Black Panther: Wakanda forever spoilers

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No need to post that you're going to wait for streaming or that you are burned out on MCU/superheroes.
Just got back from the movie:

Wow, this has to be IMO one of the heaviest MCU movies emotionally speaking. Even if she wasn't named as such we got a look at the Ironheart suit. Very surprised by the appearance of Kilmonger. They handled the passing of Chadwick with gravitas. Even the marvel logo was silent. More thoughts later.

 

[RangerWickett]

I recall loving everything about the first Black Panther except for the action in the third act fight. Even then, the ending was great because Killmonger challenged T'Challa and inspired him to change his path.

In Wakanda Forever . . . I liked most of the first two acts a lot, but I feel like the third act fell flat, both in the action setpiece and in the overall muddiness of Shuri's character arc. The only real change she undergoes is from 'not wanting to stop grieving her brother' to 'burning her funeral attire to symbolize that she is done grieving.' But that did not seem well-tied to the action of the rest of the movie.

It seemed like the emotional core was going to be her anger at the world for taking her brother from her, and her anger at her society for expecting her to get over it and accept that he still existed spiritually, whereas she wanted to focus on science to solve problems. Something like that. And she finally does recreate the heart-shaped herb with science, only to experience the Ancestral Plane and meet Killmonger, who encourages her to go all in on anger, violence, and vengeance.

And whoa, she goes for it.

And then . . . the ending kinda doesn't fit together after that. There's a bog standard Marvel Action Setpiece, and Shuri winning but deciding for no real reason to turn from the path of vengeance at the last moment. And so Namor surrenders . . . even though his people were totally winning the fight against the Wakandans. It's a mess. It doesn't seem to be saying anything.

I'd love to hear the director explain what he felt the point of the story was.

The tributes to Chadwick Boseman were wonderful, for the record.

 

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I recall loving everything about the first Black Panther except for the action in the third act fight. Even then, the ending was great because Killmonger challenged T'Challa and inspired him to change his path.



It seemed like the emotional core was going to be her anger at the world for taking her brother from her, and her anger at her society for expecting her to get over it and accept that he still existed spiritually, whereas she wanted to focus on science to solve problems. Something like that. And she finally does recreate the heart-shaped herb with science, only to experience the Ancestral Plane and meet Killmonger, who encourages her to go all in on anger, violence, and vengeance.

And whoa, she goes for it.

Not sure if we saw the same movie, She recreated the herb after losing her mom and clearly still pissed about it, kilmonger feed that anger remember the whole "burn the world" by the lakeside?

And then . . . the ending kinda doesn't fit together after that. There's a bog standard Marvel Action Setpiece, and Shuri winning but deciding for no real reason to turn from the path of vengeance at the last moment. And so Namor surrenders . . . even though his people were totally winning the fight against the Wakandans. It's a mess. It doesn't seem to be saying anything.

Going into the final battle with Namor, Shuri finds herself in the exact same position her brother was in nearly a decade earlier when he pursued T'Chaka's killer (both when he thought it was Bucky Barnes and after learning it was actually Helmut Zemo). Like T'Challa, Shuri too had become consumed with vengeance— and like her brother, she too recognizes the futility of the Cycle of Revenge and snaps out of it during the climax. Also, her mom showed up in a vision and told her to show Namor who she was.

 

[RangerWickett]

Going into the final battle with Namor, Shuri finds herself in the exact same position her brother was in nearly a decade earlier when he pursued T'Chaka's killer (both when he thought it was Bucky Barnes and after learning it was actually Helmut Zemo). Like T'Challa, Shuri too had become consumed with vengeance— and like her brother, she too recognizes the futility of the Cycle of Revenge and snaps out of it during the climax. Also, her mom showed up in a vision and told her to show Namor who she was.

Yeah, my issue is that

1) having Ramonda show up like that is not how the Ancestral Plane has worked before, so it felt like a cheap way to get Shuri to change her mind, and

2) aside from mom showing up, nothing else in the movie indicated that Shuri would stop right at that moment. Like, M'Baku even explicitly said that her mom wouldn't want her doing it, and Shuri rejected that.

