herb to become the next Black Panther as he really helped focus in on her character’s anger and desire for revenge. It was all well-connected and well-written.

The action was also decently fun and enjoyable although the Talokan are predictably similar to the Atlanteans in the Aquaman movies though here they are blue and have to wear water-filled breathing apparatuses when they are on land, though Namor himself for hand-wavy reasons is not blue and also has comics-accurate wings on his ankles that allow him to fly. As a character, Namor is well written and formidable as not only the king of an underwater kingdom comparable in power to Wakanda, but he is also near-immortal at several hundred years old and looked at by his people more like a god than a king. While the movie didn’t focus too much on his winged ankles he did feel a little overpowered on occasion when he was able to take out the Wakandan air support with ease.

This movie is also the introduction of Riri Williams who eventually becomes Ironheart, the college student with a knock-off Iron Man suit. She has her own version of a Mark I suit when Shuri and Okoye first recruit her slash find her for Namor. She doesn’t get a ton to do other than follow Shuri down to not-Atlantis then get saved by Ramonda which gives her enough motiviation to help the Wakandans in the final battle with the not-Atlanteans as Shuri helps build a more streamlined and personalized Ironheart suit (though they never use that name in this movie) though she is not allowed to take the Wakandan-tech suit with her back to America. There’s also a bit of a C-plot with Martin Freeman’s Everett Ross and Julia Loise-Dreyfus’s Valeria Allegra de Fontaine who used to be married to each other which adds a bit of fun to their dynamic and adds a bit of character to Fontaine.

In all, this was a great bit of worldbuilding to the MCU. It was a nice introduction to Namor and the not-Atlanteans in a way that didn’t feel quite so insular-for-insular’s sake as the Eternals did. Many characters had a nice arc to them, even Okoye and M’baku, the latter of which has really evolved from an antagonistic and reluctant ally to a caring mentor and almost father figure to Shuri. Within the context of where the character development ended up at the end of this movie, it made sense to put him into position as the next leader of Wakanda rather than propel Shuri into that role. It makes me curious to see where these characters have evolved to when they come back for Doomsday. But this was the right way to make a self-contained MCU movie that still included some interconnected elements. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.