Review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Image courtesy of Disney.

Ryan Coogler's 2018 "Black Panther" was a breath of fresh air in the comic book movie genre as well as Marvel's best offering to date. It remains so and its sequel, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is a pretty decent follow up, even if it doesn't live up to the original.

To be fair, it was a tall order. The absence of Chadwick Boseman haunts this sequel, and its uniqueness in the Marvel universe - in which an African nation and its fearless leader were the film's heroes, rather than your typical white guy in Spandex - is a little less pronounced this time, primarily because its plot follows most of the typical comic book movie beats.

There's a touching tribute to T'Challa (Boseman) in the film's opening scenes, though the filmmakers have left his cause of death somewhat vague. The plot mechanics kick in soon afterward. This time around, a nation under the sea that was unbeknownst to others poses a threat when it turns out that it also possesses vibranium - the metallic ore that powers Wakanda - and colonist countries want to come into possession of it.

But Wakanda and Talokan (the underwater kingdom) are pitted against each other when it turns out that a young Black student in the United States has assisted with technology that is aiding the U.S. government, and Talokan's fierce leader Namor (Tenoch Huerta) wants to have the girl killed. Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) decide to protect the girl, which leads to conflict between the two nations.

At one point when Shuri is captured by Namor, they each relay their own personal histories and seem to almost come to some understanding, but she blanches when she realizes that he wants Wakanda to team up with Talokan to take on the rest of the world. A lot of fighting ensues.

While the film's opening sequence is fairly moving and the final hour - it's a whopping two-hours-and-41-minutes - moves fairly rapidly and ties things up nicely, the middle section of the picture drags a bit. Part of it is that Talokan isn't as compelling as the filmmakers seem to think it is - the fact that its warriors seemingly can't be killed makes the film's many battles somewhat low-stakes - and too little time is spent on an arc involving one of the film's lead characters that just kind of gets rushed along toward the end.

But overall - and especially for a comic book movie sequel - "Wakanda Forever" is pretty good. One blessing for this story is that, unlike so many of the other Marvel films, there's little in the way of world building here. In other words, no other characters from other Marvel films randomly pop up, and there's no eye-roll-inducing references to things that happened in other Marvel movies, which often makes the films feel more like marketing than filmmaking.

It also helps that Coogler - who went from low budget indie filmmaking ("Fruitvale Station") to franchises ("Creed") and comic book movies - seemingly cares for his characters and their fates. I usually wouldn't suggest using stock footage from a previous film - especially in a comic book series, which often references itself in so many other ways - but the clips from the first "Black Panther" here hit home, and the film's cast -  Bassett, Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Michaela Coel and Danai Gurira - all deliver. 

So, no, "Wakanda Forever" doesn't compare to the original "Black Panther" movie - but that's fine. As it stands, it's a pretty solid blockbuster and among the better Marvel movies to follow in its predecessor's wake.