Marvel Animation has released an epic new trailer and set of character posters for its upcoming Black Panther prequel, Eyes of Wakanda. With that, we have a first look at the MCU's new Iron Fist...
Streaming on August 1st ... was this on the road map or has it just kind of appeared out of nowhere?
Regardless, it looks pretty cool. I'll watch it. Looks like they're saying that Wakandans have secretly been involved in various world events as far back as the Trojan War.
I'll do a review since I binged it over the weekend. Overview first, more details in spoilers.
Overview of the Series- Should I Watch It?
If you're a MCU Fan and/or Completist? YES.
If not? Pass.
The animation in the series is good. Especially at the beginning, you can enjoy the "painterly" effect as being quite beautiful. After a while, it loses its lustre, and the shortcomings (especially in closeups) might begin to become ... more apparent. Overall, I appreciated the animation style and thought that it fit the "Wakanda-ness" of the series.
That said, it definitely wasn't movie-grade. Good, interesting, occasionally a little janky. As for the stories .... eh. The best and worst news is that it's four episodes, each under thirty minutes. So it's not much of a commitment. All of them are "historical" with the first taking place 3000 years ago. I'd say that the first two episodes are, by far, the best. The first was good, if a little simplistic, and left me wanting more. The second was excellent and ... actually pretty emotional (IMO) and I was starting to get excited.
Unfortunately, the third episode was not up to the same standard. And the fourth episode was ... let's just say it was chock full of Marvel-isms and "let's try and tie all of this together" in a way that was unsatisfying and wasn't needed.
If you love Marvel, it's worth a watch. It's not much time and you already have Disney+. If you're not really into Marvel, there's no need.
I think that this was a success (mostly) on the animation front, and a failure (mostly) on the storytelling front. The animation part I already described- given that this was a TV show, I think that the animation style, while occasionally lacking, really evoked beauty. But the storytelling? After two episodes, I was starting to get into the whole "self-contained vignettes" that told emotionally relevant arcs that pertained to aspects of Wakandan culture- sure, each could have been longer or more fleshed out, but I was okay with the general vibes.
But the third episode was where it started to crated for me. From the beginning of the Marvel tie-ins (Iron Fist) to the wisecracking to the lack of any real emotional heft (contrast the emotional arc of the protagonist of the third and the second story) ... it was a step down. And the last one? The relationship between Kuda and Tafari was actually done well, but all that "save the future, change the timeline, blah blah blah blah" noise that Marvel loves to use to "raise the stakes" didn't wrap the series in a bow; it retconned each prior episode into being less than it was.
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