Shuri being vengeful makes sense in the story, and I thought it was compelling. But if you want Shuri to change her mind away from vengeance, I dunno, maybe she should have lost the fight. Maybe Namor should have yanked her off the spear and carried her to the Wakandan ship to show her, "You thought anger would be enough, but you lost the fight, and now your choice is to be our ally or be destroyed."

That would totally suck as a heroic debut for Shuri, and would be a naughty word way to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa, and it would kinda feel like a retread of Killmonger's arc in BP1. Another option could have worked if they had set something up earlier in the film, but by that point in the story, I didn't see anything that really would change Shuri's path. Her turning away from vengeance at the last moment felt entirely un-earned to me, and it kinda ruined the movie in my opinion.

(Plus the Ironheart and Midnight Angel suits looked like Power Ranger costumes.)

 

[Stalker0]

Shuri winning but deciding for no real reason to turn from the path of vengeance at the last moment.

the movie shows how Shuri is thinking about both all of her people, and all of Namor's people. At that moment, she realizes what MBaku said was right, killing Namor will lead to full war, and both of their people will pay the price. Shuri does what real royalty is supposed to do, she puts down her personal vengeance for the good of her people.

 

[Stalker0]

Saw it last night:

The Pros

• They handled Chadwick's death very well. It was moving and made decent sense for the plot. They didn't linger it too long, but didn't ignore it.
• Namor is a decently cool villain. Not quite Killmonger but again its a villain whose motives you can get. At the same time Namor has this very subtle "crazy" lingering beneath the surface that is interesting. He's very calm and logical, but like Thanos there is a bit of "wait....really?" about this guy. He sees one torture on the surface and immediately goes "yep all of the surface is evil and better off gone"....that's a bit extreme, but to me this informs his character. He wants to be a good king and for the most part is a pretty good guy, but there's this essence lingering under the surface that drives him into the darkness.
• The design of the underwater people as a Mayan decendent gives them a really distinct style and culture that I love. Compared to the cardbord cutout Atlanteans from Aquaman, this is a people dripping with culture and history.
• I liked what they did with Shuri. Gave her an interesting emotional backing here that drove her character. Aka it felt like a movie driven by what happened to the character rather than them acting just for the sake of plot.
• The characters feel human and flawed, there is a scene where the Queen strips Okeye of rank for failing her daughter, when her advisors caution against it. Its a powerful scene of emotion...but in reality most people probably would agree the Queen is wrong in her decision. Even MBaku and his men snicker at it later in the movie. However, considering the Queen's anger and state of mind, it made sense in the moment.
• There have been a lot of "passing of the torch" type movies in recent years, both MCU and others. There is often a temptation to weaker the OG in order to give the new character a chance to shine. They avoid that well in this movie. Shuri's taking on of the mantle in no way weaken's TChalla. Shuri is capable but has her own flaws and her own story to tell, TChalla serves both as a source of inspiration but also a source of pain and trauma, moving Shuri in interesting ways.
• I really appreciated that they showed the consequence of T'Challa's decision to reveal Wakanda in this movie. Opening up Wakanda is a MAJOR thing, and as hopeful and possibly amazing as it could be, it has a lot of negative issues, and they show several of them in this movie. That's the kind of worldbuilding that keeps me coming back, that puts the U in MCU.

