Miss Flicks

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – Film Review

Brace yourselves, the most emotionally powerful Marvel film has arrived – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The film serves as a poignant tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman while finding a new path for the Black Panther.

The film is set after the death of King T’Challa (Boseman) and follows the leaders of Wakanda as they deal with their grief and learn how to protect their nation without their Black Panther protector. This becomes particularly important when a new threat emerges from a secret undersea community named Talokan.

The fact this movie exists and is a solid entry within the MCU is an impressive achievement considering the hurdles it faced. Director Ryan Coogler was in the middle of writing the sequel’s script when Boseman died in August 2020 and he had to go back to square one and figure out a new story and a way forward without the franchise’s titular character. How this movie handles the loss of T’Challa (and Boseman by extension) is perfect, and it is extremely moving – I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes!

But I have plenty of issues with the movie outside of that. For starters, at two hours and 41 minutes, it is far too long and much longer than it needed to be. The narrative is overstuffed and tries to achieve too much which makes it feel quite messy, scattered and bloated. I wished the story had been stripped back and simplified a bit and didn’t switch between characters and storylines so much. The movie also takes its sweet time to get going, and while I’m glad the T’Challa mourning portion wasn’t rushed, it still felt like too much of a slow-burner by the halfway mark.

I also found the villains quite weak (a perennial MCU problem post-Thanos). Namor (Tenoch Huerta), the leader of the Talokan, is interesting but I couldn’t take him seriously as a villain. I didn’t really buy his motives and therefore the central conflict didn’t have major stakes. The CGI is stunning in places, particularly the world-building, but oddly dodgy in others – and I noticed this the most whenever Namor flew. Also, there are a handful of cool action moments but I didn’t think the sequences were anything special as a whole.

But I cannot fault the cast as they anchor the story with beautifully moving performances. Boseman’s presence is deeply felt because you can sense his co-stars channelling their real grief and using it for the story. Letitia Wright, in particular, is stunning in her emotionally raw turn as T’Challa’s sister Shuri, but Angela Bassett (Queen Ramonda) and Danai Gurira (Okoye) also give touching performances. I really loved the addition to Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, and I cannot wait to see what she does in Ironheart, and I enjoyed Michaela Coel‘s Aneka and wish she was in it more. Also on a positive note, I want to give a shout out to Ruth Carter for her terrific costume designs!

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a beautiful send-off to Boseman but it is also not the return to form I was hoping for. I wanted this movie to jolt me out of my Marvel fatigue and it didn’t quite do that.

In cinemas from Friday 11th November. On Disney+ from 1st February