Movie Review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) co-written and directed by Ryan Coogler

Wakanda is in mourning after the death of T'Challa, their king and Black Panther. He died a year ago and the country still does not have a new leader. Without the Heart-Shaped Herb, there is also no new Black Panther. T'Challa died of a lingering illness and his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) tried to recreate the Herb in her lab but with no success. Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) has been governing but her isolationist policies have not been popular with the rest of the world. The Wakandans don't trust anyone else with vibranium. The United States has fielded a vibranium detector that makes a discover on the Atlantic sea bed. The detector and its crew are attacked by some blue people but the blame for the assault is on Wakanda. The true assailants, Namor (Tenoch Heurta Mejia) and his fellow submarine followers, also have vibranium and do not want the surface dwellers to disturb their homes or get power from vibranium to challenge them. Namor travels to Wakanda where he seeks an alliance to prevent another vibranium detector which was made by a nineteen-year old student at MIT. The Wakandans are not interested in kidnapping and handing over the student, so they refuse. The conflict between Wakanda and Namor's people grows throughout the film.

The tragic death of Chadwick Boseman (who played T'Challa) looms over the movie and provides its most dramatic and heartfelt moments. The grief of the Wakandans, especially former lover Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) who has moved to Haiti to deal with her sadness, is palpable and provides a good start. Then the film bogs down in its plot. The concept of one nation's responsibility to other nations gets unnecessarily drowned out by the conflict between Wakanda and the sea dwellers. A lot of minor and major plot holes (like how the teenager built the vibranium detector without any vibranium to test it on) make the film hard to believe. The post-credits sequence creates an even more nonsensical situation.

Namor's culture is a little underdeveloped and his new origin story (he comes from the Aztec people) does not improve on the Atlantis origin in the comics. Namor is a very conflicted and often evil character in the comics, much like Magneto in the X-Men, but they don't capture that here. He's also a ladies' man in the comics which they try to do unconvincingly. Weirdly, they keep the wings on his ankles which just look silly (plenty of other characters magically fly without flimsy excuses, why not him?). He could have been introduced as the next big villain for the MCU, but he winds up just as a scheming petty tyrant.

Not recommended--this is a huge step down from the first movie, which is one of Marvel's best. So much potential was wasted here.