WAKANDA FOREVER (2022): A very, very good film

As I have said before, it’s really hard to get me to dislike a superhero film. Even sad offerings like 2003’s Daredevil is a movie I will sit through once a year. That being said, the new Black Panther movie is excellent.

The sequel to Marvel’s 2018 Black Panther feature film, Wakanda Forever had two accomplish two things: deal with the sudden and terrible loss of Chadwick Boseman (the incredible actor who himself played the title character), and move the story forward. The film did both with exceptional alacrity (not that is was without flaws, but more on that later).

In the film, Wakanda is a country in anguish, after the loss of their king and protector, The Black Panther. T’Challa’s mother and sister, the Queen and Princess respectively, have to keep the nation together and keep themselves together as they pick up the pieces on T’Challa’s final act: share Wakanda’s vast resources to better the world. Wakanda has, to the rest of the Earth, been known as a third-world farming country. But Wakanda has been keeping secrets- incredibly advanced technology and the unique metal known as Vibranium.

Vibranium powers the tech, gave the Black Panther his unimaginable battle suit, and could easily be weaponized if it fell into the wrong hands. That last detail is of course the rub. What the rest of Earth thought was an impossible to find substance, is now revealed in great stores in Wakanda. Appreciation and gratitude now fight with jealously and mistrust, as Wakanda is revealed for the powerful nation that it is.

Everyone now wants to control it. Echoes of Tony Stark’s “I’m not giving you my tech” ring in the ears of those leaders and inventors who think they could handle the tech better. And let us not forget about the bad guys.

Oh, the bad guy. His name is Namor, he’s an Atlantean, and he has his own store of Vibranium which no one knew about. Namor is a classic Marvel anti-hero and fit perfectly into the story of a Kingdom who has what it has, and just wants to be left alone. Well, almost perfectly. With his own Kingdom and Vibranium store at risk of becoming under siege, he tries to cut a deal with Wakanda against the rest of the planet. Wakanda being the gentle souls they are decides they aren’t having it. So Namor decides, “Fine. I’m coming for Wakanda first.”

What I love about this movie is its sheer genuineness in the characters. Every person has an important part in the story, as the story moves along at its 2 hour and 45 minute pace. No that’s not a typo. Wakanda Forever is almost three hours long. But it doesn’t feet like it. I moves, it jerks around our emotions, it smacks us with reality, it gives us the cathartic battles we need, and it reaches a solid conclusion. We care deeply about the characters, which is why it doesn’t seem as long as it is. That being said- There are some ticky tack fouls that could give pause to geek, comic book purists such as myself.

1) Namor is not portrayed as Atlantean. He’s Mesoamerican, like the Mayans. It’s far from the comic book portrayal of the King of Atlantis. The question is why? It didn’t add anything to the character, and probably took away from his characterization. I’m certainly not opposed to Mayan characters, but Namor ain’t it. And yeah I’m that guy who says if you are going to mess with canon, you better have a spectacularly good reason for doing it and I probably would still disagree. What I do agree with is one reviewer who wrote that the film feels about 20 minutes too long, and we didn’t need all the back story on Namor’s city of Talokan. I think that’s fair.

2) Once again we get to hear that Vibranium is the strongest metal on Earth. It’s not. Also we were told that Cap’s shield was made of Vibranium. It’s not. But only the comic book nerds like me are going to care. I could write 1000 words on this issue alone, but I won’t. I will mercifully offer the short version. Fox had the rights to the X-Men when the MCU officially started, which means that they had the rights to Adamantium, the strongest metal on the planet. Since the MCU couldn’t use AD without paying a spaceship size load of cash to Fox, Adamantium became Vibranium in the MCU. That’s not to say that Vibranium isn’t exceptional, but in the canon it’s about as strong as titanium with unique vibration absorbing properties. Powerful stuff yes, and now it’s a moot point since Fox is with the MCU at Disney, but it would be silly to retcon it now. Oh and that shield? It's proto-Adamantium, a one-off combo of the two metals accidentally discovered by Dr Myron MacLain when he was trying to combine Vibranium with steel. Cap’s shield is the only thing that is the proto stuff.

3) SPOILER ALERT! Namor didn’t find Wakandan Vibranium. In the comics, he found the Antarctic version of Vibranium, which instead of absorbing vibration and kinetic energy, destroys other metals at a molecular and atomic level, turning them to liquid. It’s called the anti-metal.

Would most people care? Nah. Do I? Yeah. You can’t just scramble up canon because you think its artistically cool to do so. Just ask Tim Burton.

IMDB gives Wakanda Forever a 7/10. Now remembering what my son Luke said, that would barely put the film in the good category. It’s better than that at 8/10. If the fixed the canon violations it could be a 8.3 or 8.4.