Marvel is back for its final film of Phase 4, and it’s the return to Wakanda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever! This film had the highest expectations of almost any MCU movie to date and had the most difficult journey to success by far. With that being said, Wakanda Forever is a long, clunky mess of a film with the best of intentions.
Ryan Coogler is back to co-write and direct after the first film, but as we all know, he had to re- write this sequel in only a couple of months after the shocking passing of Black Panther himself, Chadwick Boseman. Wakanda Forever’s biggest task were to show it’s love to the memory of Chadwick, while also showing the audience that this world continues on without him. I think it succeeds in that facet for the most part, I just wish the execution was better. The story feels drawn out, with tons and tons of exposition to explain it’s more complicated plot, with writing and editing issues to go along with it.
Without going into real spoiler territory, this film’s cast is all pretty great. Mostly being led by Letitia Wright as Princess Shuri, Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, and newcomer Tenoch Huerta as the mutant Namor. Namor is an incredibly powerful character, and the first mutant Marvel ever created in the comics! He is the ruler of a kingdom in the sea, with powers including flight, super-strength, and the ability to breathe both in and out of water. I think Namor is one of the best pieces of this film. The writing still makes the character struggle at points, but Tenoch Huerta does a great job and I believe the character has a ton of potential moving forward.
Letitia Wright had a mountain to climb for this movie, transitioning from a side character with limited screen time to the lead of one of the biggest sequels of all time. I think she does her best in this film, and overall, it’s a pretty good performance.
Wakanda Forever struggles with pacing throughout, and you can feel it’s runtime of 2 hours and 45 minutes for sure, but even after the first two acts, while all of that was true, I was still really on board for the story they were trying to tell. The third act falls apart in a lot of ways for me. Whether it’s the script feeling like it should’ve been touched up, to unfinished CGI, I started to make uncontrollable faces asking “why?” throughout. It has some great action and emotional performances, but its clunky with almost every change of camera angles. In the end, this is not the worst movie ever, not even close. As a die-hard Marvel fan though, and a lover of the first film, I had high expectations for this one and it didn’t live up to any of them for me. I still think its very enjoyable and worth seeing on the biggest screen possible! Also, be sure to stick around for the one post-credits scene, it’s a tearjerker for sure!
'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' opens in Theaters on November 11th, 2022
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Logan Wischmeier (Contributing Editor) is a Texas native and a massive fan of all genres of film. You can find him talking about movies on YouTube or in line for the latest Star Wars/Comic Book film.Click Here to check out Logan's Articles.