Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. If you do not wish to be spoiled, please feel free to leave this page. The post will still be here once you've seen the film, should you wish to return (and we hope you do).
Y'all, in my almost four decades of riding around on this spinning blue rock hurtling through space, I have not once cried at a movie. Not once. Not even at the end of Titanic (which was the first film to get me even remotely close to tears). Wakanda Forever put an end to that. I've seen it twice now. The first time I was able to choke back my tears, but the second time (in a much less crowded theatre), I let them come.
I knew it was going to be emotional even before I went to see it. It is, after all, a dedication to Chadwick Boseman, sadly taken by cancer back in 2020.
The film opens with Shuri riding the elevator down to her lab, praying to Bast, that last ditch desperate plea, grasping at straws, asking that Bast help her save her brother. He is sick and he is dying and she is trying to recreate the heart-shaped herb to try and save his life. But she does not, and her mother comes to give her the news... and then it transitions to the Marvel splash.
It was silent. A pause for remembrance.
...
So, the film introduces three things, the first of which is the reality that Wakanda was absolutely correct in not letting the world know about vibranium. Jealousy is an ugly thing, and world superpowers with tiny people as their heads of state are feeling it. There are efforts to find vibranium outside of Wakanda, which, for some reason (though unsurprisingly), included an attack on a Wakandan outreach center. (An attack that the Dora Milaje thwarted without breaking a sweat, but still.)
The second thing the film introduces is Namor the Sub-Mariner. Namor and his aquatic people have undergone quite the metamorphosis for the MCU. In the comics they are from Atlantis, but Marvel Studios, finding Atlantis to be rather overdone (and quite rightly, I might add), have shifted the civilisation all the way to the other side of the Pond, rooting it in rich (and apparently happily well researched) Mesoamerican culture.
Namor, also called K'uk'ulkan, is now the ruler of Talokan, a nation built in the depths of the ocean after his mother's people fled Spanish Conquistadors. The invaders had brought smallpox and the people were dying, and so their shaman sought out a solution. Said solution ended up being a plant grown from vibranium rich soil under the waters, much like the heart-shaped herb of Wakanda, but instead of just imbuing the person who ingests it with superhuman abilities, it gave them superhuman abilities and made it where they could no longer breathe air or live on land.
Namor is fiercely protective of his people and has a deep resentment for the peoples who reside on land, and thus he is, in fact, our antagonist for the duration of the movie.
It turns out that the US (because of course it's those assholes) have gotten their hands on a machine that can detect vibranium. And it has found some in (or near) the Gulf of Mexico (I don't remember, I sorry). So down we go to check it out and whatnot, yay.
I'm not going to lie, I would absolutely be that one scientist who got so distracted by the phantom jellyfish that I wouldn't notice the guy beside me being attacked and killed by sea people. (To be fair, though, the Talokanil were very, very quiet about it.)
The vibranium detector was built by the third thing the film introduces, Riri Williams (who will become Ironheart). A super-genius inventor on the level (at the very least) of Tony Stark at only nineteen, Riri built the thing as a school project at MIT. (Not gonna lie, considering where the thing ended up, I feel a bit like her professor goaded her into it with less than noble intentions... But that's maybe just me.) She comes across to me as absolutely book smart, pretty street smart, but somehow still lacking basic common sense. Seems legit for a character her age.
Anywho, Namor, in an effort to protect his people, wants Riri dead so she can't build another vibranium detector. He also wants Wakanda to help him find her, as he blames T'Challa for governments looking for vibranium in the first place (which is sort of fair, really). And despite Queen Ramonda's hesitance, he isn't going to take no for an answer.
Namor's character is somehow amazing in his levels of arrogance. You can tell that he is not used to ever hearing the word 'no' (possibly hasn't heard it once in the last four hundred and fifty-ish years), though he manages not to be the insufferable sort about it. He's just very matter-of-fact in the way he deals with people and his expectations of being obeyed. Not a single threat he makes comes from a place of malice, it's just how things are for him. He would absolutely be a horror if he were real, but as a fictional character, he's just sort of fucking awesome. (I am not going to make this a Namor simp post, I am not going to make this a Namor simp post, I am not...)
Anywho, I'm attempting to not just summarise the film (after my Dominion review [of sorts] I realised that's a bad habit I've had), so I just want to touch on a couple of things that I really liked.
First off was a little glimpse into the fact that Namor has a bit of a personality outside of 'obey me or else'. Shuri, still trying to convince him to not murder a kid, offers herself as a hostage instead and makes a comment that she'd love to see Talokan. Namor responds to this by telling her she could go dressed as she is (in the traditional garb given to her by Namora [which was gorgeous, by the way]), but that she'd almost instantly suffer hypothermia, her blood would become toxic, and her bones would break from the pressure, but then, after half a beat, goes, 'Or you could wear a suit. We have some of them.' He follows this will a boyish, impish little grin.
In case anyone else was wondering why a people who lived exclusively underwater and didn't like outsiders had deep dive suits, those suits were, in fact, fairly newly acquired. The suit Shuri is wearing is the same as that of the divers at the start of the movie (and if she knew how Namor had obtained them, I doubt she'd have been so keen to wear it).
I also adored the showcase of Talokan's capital and its people. One of my favourite things to see was the game of pitz (which I'd learned about in a high school Latin American Studies class, years and years ago). I was that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the screen meme in my head.
I rather love M'Baku in this film, too. I had to laugh when he showed up to council aggressively eating a carrot (he did say in Black Panther that he's a vegetarian), but I also couldn't help but admire and appreciate his dedication and his wisdom here. And his humanity. Talking with Shuri after her mother's death, M'Baku seems somewhat at a loss of how to handle her anger, and looks to step into a 'support until she figures herself out' role. He knew there wasn't anything he could actually do for her, and you could tell it hurt him that he couldn't do more for her. Winston Duke gave an amazing performance. (Why is this man not everywhere? He's a great actor and he has such a nice voice that I could listen to it for days!)
One thing that amused me was when Okoye and Shuri had their little meeting with Everett Ross during his run. Summoning him with the kimoyo bead and his reaction to such put me in mind of John Watson being summoned by Mycroft via random public phones in the first episode of Sherlock. Seems Martin Freeman has been typecast for characters who are reluctantly doing other people's bidding. Has for a while now, I suppose, seeing as the first thing I ever saw him in was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Heh.
One thing I did think fell a little flat was Namor's motivations. The idea that he needs to protect his people is sound, of course, but his level of aggression, his desire to take the offense and basically burn the upper world to the ground, seemed a little forced. Based on the film, the only thing he has to go off of was an interaction with Conquistadors around four hundred years prior. It would have been nice if we'd been given just a little more justification in there. Four centuries is a long time, and things change.
Don't get me wrong, there's ample reason for Namor to still have issues with the land dwellers. Comic book Namor is basically an eco-warrior/terrorist (from what I've seen so far) because people keep doing things that endanger his oceans and his people in said oceans. The only nod to this we got in the film, though, was when Namor emerges into Wakanda for the first time and comments to Ramonda and Shuri about how clean the air and water were.
I am, for the record, still a little cross with Shuri for slicing off one of Namor's ankle wings. Like, that was just mean...
Overall, the film was great. Grief as a theme, interwoven through every facet of the story, was extremely compelling. It made for a very intense coming to power story for Shuri as the new Black Panther, and I'm excited to see where she's going. (Script wise, it was a vast improvement on Black Panther.)
Overall, I give it a 9/10.
For the record, the score was written by the genius talent that is Ludwig Göransson. Please enjoy this offering from the soundtrack:
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