Marvel released a new epic. Wakanda Forever is almost three hours long, and it is a rollercoaster ride. There is a ton going on in this movie, and it has some great aspects to it that help hold it all together. They had a big task in carrying on the franchise without its main actor, Chadwick Bosman, and Marvel did a good job of pushing on in an interesting and beautiful manner. The story is lacking at times, but they do an excellent job of hiding that with incredible visuals and music.
Wakanda Forever starts with the death of T’Challa, it occurs in a very broad way, where there was something going on with his heart, and Shuri was trying to find any way to cure him, but she was unable to save him. This causes the country to go into mourning. While that is happening, scientists are searching for another place to mine for vibranium besides Wakanda, and they succeed in finding it at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but right as they are about to extract it, there is an attack under the sea and on the boat by blue people. Wakanda is blamed for the attack, because they try to protect vibranium at all costs, but it was not them.
While Shuri and the queen are out mourning by the water, the king of the water people, Namor, comes out of the water, and he tells them about the vibranium under the water, and what happened, but he made them swear not to tell anyone about his hidden society. So Shuri and Okoye go to find Riri, the girl who created the vibranium finding machine, and she reluctantly agrees to go with them to Wakanda, but as they are about to leave the feds stop them, and while they are trying to escape the feds, they end up getting attacked by Namor’s group, and Shuri and Riri are kidnapped. Shuri gets the rundown on how Namor and his people came to be, and then she is rescued by Nakia. This enrages Namor, and war ensues between the Wakandans and the Atlanteans.
The day before going to see the new one, I rewatched the original, and it was good. It had a good story, but I was surprised at how bad it looked. There were so many times when I was completely taken out of it due to its poor CGI, but the relationship between T’Challa and Killmonger was great, and everything else that was happening in the movie helped as well. This was almost the opposite. There was a story line, the Wakandans and the Atlanteans relationship, but there was also the story line of overcoming grief, it felt like they were taking to pack a lot into the movie, and at times it was disjointed. Wakanda Forever also did a much better job with their CGI, I really enjoyed the underwater scenes, and the fight scenes in this movie looked so much better than the original. For the most part it did not even feel like a Marvel movie, it felt more like a sci-fi war movie between two future countries, until the new Black Panther arose. So the new one was better, it just had a very disjointed plot at times, but the other aspects of it helped to lift it above the original just barely.
It was funny to see the heavy focus of water in this film, especially with the Atlanteans being blue. When you go to see the movie, you will undoubtedly see a trailed for the new Avatar movie, which primarily takes place in water. James Cameron came out and said that his water scenes were going to blow all other movies out of the water (pun intended). So I found it interesting that this film had such a large focus time in water, and it looked so good. The scene where Shuri is getting shown Atlantis had me awed and filled with wonder. It was beautifully done, and the other scenes in the water worked well too. Not to mention that the other scenery that was used throughout the movie was great as well. It helped to see it in Real D 3-D. It literally gives it an added dimension, and normally I am not a huge fan of 3-D, but I do believe that it made a difference in how awesome this movie looked.
The other aspects that really helped this movie came from the fashion and the music. The outfits that they wore in this movie were excellent, I do not think they were anything that I personally could have pulled off, but they do an excellent job of looking amazing in them. The only note I have on the fashions comes from the Atlanteans. They were still wearing typical native garb, and it looked like the material was similar to burlap, and they lived in the water. In Wakanda, they found a way to incorporate vibranium into clothes like the Black Panther suit, so why did the Atlanteans not create some nice spandex suits for the water made from vibranium. Burlap and salt water for extended periods of time just does not seem like it works. The music was also excellent in this movie. I really enjoyed the soundtrack to the first movie. It is worth a listen. The sequel did not disappoint in this manner either. This goes for the movie and the credits. Probably the best two movies for music in the MCU, and that is saying something, because there is some good music on other movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ragnarök.
Grief clearly played a huge role in this film, going into it we all knew that T’Challa would be gone, but they add another death on top of it that was also powerful. So Shuri was going through it bad in this movie. In the first movie, she was happy all the time, and she was an incredible teammate to T’Challa. In this film, she had to grapple with two deaths, and she was enraged, she wants revenge. So when she is becoming the new Black Panther, and she goes to the ancestral plain, she sees Killmonger instead of her family. This also reflected her lack of belief in traditions, and that she did not really think the ancestral plain existed. The climax includes a fight between Shuri and Namor, and it is tough to watch toward the end. Shuri seems like she is about to kill Namor, but instead she teams up with him, and they make an alliance.
One of the biggest themes of the film comes from two minority groups overcoming their past colonization, but the two empires have different outlooks on how to handle their rise to power. The Wakandans are more tolerant of their past colonizers, they do not look on them favorably, but they are not actively trying to display their dominance with military force. Whereas the Atlanteans were harboring more harmful feelings, and they seemed to be craving violence, and they ended up taking out this violence on the Wakandans instead of their real enemies. So I was worried in the final fight that Shuri was going to turn her back on T’Challa’s views and kill Namor, but instead she held back. This cemented the theme of unification over destruction. It was rough for most of the movie to see two historically hurt groups fighting each other instead of lifting each other up, so it was good to see their alliance in the end.
When the movie ends, it felt like it would be wrong to have a post-credit/mid-credit scene, but they included a mid-credit scene anyway, but thankfully it was not about setting up more Marvel movies, it was relevant to the family dynamic of the movie, and it has to do with leaving a legacy once you have passed. Shuri has it revealed to her that Nakia and T’Challa had a child, and he is the heir to the throne. This was an interesting reveal at the end of the movie, but to me it seemed unnecessary, the movie ended with a perfect emotional punch, this was not needed.
Going into this film I was a little worried with the return of Ryan Coogler, only from the standpoint of the action sequences and CGI being so bad in the original that I was worried that this could affect this movie as well, but thankfully it did not. The movie also had one of the better villains in an MCU movie. He is charismatic, and they give him a good empathetic story, and he made good points. So that is back-to-back Black Panther movies that have great villains. This was the best MCU creation of the year, and I hope this helps steer the MCU in the right direction again, because it has not been a good year for them. Definitely go see this movie as soon as possible in Real D! It gets 4 stars!
One part that I would be remiss not to mention came from the people sitting around me. In the row in front of me, there were three guys. One of them sat there and watched the movie the whole time, no problem there. The guy next to him pulled his phone out multiple times, which does not really bother me, but he was pulling out his phone to check stocks. He was literally going on to the Robinhood app to check on his portfolio, but he was also the guy who would clap and cheer during the movie. These two things just do not seem to mesh, how do you care enough to cheer, but you are also willing to check your stocks for minutes at a time? He also took his shoes and socks off and had he bare feet on the chair in front of him. Then the guy next to him also pulled out his phone a couple times, and he got onto snapchat, and he literally sent a picture of the screen to over twenty people, like everyone in his snap contact list needed to know during the movie that he was seeing the new Black Panther. Then the guy to my left kept cheering and yelling out, and the girl he was there with multiple times told him to be quiet. This is what makes the movies great, you will not get that experience at home!
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