Dude, who even knows.
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Anyone see Wakanda Forever? I thought the first Black Panther was good but they were trying to run a plot arc AND an emotional arc AND a “relevance to modern Blackness” arc and they maybe had room for 2.25 of those
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underrated that postcolonial Africa fantasy Black Panther took a lot of Pan-Africanist poses but it was ultimately about a succession of power disputed between two guys ethnically native to the country in question (tho one went to the US for acculturation and military training)
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It was a fun, beautiful lightweight action movie
The very opening shot of stars with a kid asking for a story reminds me of when Curtis, the newspaper comic strip, would take a few weeks every Kwanzaa to just make up an African fable
the afrofuturist look is great to see, this is the third visually richest movie I can remember after Curse of the Golden Flower and Fifth Element
I like how they have a real muscular-yet-feline movement/fight style for suited-up T’Challa
T’Challa’s sister/gadgeteer/Guy In The Van Shuri totally steals the movie
also rebel nobility/mountain gorilla man M’Baku
BUT
it was overstuffed and consequently spread thin, maybe it’ll all be better in the 4-hour #WakandaForever director’s cut
Between the mechanical plot (gotta get the Macguffin from point A to point B in time to stop character X, etc.); the rise-of-the-hero arc (T’Challa goes from thinking himself unworthy to fill his ancestors’ shoes, becomes king, loses his title, regains it, is ready to move his role beyond his predecessors); and the “this is all thematic of the Black experience” angle they’re playing to, the movie manages to keep 2 in alignment at any given time while the third fumbles around in proximity without aligning and it’s just frustrating
like the Oakland bits, they fit with the mechanical plot, and “guy in a 1992 apartment like that planning an operation with guns but it goes bad” has a VERY pungent valence to play off, but later it’s like “oh, and that’s why Killmonger showed up” and eeh
or at the end returning to Oakland and it’s like yes character X suggested so-and-so and plot obstacle Y is resolved. and yeah showing up in your “Bugatti Spaceship” to represent Truth, Justice, and the Black Way to those kids has emotional weight, but there’s nothing in the previous fight scenes or looking off the ledge at Wakanda that earn making T’Challa a pan-africanist
the nobility characters were colorful but they ate screen time and everyone got exactly 1 trait and 1 visual signature each (meanwhile it’s really striking how none of the rest of Wakanda seems to particularly notice)
one character is T’Challa’s ex and they have to keep explicitly lampshading that because it doesn’t really affect the plot any
two characters are current lovers but I forgot about that until it was invoked in resolving a fight scene between them? because for the most part they had stuck to thematic/stylistic distinctions (him: flowy blue cloth revenge-seeking rhino, her: tight red and gold dutiful spearwoman)
the South Korea casino fight set was close enough to Kill Bill’s Gogo fight set you noticed by comparison what a great fight scene it wasn’t
but the car chase on the roofs was the best action scene, but that’s *because* they could show off the pouncing with everyone at full power and didn’t have to service plot twists or even the Wakanda esthetic, which is also why in retrospect it’s disconnected from everything
they had to set up the coronation to set up the Klaus plotline in order to even get to the main plotline
there aren’t that many scenes where when you scrape off the afro-aesthetic facade the framework is “this could only be Black Panther”.
part of it T’Challa’s powerset just isn’t that distinct, he’s a particularly good melee STR/AGI fighter? but it doesn’t really interact with his themes except through the aesthetic. the suit absorbing/releasing kinetic energy is novel but doesn’t build to anything. he jumps on a grenade at one point and it makes him stronger! for like a single disposable attack
for having an ambiguous power-set they keep working up excuses to depower him for fights, two times out of three it’s the same one and the third it’s just some TOS-level jargon they referenced earlier
which is true to how comic books work yes, but not the arcs that get remembered c’mon
CIA didn’t need his piloting mini-arc, especially when it was undercut by M’Baku showing up to save the day simultaneously
the Stan Lee cameo is overdone