The Cons

• The movie is longer than it needs to be, and it does drag in places. The plot doesn't feel as tight as the first one. I think they could have cut out 30 minutes and the movie would have been fine. This was my biggest complaint, I was squirming a bit by the end just waiting for it to finish.
• Ri Ri Williams is an interesting character but I don't feel they ever quite know what to do with her. At the end of the day she feels like an add on.
• Wakanda has a major major security problem. Realistically, Wakanda's capital was defeated by a small group of people, sure they had some superpowers, but it was a SMALL group. Any major armed forces from a modern country would trounce Wakanda is that's the kind of military showing they have to bare. They act like Namor had some super secret technique that let him breach Wakandan security, all he did was come through the water. There are plenty of stealth team operations that could have conducted similar approaches. Wakanda has an impenetrable shield but a siege of the city to blockade it....Wakanda doesn't seem to have an answer for. Aka Wakanda is presented as this nigh invincible civilization to the rest of the world but in reality, its still a small country with a small military force, as advanced as they are there is no way they would withstand a major military invasion from a modern country.
  • Perhaps....that's the point, and perhaps I'm looking at this wrong. After all, in Namor's closing statement he mentions who the world will turn on Wakanda, and they will return to Namor. This may be foreshadowing, as cocky as Wakanda is they are simply no match for a "real" war, and if that actually becomes a thing, Namor comes back in the picture.
• They handle Ross a bit too casually for me. Its the classic "a guy helping the good guys is a good guy" trope, but in reality, Ross is a STONE COLD TRAITOR. Its black and white, he works for a major intelligence agency and was delivering major amounts of intelligence to a foreign power. That is NOT ok, even if one of them "saved your life".
• Maybe it was just me, but the movie is darker in the water scenes than I would have liked, a bit harder to see than I think they were going for.
• While its cool that MBaku gets to be King now, the messaging is a bit rough. There was this premise throughout the movie of Shuri finding a balance between her technical mind and the traditions of her people, and she started to get there. But then at the end she "scoffs" tradition by not even showing up to the ceremony, which feels a little off. I don't mind Shuri showing up and then letting MBaku win the challenge, that I could respect....but her not showing up just feels a bit hallow to one of the messages of the movie.
• I have to agree with Okoye, that new suit is UGLY!

Overall: Like most sequels it doesn't quite live up to the original, but its a solid movie and well worth watching. Probably the best MCU to come out in a while.

 

[Stalker0]

the movie shows how Shuri is thinking about both all of her people, and all of Namor's people. At that moment, she realizes what MBaku said was right, killing Namor will lead to full war, and both of their people will pay the price. Shuri does what real royalty is supposed to do, she puts down her personal vengeance for the good of her people.

Continuing my thoughts on this. While its probably true that Shuri killed a lot of aliens in Endgame (with a major battle like that you can't tell me she just "wounded" a bunch of people)., this might have been the very first time that Shuri was going to kill an actual "person", someone she knows rather than a faceless alien mook.

That is a different ballgame, people talk all the time about that first kill being such a major moment, that can change people, that can show you a bit of who you are. Part of the explanation could simply be that....when confronted with that moment.... Shuri realized that the love of her people outweighed her desire for vengeance.

 

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(Plus the Ironheart and Midnight Angel suits looked like Power Ranger costumes.)

The ironman suits look like the red power ranger suit from the 2017 movie lol

Saw it last night:

• Wakanda has a major major security problem. Realistically, Wakanda's capital was defeated by a small group of people, sure they had some superpowers, but it was a SMALL group. Any major armed forces from a modern country would trounce Wakanda is that's the kind of military showing they have to bare. They act like Namor had some super secret technique that let him breach Wakandan security, all he did was come through the water. There are plenty of stealth team operations that could have conducted similar approaches. Wakanda has an impenetrable shield but a siege of the city to blockade it....Wakanda doesn't seem to have an answer for. Aka Wakanda is presented as this nigh invincible civilization to the rest of the world but in reality, its still a small country with a small military force, as advanced as they are there is no way they would withstand a major military invasion from a modern country.
  • Perhaps....that's the point, and perhaps I'm looking at this wrong. After all, in Namor's closing statement he mentions who the world will turn on Wakanda, and they will return to Namor. This may be foreshadowing, as cocky as Wakanda is they are simply no match for a "real" war, and if that actually becomes a thing, Namor comes back in the picture.

They point out a few times that Namor's people were able to bypass the security systems they have in place in the water along with any surveillance. "This fish-man didn't show up on any of our drones"

 

[RangerWickett]

Ross is a STONE COLD TRAITOR. Its black and white, he works for a major intelligence agency and was delivering major amounts of intelligence to a foreign power. That is NOT ok, even if one of them "saved your life".

Traitors help their country's enemy. Ross's point was that Wakanda was not an enemy, and was not responsible for attacking the sea station.

Now, it's extra silly that Shuri apparently 'cleared up' stuff for Riri Williams so she could go back, but instead of doing the same for Ross, she went and abducted him, so he looks guilty. I guess Coogler thought it would make for a neat scene, but it's very trope-y and illogical.

 

[Stalker0]

Traitors help their country's enemy. Ross's point was that Wakanda was not an enemy, and was not responsible for attacking the sea station.

That's not Ross' call to make, he even notes himself that the info he gives them is worthy of someone killing him. While he tries to laugh it off....yeah its that serious.