Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Starring: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett

The people of Wakanda fight to protect their home from intervening world powers as they mourn the death of King T’Challa.

Apparently, director Ryan Coogler had the script all ready and was about to start shooting when Chadwick Boseman died. Chadwick starred as Black Panther in the original film and was set to return. Upon his death, the entire script had to be rewritten. The result is a mess of a film.

The film pays tribute to Chadwick Boseman and the beginning explains his absence from this sequel. I understand the need to pay tribute to him, but they do this for the entire movie. No offence and with all due respect, it does become tiresome hearing the cast constantly talking about “mourning their loss”.

Ok, with that out the way, 2022 saw the release of two films featuring blue people living in the ocean: this movie, and ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’. Yup, there are blue people in ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’. Vibranium can be used to make weapons that can go undetected through metal detectors. Vibranium comes from a meteorite that crashed to Earth, and the reason it can only be found in Wakanda. The Wakandans will do everything in their power to protect it, and wants to keep it from the rest of the world.

But now antagonist Namor (Tenoch Huerta) also wants the vibranium, or he will launch a war on Wakanda. He comes from the undersea kingdom of Talokan, and he is a powerful entity. His back story is told, but this villain was so uninteresting that I didn’t care much. (He does look good in those green undies, though). Oh, and there’s a 19-year old scientist named Riri who built a vibranium detector – as part of a school project!! (Allow me to compose myself while I try to stop laughing!!). Oh wait, this 19-year old girl also built an Iron man suit!!! (oh, there I go laughing again shaking my head in disbelief at the stupidity!!) So, we have an Iron Man wannabe, an Aquaman wannabe, and blue Avatar look-alikes in ONE film…But there’s no Black Panther in the Black Panther film!!! Hell, wait, the bad acting princess Shuri (Letitia Wright) takes a shot at becoming Black Panther towards the end… What a joke!

Man, this was a silly, silly, silly script! All attempts at humour failed miserably, and were ever so annoying! And what silly dialogue! Hell, everything about this movie was just silly. I didn’t like the first film, and I think I liked this one even less. (Is that possible, since I disliked BOTH?).

Some of the visual effects were good, but some were cartoonish. Many of the gadgets and magic in the film were downright laughably stupid! I literally sat there thinking what the bloody hell! The best effects and visuals by far were the water grenades; they were awesome! What else did I like here? The costumes! The costume design was fantastic and worthy of an Oscar. As for the film, I hated it. It was overlong, uninteresting, and boring. I’m so done with Black Panther!

‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ was a box office success, earning $858.5 million on a $250 million budget. It received 185 award nominations, winning 39 so far. It received 5 Oscar nominations for Best Achievement in Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Song, Best Visual Effects and Best Supporting Actress. The Oscar nominations are still pending at this stage.

Would I watch it again? Nope!