BEFORE: I'm guilty once again of watching films out of order - it's allowable under my rules, which I totally made up, of course. This film became available on the Disney+ platform on February 1, and of course by then I'd started my romance chain, which was going SO well until I totally got bored with high-school romances. Curse you, Wolfgang Novogratz!
BUT, my wife went ahead and watched this "Black Panther" sequel without telling me she was going to do that - she caught up on the "Avengers" movies and then moved on, before going back to watch the "Iron Man" movies that she missed. (She still won't watch "Ant-Man", which I think she would enjoy, except for the parts with the ants.). She had some questions for me - OK, it was really just ONE question, but for fear of spoilers I requested that she NOT ask me the question, and then set to seeing the movie on the next (mostly) free weekend I had. So it's not my fault I'm watching films out of order, not this time, I did it for her. Happy post-Valentine's Day weekend, baby...
If my plan to get here held up, then Lupita Nyong'o carries over from "The 355" - but who knows, maybe I'll get here some other way, I just know I have to get here, it's an important waypoint between St. Patrick's Day and Easter - I had to break up the distance between the holidays into two parts to have a chance of figuring out a path.
THE PLOT: The people of Wakanda fight to protect their home from intervening world powers as they mourn the death of King T'Challa.
AFTER: OK, so I'm caught up again on Marvel movies, just in time to fall behind by not going to the theater to see "Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania". Really, who's got time? Really, who can afford the price of a movie ticket these days? I'm just making excuses, I know, but I passed on watching "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" in the theater (and it even played in the theater where I work some nights & weekends) and look, it turned up on Disney Plus just what, three months later? I can wait to see the third "Ant-Man" movie if it's going to be accessible on my computer in what, May? I've got new episodes of "The Mandalorian" to keep me busy until then, PLUS things are supposed to get busy at the theater in March, so there's that.
I think I made the right call on "Wakanda Forever", I mean it's still a MARVEL movie so I enjoyed it on some level, but it's just too damn long, I had to take a couple of breaks to do things around the house, and there some very long exposition parts that made it a real slog. This was the day I went into Manhattan for an endoscopy (I wonder how my exam turned out, no spoilers...) so I lost some time in a doctor's waiting room today, then we went to a soup dumpling place for lunch, so between that and an extra 2 1/2 hour movie, this day was totally shot. BUT, I went through with a medical exam that I didn't want to have, AND rewarded myself with lunch and an extra movie, so that's...well, it's not nothing. It's something.
"Wakanda Forever" was the latest movie that was somehow going to save U.S. movie theaters, which is also what they said about "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and then also "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness". Then after those came and went, it was somehow up to "Top Gun: Maverick" and "Avatar 2: The Way of Water" to save movie theaters and in-person screenings. Did it work? Are they saved? Apparently not, because three more big movie theaters in Manhattan closed in January. Maybe "Quantumania" will save movie theaters, but I'm not getting my hopes up. As a Disney stockholder, it's great these movies are performing, but I think in general, over time, movie theaters are doomed, more are less, just like newspapers and magazines. They're holding on, but the decline of all things is inevitable, that goes for you, me, and physical media. If you work in print media, get off the Titanic before the iceberg hits.
I keep thinking Marvel Comics - the paper comic books - are doomed, as well as comic book shops, but they're hanging on, too - the movies support the comic books, even though they take place in different universes. But part of me wonders why we still need the comic books, now that the characters are prominent in movies and TV shows. Perhaps that's also a matter of time, or maybe people are buying more comic books than I think - do kids read them digitally, and if so, how does THAT work? What's the point of a digital comic book? For years the paper comics have been offering "free" digital comics - when you buy a comic there's a code inside to use at Marvel.com to redeem for a free digital comic, but why would I need to DO that if I'm already holding the paper comic book in my hands? Why not just read the thing I'm holding?
Oh, right, Black Panther. The sequel film opens with the death of King T'Challa, only it doesn't ever get around to telling us how he died - it's a "mystery illness", but is it the same one that took the life of the actor? Or did the character die an ironic death, like from vibranium poisoning? (It could happen.). Why be coy about this? I guess it doesn't matter, dead is dead, and maybe this sequel could have saved movie theaters if only Chadwick Boseman didn't pass away, we'll never know. Anyway, there's a touching funeral for the character which is obviously also a touching funeral for the actor. But then the country has no King, and no protector either, except for the fact that everyone in the country of Wakanda is some kind of warrior.
