I never thought the original Black Panther was anywhere near being the best solo Marvel movie, but I did enjoy it and T'Challa's character throughout his appearances. With that being said, when Chadwick Boseman sadly passed, I accepted that this franchise was doomed. I always believed that recasting T'Challa was the only way to go. It would've been incredibly hard to find a good replacement, but the character is very important to the Marvel universe. It is also simply too soon to pass the mantle of Black Panther on. When they confirmed he wouldn't be recast, I felt like it was a big mistake narratively.
Now does Wakanda Forever handle the death of T'Challa/Boseman well? Absolutely! Being able to respect the legacy of the actor while also metatextually connecting the event to an in-universe tragedy is definitely one of the movie's standout features. Regardless, I feel like the movie is a little too reliant on the audience being impacted by Boseman's passing.
Don't get me wrong, the fully silent opening gave me chills. They incorporated the death beautifully and honorably, but the result is what feels like two movies in one. You can clearly tell the original script was written before Chadwick's death. I really respect Coogler's decision to not recast, but I still wish T'Challa and Namor got to cross paths.
My issues spring not from the T'Challa-related parts of the film, but from how the rest feels lacking without his presence. I don't think Shuri works as the protagonist. She was a fun (yet underdeveloped) carefree tech nerd in the original movie and here she takes a 180 to being reserved and bitter. The changes to her character were perhaps necessary for this story, but it doesn't make them good changes for her. Some don't match her at all and her vengeful arc is just T'Challa's from Civil War with a less fitting character. She never struck me as someone who would willingly become the Black Panther and there isn't much impact when she does anyway.
Ramonda is a pleasant surprise in this movie. Her monologues are insane. Angela Bassett deserves all the credit she's been receiving. However, Okoye is the only character I felt really connected to and she is stupidly sidelined a third into the movie. She would've enhanced the film a lot if given more screen time. So would've M'Baku, who is completely wasted. Between them and W'Kabi, who is fully absent, we have three characters connected to T'Challa and it isn't explored how his death affected any of them personally. This is one of many missed opportunities that came with trying to focus the movie on both Talokan and T'Challa's death.
Some of the action scenes are awesome and some drag. As to be expected from Danai Gurira, Okoye's fight scenes are the tensest we've gotten from Marvel all year.
Namor himself is a pretty good villain. In a similar fashion to Killmonger, his actor sells the character for me despite his viewpoints being completely ridiculous. They somehow managed to adapt his crazy mutant powers to live-action in a cool way. Changing his kingdom from Atlantis to Talokan ended up being a really cool idea, even though the place and its people needed more elaboration. There are many more cool concepts they could've explored with the Aztec roots. Hopefully they are saving more about the civilization, the people's powers, and their technology for a Namor project.
Ironheart is an even more underdeveloped part of the movie, undoubtedly to save content for her upcoming show. Her character is just as dumb and not relatable as I expected her to be and her suit looks awful. A Black Panther movie didn't feel like the right place to introduce an Iron Man ripoff.
Also, Ross's entire storyline felt weird and unneeded. It's only included to add awkward colonizer jokes and set up future MCU films. If he and Ironheart were removed, there would definitely be enough room to have included more from the aforementioned underutilized characters.
By the latter half of this movie, the pacing really starts to drag. I've complained recently about Marvel movies like Multiverse of Madness and Love and Thunder being way too short, but this film had no reason to be 2 hours and 40 minutes and feel like it's over 3 hours. There's so much downtime between the action that when the final battle starts, the movie has already overstayed its welcome.
The things I'm disappointed they didn't include or flesh out have no excuse to not be here or be better implemented considering how aggressively long and slow the film is.
So this definitely isn't a bad movie per se, but it's not fantastic either. It's very bold but very flawed with iffy decisions on what to prioritize and how to structure this challenging project. I was pretty disappointed when I first saw it, but there's some great stuff sprinkled throughout. The lack of T'Challa, awkward pacing, and wasted opportunities easily made it worse than the first movie to me.
Now does Wakanda Forever handle the death of T'Challa/Boseman well? Absolutely! Being able to respect the legacy of the actor while also metatextually connecting the event to an in-universe tragedy is definitely one of the movie's standout features. Regardless, I feel like the movie is a little too reliant on the audience being impacted by Boseman's passing.
Don't get me wrong, the fully silent opening gave me chills. They incorporated the death beautifully and honorably, but the result is what feels like two movies in one. You can clearly tell the original script was written before Chadwick's death. I really respect Coogler's decision to not recast, but I still wish T'Challa and Namor got to cross paths.
My issues spring not from the T'Challa-related parts of the film, but from how the rest feels lacking without his presence. I don't think Shuri works as the protagonist. She was a fun (yet underdeveloped) carefree tech nerd in the original movie and here she takes a 180 to being reserved and bitter. The changes to her character were perhaps necessary for this story, but it doesn't make them good changes for her. Some don't match her at all and her vengeful arc is just T'Challa's from Civil War with a less fitting character. She never struck me as someone who would willingly become the Black Panther and there isn't much impact when she does anyway.
Ramonda is a pleasant surprise in this movie. Her monologues are insane. Angela Bassett deserves all the credit she's been receiving. However, Okoye is the only character I felt really connected to and she is stupidly sidelined a third into the movie. She would've enhanced the film a lot if given more screen time. So would've M'Baku, who is completely wasted. Between them and W'Kabi, who is fully absent, we have three characters connected to T'Challa and it isn't explored how his death affected any of them personally. This is one of many missed opportunities that came with trying to focus the movie on both Talokan and T'Challa's death.
Some of the action scenes are awesome and some drag. As to be expected from Danai Gurira, Okoye's fight scenes are the tensest we've gotten from Marvel all year.
Namor himself is a pretty good villain. In a similar fashion to Killmonger, his actor sells the character for me despite his viewpoints being completely ridiculous. They somehow managed to adapt his crazy mutant powers to live-action in a cool way. Changing his kingdom from Atlantis to Talokan ended up being a really cool idea, even though the place and its people needed more elaboration. There are many more cool concepts they could've explored with the Aztec roots. Hopefully they are saving more about the civilization, the people's powers, and their technology for a Namor project.
Ironheart is an even more underdeveloped part of the movie, undoubtedly to save content for her upcoming show. Her character is just as dumb and not relatable as I expected her to be and her suit looks awful. A Black Panther movie didn't feel like the right place to introduce an Iron Man ripoff.
Also, Ross's entire storyline felt weird and unneeded. It's only included to add awkward colonizer jokes and set up future MCU films. If he and Ironheart were removed, there would definitely be enough room to have included more from the aforementioned underutilized characters.
By the latter half of this movie, the pacing really starts to drag. I've complained recently about Marvel movies like Multiverse of Madness and Love and Thunder being way too short, but this film had no reason to be 2 hours and 40 minutes and feel like it's over 3 hours. There's so much downtime between the action that when the final battle starts, the movie has already overstayed its welcome.
The things I'm disappointed they didn't include or flesh out have no excuse to not be here or be better implemented considering how aggressively long and slow the film is.
So this definitely isn't a bad movie per se, but it's not fantastic either. It's very bold but very flawed with iffy decisions on what to prioritize and how to structure this challenging project. I was pretty disappointed when I first saw it, but there's some great stuff sprinkled throughout. The lack of T'Challa, awkward pacing, and wasted opportunities easily made it worse than the first movie to me.