Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Year: 2022
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong'o & Letitia Wright
Runtime: 161 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 29/11/22
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Angela Bassett, Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong'o & Letitia Wright
Runtime: 161 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 29/11/22
I’d like to preface this review by saying I certainly don’t envy the position director Ryan Coogler must have been in when creating Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It has been well reported over the years that it is difficult enough to be a creative working within the constraints of a franchise machine, let alone one as massive as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But to have completed the script and been ready for shooting only for your leading actor to tragically and unexpectedly pass away would have been not only heart-breaking but also would have put Coogler in an impossible situation as to how to actually make the film without the central character being there.
Whilst I can’t compare what I do here to what Coogler experienced, it also puts me in a difficult position writing this review. Because there’s a lot that Wakanda Forever does incredibly well, but there’s a lot that holds it back from true excellence and some of that is unfortunately baggage relating to this real-world tragedy. But, like Coogler, I’m going to do my best here.
Following the unexpected and sudden death of King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the nation of Wakanda is thrust into a period of mourning. But when an underwater nation, Talokan, led by their king Namoor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), makes themselves known to Wakanda, they ask for assistance in waging war on the worlds superpowers in order to protect deposits of Vibranium buried under the ocean floor. Unwilling to wage war on the rest of the world but desiring to keep the limitless power of Vibranium out of the hands of imperialist warmongers, Wakanda’s Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), General Okoye (Danai Gurira), and former Wakandan spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) must find a peaceful solution without the aid of their sacred Black Panther.
Whilst I can’t compare what I do here to what Coogler experienced, it also puts me in a difficult position writing this review. Because there’s a lot that Wakanda Forever does incredibly well, but there’s a lot that holds it back from true excellence and some of that is unfortunately baggage relating to this real-world tragedy. But, like Coogler, I’m going to do my best here.
Following the unexpected and sudden death of King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the nation of Wakanda is thrust into a period of mourning. But when an underwater nation, Talokan, led by their king Namoor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), makes themselves known to Wakanda, they ask for assistance in waging war on the worlds superpowers in order to protect deposits of Vibranium buried under the ocean floor. Unwilling to wage war on the rest of the world but desiring to keep the limitless power of Vibranium out of the hands of imperialist warmongers, Wakanda’s Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), General Okoye (Danai Gurira), and former Wakandan spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) must find a peaceful solution without the aid of their sacred Black Panther.
I feel that the way Wakanda Forever addresses the elephant in the room, Boseman’s passing, is both one of the greatest strengths but also its heaviest burden. For those going in expecting a typical Marvel movie, you’re going to be disappointed, especially when compared to the first Black Panther film. Wakanda Forever is a slow burn drama about grief and mourning, about how such an event can alter the way you look at and understand the world, and about how different people come to terms with it. By making T’Challa’s (and by extension Boseman’s) death so central to the narrative, it often meant that I struggled to fully engross myself in the film whenever the plot moved away from it to handle the Talokan problem. In fact, I wish that Wakanda Forever had bucked tradition as hard as it possibly could, and not had a traditional antagonistic threat, instead be a film about a nation regaining its identity following an unimaginable tragedy. Because T’Challa/Boseman’s death is so integral to the character development, I really struggled with basically any other element of the film. The way Coogler handles the grief, and the mourning is pure gold, but unfortunately this is a superhero film, and that means that it needs to have high stakes action and big punch ups which felt tonally at odds with the emotional core of the film.
That being said, the Talokan stuff is pretty good too, and had the film not needed to spend so much time addressing the aforementioned tragedy then I think it would have been fine. Namoor is not as compelling a villain as Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger from the original film, yet he represents the polar opposite ideology, one that more closely aligned with T’Challa, yet of course in a way that is morally unjust. Putting imperialism at the forefront of this part of the story works really well, Talokan is a nation that has experienced the horrendous effects of slavery, and now has the power to stop nations like the United States from obtaining the most powerful element on the planet. They’re scared of being invaded again, they’re scared of modern imperialism and slavery, and so they are prepared to pre-emptively strike to protect themselves.
