LM23 Rating: Long live Wakanda!
Big popcorn movies often hit every mark except for the villain. It’s as if all of the time and resources were spent on the heroes, and they just wing it with the villain. The modern Terminator films all fell flat because of the lack of a T-1000 and even the great Christian Bale was wasted in this summer’s Thor: Love & Thunder.
A villain without love is the scariest
But Wakanda Forever by Ryan Coogler nailed it this time. Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) is the scariest of villains because he can go from a welcoming host, as he did when he showed Princess Shuri around their under sea home. But in the next second, he and his army has arrived uninvited to Wakanda and they’re killing most everyone in their way, including the heart of Wakanda.
There has been a lot of talk from fans and who else about how Wakanda Forever can carry the torch forward from Chadwick Boseman and the super hero film altering, Academy Award nominated, Black Panther.
There is so much life and layers beyond just one character
For those going into this film not expecting a Chadwick Boseman substitute, Wakanda Forever proves that there is life and layers more to the Black Panther universe beyond T’Challa.
The main storyline of Wakanda Forever is the wars and soon to be wars because of vibranium. For the longest time, it was thought the metallic element was only available in Wakanda which made the tiny nation one of the most powerful in the world. But vibranium apparently exists deep in the ocean called Talokan. Talokan has many parallels to Wakanda. It’s a utopia for its citizens but only because they’re isolated and cut off from the rest of the society. There’s no mixing and mingling with the surface world as that risks the existence of Talokan.
Perhaps one of the few weak points of the film is the motivation of Namor and his people of fighting so fiercely to be anonymous and unknown to the world. We learned that colonizers had destroyed Namor mother’s village and that perhaps is the ultimate reason why Namor wants nothing to do with the rest of the world. He’s not trying to start something, but he will scorch the earth if he even has a whiff of his turf being discovered.
Not fully certain why Namor is motivated to fight after years of peace in isolation
The need for Namor to fight and obliterate the world is not quite fully explained or understood. He’s very quick on the draw to pick a fight with Wakanda and seems very confident that his team is better. That also wasn’t quite clearly explained either. But it’s very evident that Namor and his army are ruthless and powerful and what we saw was probably just a small percentage of the carnage they are capable of.
But nevertheless, Namor takes the fight to Wakanda because there’s a scientist who has created a machine that can detect vibranium. He feels like there’s no other choice, but to kill the scientist and Shuri and her people better get on board.
The scientist in question if the super cute and super smart MIT student, Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne). Riri is a prodigy who somehow made something at school which then got into the hands of the CIA or government operatives searching for vibranium. Though Namor’s beef is with Riri, the Wakandans refusal to hand over the scientist therefore drags them into a war they didn’t ask for against Namor and his people.
We needed more origin story for Riri
The Riri character is another weak point of the film. Not because the character wasn’t great, but it seemed to be shoehorned into the plot and we didn’t quite get the story of this prodigy unlike how we learned so much about Namor’s background.
We’re supposed to believe a random teen prodigy could have created a machine that can detect vibranium, but Shuri and the Queen (played by the magnificient, the iconic, the needs an Oscar now Angela Bassett), have no idea about this machine? There’s a lot of teen prodigies in the world and it just seems strange that only Riri figured this out. We’re also supposed to believe later on that Riri is able to make a suit like Iron Man and then fight in the final battle between Wakanda and Namor’s army.
The movie is almost three hours, but it flew by pretty quick. There are a lot of quiet and serious scenes mixed together with exciting, action sequences. The car chase scene where the FBI are after Riri, Shuri, and
Okoye was the warrior MVP
Okoye was riveting. I thought I fell off a cliff when the explosion happened and both Shuri and Okoye crashed in slow motion.
The hand to hand combat scenes were also amazing. The general of the Wakanda army, Okoye, is the MVP fighter of the film. She and her equivalent of Namor’s army oddly had the more intense and graphic fight scenes. Even though it was a final showdown between the new Black Panther (Shuri) and Namor in the end, the fighting didn’t seem quite believable or fair. Shuri is so lithe that it seemed almost not right that Namor, who’s built like a tank, is throwing blows at her. Even with her Black Panther powers, it just didn’t seem right. But Okoye fighting Namor’s warrior guy, yes. Totally believable. Totally want to see another showdown between these two.
This is just the beginning of the new chapter of Black Panther
Wakanda Forever ended with peace for now between Wakanda and Namor’s people. But the lust for power is too much it seems. As Shuri goes to Haiti to finish her mourning rituals for T’Challah, M’Baku announces he wants another shot at the throne. And Namora isn’t buying that all is fine with the Wakandans. It’s pretty clear that Wakanda Forever is the start of a brand new chapter and so it acts almost like an origin film and so there’s a lot of loose ends that you know is meant to set up the sequel.
Definitely go see Wakanda Forever. Everyone stepped up to the plate. Congratulations to Ryan Coogler and the entire cast. And amazing tribute to Chadwick in the Marvel title sequence at the beginning of the movie.
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