Hogan Reviews

The final film in “Phase 4”, otherwise known as the “bit in between two big story arcs”, finishes in the same way as the others, as in being perfectly fine but not really worth shouting about. Sadly a lot of this has to do with the passing of Chadwick Boseman, whose charismatic presence was extremely missed from the film, and the choice of making Letitia Wright’s Shuri character the new central figure. Still though, we finally got an MCU version of Namor and he even has the crappy looking ankle wings! Hooray! Let’s take a close look…

As mentioned not only in the opening paragraph but all over the media and all over the film itself, the unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman is severely felt here. In the film all the Wakandan characters’ story arcs are all tied to his passing and outside of the film I just never felt invested in the story because it felt like there wasn’t a central figure to “cheer for”, for a lack of a better term. Letitia Wright, even ignoring her controversial twitter posts, just never connected with me as the new lead, she just felt like a side character who was suddenly thrusted into the lead role… which is exactly what she was! I’m not sure what would’ve been a better option but there had to have been one, recasting would be weird but a new Wakandan character taking up the Black Panther mantle would’ve been better. Yes, Shuri becomes the Black Panther, I’d have saved that for the Spoiler section if it weren’t all over the trailers AND posters for film. She first hides away in her lab before going on something of a journey of vengeance before finding her feet as a hero during the final confrontation, it’s a perfectly tried and true plot thread but I never felt invested in her.

It’s the new Black Panther! … I think, that’s the problem with black suited heroes in a dark area…

Honestly Shuri’s mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) was a more interesting character, able to grieve and come to terms with her son’s death and try to inspire her daughter to do the same all while having to take on ruling her country during a time of crisis. Thanks to T’Challa making Wakanda’s existence public in the previous film countries from all over the world wish to have some of their valued Vibranium but she refuses to give it due to not trusting them to not just make weapons with them. T’Challa’s ex Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) would have also made a better candidate for lead, she left Wakanda and started a new life but is pulled back into their world to help with their crisis. Danai Gurira returns as Okoye of the Dora Milaje and still makes for an entertainingly deadpan imposing bodyguard figure, and Winston Duke also makes a comeback as M’Baku, the leader of the Wakandan northern tribe who are now welcome partners to the country proper. He’s charismatic in a fun way, so he wouldn’t have made a good central character replacement either, to be fair. He was good in role though!

Lead antagonist Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) is vastly different from the comics but this new character at least works well within this film. Instead of being a Greek mutant from the sunken city of Atlantis he is a member of a Mayan settlement that used a magic plant to escape the Spanish and live underwater, though he is at least a mutant with tiny ankle wings, pointy ears and slower aging though, that’s the same across both mediums. However Namor from the comics is arrogant and violently against humanity in order to protect his underwater home but this Namor is more understanding and sympathetic, having a legit reason to distrust the people of the surface world given they were responsible for his mother’s death and enslaving a bunch of his people when he was still an impressionable boy. That being said once the US government detects Vibranium in an ocean trench near his underwater city of Talokan Namor attacks them and prepares his people for a war against the entire planet, so… he’s not lacking in confidence at least! He bonds with Shuri and wishes for Wakanda to join forces with him, but when they refuse he makes them his first target. I can’t say Tenoch has much of a commanding presence about him either, which helps with the more sympathetic part but not the would-be world conqueror part.

“Did you just make fun of my ankle wings?!” “… Yes.” “Oh. That’s not very nice.”

Lastly we’re introduced to Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) who in the comics would become Ironheart, a sort-of successor to Iron Man that frankly flopped, as far as I can tell. Here she is a genius MIT student who was actually the one who invented the Vibranium detector that the US used and so becomes a target for Namor and therefore is taken in by Wakanda. Sadly she makes literally zero impression, having one or two funny scenes in her introduction and then slowly disappearing into the background. She does make her own version of the Iron Man suit though and takes part in the final battle, so… that’s something. She’ll need a lot more / any character if she’s being set up to lead her own series though. I also have to say that Martin Freeman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus reprise their roles as CIA agents Everett Ross and Valentina de Fontaine but their brief story feels extremely detached from the main plot and frankly wasn’t that interesting. It was like they felt like they needed Ross in because it’s a sequel but didn’t know how to fit him in.

So the effects were good, there were some fun scenes both humour and action-wise, and I can’t say I was bored, but none of the characters stood out as big time leads and therefore it felt lower-tier somehow. Plus there were some really lazy writing in the final third that I’ll get to in the spoiler section…

Overall Thoughts:

This car-filled battle on a bridge reminded me strongly of the car-filled battle on a bridge in Black Widow…

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has the usual MCU mix of humour and fun action scenes but it’s severely lacking a charismatic lead performer and some of the lazy writing during the final third was frankly embarrassing. One of the weaker MCU efforts, though obviously a lot of that was out of their control, tragically…

I mentioned lazy writing towards the end a few times in my review and they come in three major scenes, starting when Namor finally invades Wakanda and his army decimates the city, kills their monarch and has their army on the run so decides to give them five days to regroup before he returns and finishes the job. Why? No reason given, the writer just needed to give Shuri time to become Black Panther and for Okoye and Riri to get new exosuits, it made literally zero sense to give your enemy time to regroup when you have then on the ropes. Then the Wakandans plan is to, get this, attack the water-based army, an army that has to wear breathers on land because they’re at such a disadvantage, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN. They literally sail out on a large black boat and do battle surrounded entirely by water. Oddly it doesn’t go in their favour, who would’ve thought?!

M’Baku raises his hand when someone asks who should be the next Black Panther. Everyone ignores him. Poor M’Baku…

Luckily for them Shuri and Namor are having a battle nearby that is really going to be the deciding factor and oddly Shuri is impaled through the gut and pinned to a nearby rock and how does she survive? … she pulls it out and her Black Panther suit reforms over the wound. She then finishes the fight without showing much pain and its never mentioned again. I’m sorry, but huh? How … how? Since when was super-healing a Black Panther ability? It was so weird… Anyway, Namor yields to Shuri and they agree to not only peace but to help each other out if either are attacked, but to not go on the offensive themselves. We then get a final scene where Shuri finds out that T’Challa has a son also called T’Challa who Nakia had been raising in secret as Boseman T’Challa didn’t want his son to have to deal with the pressure. That’ll be a fun pay-off if the MCU is still around in a decade and a half or so…