All right, so pushing on with the final movies and shows belonging to Marvel's Phase Four, I have come to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the favourite Phase Four film of many. I was wary, to be honest. While the first Black Panther movie had likeable goodies and great villains, it wasn't really my cup of tea. I expected more of the same and with perhaps even more worthiness. But while this film isn't one of my favourite Marvel things, I was pleasantly surprised by it. Let's get started with the overview:
Movie set-up: The kingdom of Wakanda and the royal family are reeling after the death of the noble T'Challa aka the Black Panther from an unspecified illness. T'Challa's sister Shuri, a scientific prodigy, blames herself for not having been able to find a cure for her brother and buries herself in work. Meanwhile, her mother the Queen has a hard time with the UN, or rather they're having a hard time with her as Wakanda isn't exporting any of their much-coveted wonder mineral vibranium. As vibranium is the country's main asset, one can't help but wonder how T'Challa's "one tribe" vision is coming along, exactly.
Anyway, things are about to get worse as the US finds vibranium elsewhere, in the wide ocean – only to be set upon by mysterious merfolk. Wakanda gets the blame somehow. Also, the head of the merpeople, called Namor, pays the Queen and Shuri a visit. He also blames Wakanda, in this case for opening the surface world's eyes to the wonders of vibranium. Fearing the detection of his underwater kingdom Talokan (Atlantis in all but name), he demands that they help find the person who built the US's vibranium detector, or else...
Shuri has been willing to let the Black Panther legend die with her brother, but as the conflict escalates she finds she has to think again. Only, will she be worthy of walking in T'Challa's footsteps?
Overall impression: This film looked set to be critic-proof. As long as it handled the absence of Chadwick Boseman, who tragically died of cancer in 2020 and thus couldn't reprise the role of T'Challa, in a respectful manner (which it did), surely no-one would be heartless enough to find it anything else than spectacular, especially considering the high worthiness factor of the Black Panther franchise.
At the same time, the film's creators were left with a "Hamlet without the Prince" dilemma. Yes, another character could take over as Black Panther – after all, it's already part of the set-up that the title of Black Panther is handed down throughout the generations – but the trouble was finding the perfect fit. The other heroic characters already had established parts to play and characteristics that rhymed more or less well with the role of franchise-fronting lead ass-kicker.
I wasn't thrilled to hear it was going to be Shuri who donned the black suit, ironically because she was one of the characters I enjoyed most in the first film. I liked her quirkiness, humour and brains – characteristics not traditionally on display in defender-of-the-nation action heroes (not that T'Challa wasn't intelligent, but he was wise rather than clever-clever like Shuri).
In the end, the film didn't turn out to be as depressing or moralising as I feared. The film makers found a way to pay moving tribute to their deceased lead actor without losing sight of the difference between Boseman and T'Challa. It's T'Challa the fictional character's death that is crucial to the story being told. More than his combative skills, it's his compassion and sense of diplomacy that his country misses. Queen Ramonda (in a power-house performance by Angela Bassett) is impressive, but a diplomat she ain't. As for Shuri, she is blind-sided by grief, and once in the Black Panther suit less inclined to be forgiving than her predecessor.
The film did feel too long; it's evident that the film makers scaled down the importance of the US as the third party of the ongoing conflict, but they could have cut even more here. For example, they could have found another bone of contention between Wakanda and Talokan than gifted science student Riri aka Ironheart, who will soon get her own TV show anyway. But all in all, I liked that the film touched on universal themes like dealing with loss and change and didn't get bogged down in a classic "bad whiteys want precious minerals" plot (there's a reason I haven't seen either of the Avatar films).
OK, but what about the villain, then? Well... the problem is that the part of the film which resembles the Avatar setup the most is the one which provides him with his motivation. Also, as he's several hundreds of years old and his people ended up as underwater creatures because of the Spanish conquistadors (long story), he's got quite a bit of po-co rhetoric going on.
All right, that sounds tiresome, but wasn't Killmonger a bit like that? What made Killmonger bearable, in spite of poisoning polite museum attendants and wanting a full-out race war, was that he was still very much a product of the modern age. Also, he had compelling personal reasons for resenting the Wakandan royal family.
Namor, on the other hand, comes perilously close to the trope of a leader of a "nature people" (as we Swedes call it – not patronising at all then) who equates modern civilisation with disaster. I almost expected him to say something along the lines of "we lived in harmony with the Great Spirit of the Ocean, and then the men from the surface came with their sticks that shot fire". It's not as bad as that, but as I said, close.
He's also extremely trigger happy (or throwing-spears happy). The US try to mine vibranium out in the ocean, without even knowing of Talokan's existence, and suddenly Namor's ready to declare war, and on all the surface world, no less? I get that Talokans are great fighters, but if pushed, we evil surface dwellers could still drop a bomb on them, right?
Having said that, he's charismatic enough, and it helps that he's supposed to be the villain – as with Killmonger, the film makes it clear that Namor's on the wrong track. But to my mind, the villain is not the main reason to see this film. Shuri's story of overcoming grief is more compelling – and Okoye (a female general whose kick-ass skills I have no trouble believing in) is fun.