What makes it hard for me to be properly invested with the Talokan stuff is the way it’s presented visually. It reeks of James Cameron’s Avatar, and not even just a little bit, they’re blue and they live underwater, and with Avatar: The Way of Water coming out in under a month, this feels deliberate and it’s incredibly distracting.
In fact, the visuals are what rub me up the wrong way about Wakanda Forever the most. Whilst the cinematography is for the most part pretty good with some really gorgeous shots every now and again, the way the film is choppily edited, and the horrendous CGI work are simple inexcusable.
Marvel’s steadily declining CGI quality has been no secret, and it’s easy to pinpoint why it’s happening. Too much reliance of digital visual effects with not enough time or resources dedicated to it, Marvel’s team of animators is stretched so thin at this point, and it really shows. Some of the most obvious examples are that of Riri Williams’ (Dominique Thorne) Ironheart suit, and Namoor’s flying. The water effects do look outstanding by comparison, but despite that looking great it’s not enough to distract from the other woefully low-quality digital effects.
I went out of my way to look up who edited this mess because it’s borderline criminal how excessive the cuts and use of audio dubbing is. Michael P. Sawyer, Kelley Dixon, and Jennifer Lane, named and shamed for some of the worst editing I have seen since Transformers: The Last Knight. At one point in the film there was a subdued dialogue scene between two characters, Shuri and Namoor, and I counted eight cuts within twenty seconds. That’s little over two seconds per shot, and most of those twenty seconds only Shuri was talking. There was simply no need to have that many cuts, some of which lasted only a second or so, and I can tell it was all done so that the audio could be dubbed over. But it was so distracting, and it actually started to make my eyes hurt a bit because the camera just wouldn’t sit still on anything for longer than it took for someone to get a word out. That’s just one example but there are countless times where there are cutaway shots to something entirely pointless for the briefest of moments, and a lack of flow to the combat sequences because the cuts are so jarring.
This combined with a bloated runtime that’s at least twenty minutes too long, countless story threads that are inconsequential or included simply to connect Wakanda Forever to the wider MCU (just in case you forgot you were watching a Marvel film). It was a chore to watch at times, and that’s a great shame because there’s something really magical and poignant at the core of it all.
That being said, the Talokan stuff is pretty good too, and had the film not needed to spend so much time addressing the aforementioned tragedy then I think it would have been fine. Namoor is not as compelling a villain as Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger from the original film, yet he represents the polar opposite ideology, one that more closely aligned with T’Challa, yet of course in a way that is morally unjust. Putting imperialism at the forefront of this part of the story works really well, Talokan is a nation that has experienced the horrendous effects of slavery, and now has the power to stop nations like the United States from obtaining the most powerful element on the planet. They’re scared of being invaded again, they’re scared of modern imperialism and slavery, and so they are prepared to pre-emptively strike to protect themselves.
What makes it hard for me to be properly invested with the Talokan stuff is the way it’s presented visually. It reeks of James Cameron’s Avatar, and not even just a little bit, they’re blue and they live underwater, and with Avatar: The Way of Water coming out in under a month, this feels deliberate and it’s incredibly distracting.
In fact, the visuals are what rub me up the wrong way about Wakanda Forever the most. Whilst the cinematography is for the most part pretty good with some really gorgeous shots every now and again, the way the film is choppily edited, and the horrendous CGI work are simple inexcusable.
Marvel’s steadily declining CGI quality has been no secret, and it’s easy to pinpoint why it’s happening. Too much reliance of digital visual effects with not enough time or resources dedicated to it, Marvel’s team of animators is stretched so thin at this point, and it really shows. Some of the most obvious examples are that of Riri Williams’ (Dominique Thorne) Ironheart suit, and Namoor’s flying. The water effects do look outstanding by comparison, but despite that looking great it’s not enough to distract from the other woefully low-quality digital effects.
I went out of my way to look up who edited this mess because it’s borderline criminal how excessive the cuts and use of audio dubbing is. Michael P. Sawyer, Kelley Dixon, and Jennifer Lane, named and shamed for some of the worst editing I have seen since Transformers: The Last Knight. At one point in the film there was a subdued dialogue scene between two characters, Shuri and Namoor, and I counted eight cuts within twenty seconds. That’s little over two seconds per shot, and most of those twenty seconds only Shuri was talking. There was simply no need to have that many cuts, some of which lasted only a second or so, and I can tell it was all done so that the audio could be dubbed over. But it was so distracting, and it actually started to make my eyes hurt a bit because the camera just wouldn’t sit still on anything for longer than it took for someone to get a word out. That’s just one example but there are countless times where there are cutaway shots to something entirely pointless for the briefest of moments, and a lack of flow to the combat sequences because the cuts are so jarring.
This combined with a bloated runtime that’s at least twenty minutes too long, countless story threads that are inconsequential or included simply to connect Wakanda Forever to the wider MCU (just in case you forgot you were watching a Marvel film). It was a chore to watch at times, and that’s a great shame because there’s something really magical and poignant at the core of it all.
But to end on a high I want to talk about the simply magnificent performances from the leading ladies. Letitia Wright fills Boseman’s shoes as the leading actress and despite being big boots to fill, she really grows into the performance. It’s often safe to assume that the quirky sidekick character getting a more central role will spell disaster, but Wright brings a completely different energy to the performance than she did in Black Panther or Avengers: Infinity War. An energy that still feels like Shuri, but more mature with a loss of innocence. Gurira and Nyong’o were equally thrilling to watch, delivering career best performances in both dialogue exchanges and action sequences. But it’s Anglea Bassett who steals the show here with a performance so powerful it almost moved me to tears at times. Never in the MCU before has there been a performance this powerful or graceful, so much so that when Bassett really gets going, I totally forgot I was watching an MCU film. Without wanting to sound cliché, this performance really is Oscar worthy, and I really hope that the Academy sit up and pay attention to how phenomenal she was in this film.
Wakanda Forever really is a mixed bag and I think some of that was Coogler making the best of a bad situation. For what Wakanda Forever achieves whilst taking into consideration what it struggled against, it’s a very impressive film. However, the staple Marvel let down of shoddy CGI, bloated runtimes, and an insistence on awkwardly shoehorning in cameos and setup for future projects drags an otherwise impressive and unique entry in the franchise back down to the calibre of their other recent and underwhelming projects.
Wakanda Forever was never going to be able to move past Boseman, and the way Coogler has woven reality into this fantasy world is truly moving. The amazing performances from all of the main cast, and a feeling that this was a real passion project for everyone involved do redeem a lot of Wakanda Forever’s more benign issues, but unfortunately there is no escaping the most egregious and pervasive problems presented by the film's technical failings.
For the most part a fitting tribute to a fallen star, always shining but never forgotten.
Wakanda Forever really is a mixed bag and I think some of that was Coogler making the best of a bad situation. For what Wakanda Forever achieves whilst taking into consideration what it struggled against, it’s a very impressive film. However, the staple Marvel let down of shoddy CGI, bloated runtimes, and an insistence on awkwardly shoehorning in cameos and setup for future projects drags an otherwise impressive and unique entry in the franchise back down to the calibre of their other recent and underwhelming projects.
Wakanda Forever was never going to be able to move past Boseman, and the way Coogler has woven reality into this fantasy world is truly moving. The amazing performances from all of the main cast, and a feeling that this was a real passion project for everyone involved do redeem a lot of Wakanda Forever’s more benign issues, but unfortunately there is no escaping the most egregious and pervasive problems presented by the film's technical failings.
For the most part a fitting tribute to a fallen star, always shining but never forgotten.