So it's fairly obvious that there's going to be a NEW Black Panther before the end of the film, it just comes down to WHO it's going to be - there were at least three solid choices, all of them female, since M'Baku doesn't seem like the type who wants to be King. But even then, when you review the candidates, you're going to keep coming back to one over the others, and the film reinforces this by spending the most time on this person. Doesn't take a genius....but then when you know WHERE the film is probably going, it becomes annoying that it takes so damn LONG to get there. Really, we could have saved an hour of everyone's time if she just mentally got there earlier, would that really have been so wrong?
In the meantime, there's a new super-power in the world, making its presence known for the first time - now if this were the COMICS, I'd call it "Atlantis", but in the MCU, it's got another name, the underwater kingdom of Talokan, led by Namor, also known in the comics as "Sub-Mariner". And in the comics he was a hero, both an Invader (Capt. America's group during WWII) and an Avenger, but in other comics like the Fantastic Four, he was often the villain. Umm, it's complicated - and every writer maybe put their own spin on him over the years, so let's just say that Marvel Comics continuity is a giant mess. He's a merman, he's a mutant, he's 200 years old, he can fly, he can breathe underwater, he's pink, he's yellow, his subjects are blue, his father was a sea captain, his mother was a princess. He's Marvel's answer to Aquaman, get it? And if you saw the DC movie "Aquaman" a few years ago, it might explain why this movie put such a different spin on the character, because otherwise this movie might have looked a lot like THAT one, and people would say it was a rip-off.
When we think of Atlantis, we think about the legend of a city that sank under the ocean during ancient times, and that makes us think about Greece and Rome, so in both the Marvel Comics and the DC movie, the undersea world was full of architectural columns and classic-looking statues, just like Greece, right? So renaming Namor's land as Talokan and moving it to some place near Mexico is really genius - everything looks a little Mayan, Namor's kind of Latino now, and suddenly I've been pronouncing his name wrong all these years - it's not "NAY-more", it's "nuh-MORE", with a Spanish flourish, as if to rhyme with "amor". Wow, this makes sense - BUT, and this was a big NITPICK POINT for me, then why did nearly EVERY character in this movie go back to saying "NAY-more", which, we all just learned together, is WRONG in the MCU? Did they come up with this at the last minute, after most of the movie had been filmed? IDK.
(For that matter, why did everyone in the movie pronounce the "H" in the word "herb"? Don't they know it's silent, at least in American English? We just say the word as if it's "erb", like the "H" isn't even there. I know that British people say the "H", but this is an AMERICAN movie, so why? How do African people say the word, like the Yanks or the Brits?)
This brings up a problem that I had with the first "Black Panther" movie, and it's a problem for me again - I can't really describe my problem without sounding very racist, I fear. And I'm not black, not African, so it's probably better if I don't state my problem at all here. I have no right to complain about cultural appropriation, because I'm a white American - so why does this bug me? I don't have a dog in this fight - but I've been taught all my life to NOT fall back on stereotypes for foreign people, and basically it feels to me that this is all that this movie does, so it still feels kind of wrongish, even if it isn't. And I know, it generally portrays African society in a positive light, but it gets there by depicting Wakanda as a futuristic utopia, and then part of me realizes that in real life, African countries are just not like that. I know, blame Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who created the Black Panther character and his homeland - and it's a comic book, so it's a fantasy.
Still, something's eating at me - if there were a movie set in France, and every character in that movie was portrayed as a stereotypical "Frenchie" person, like if everybody wore a beret and dressed like a mime and spoke in an outrageously exaggerated fake French accent, somebody would have a problem with that - most likely the French. If a movie that was set in Germany had every character dressed in lederhosen or dirndls and walked around constantly carrying a big mug of beer and a pretzel, talking like Sgt. Schulz from "Hogan's Heroes", somebody would complain about that, because it's not an accurate portrayal of true German society today. So, umm, why is it OK here to hire a bunch of American and British actors and tell them to talk "more African"? Just asking, because I think this is a bit over the line and non-PC, but nobody else seems to be bothered by it. You know what, forget I said anything.
NITPICK POINT: How has the underwater kingdom been able to stay hidden for so many centuries? And were they affected by "The Blip" or not? Wouldn't the sudden disappearance of half of their population make them curious enough to contact the surface world, if only to find out what the heck just happened?
NITPICK POINT: It's awfully convenient that Namor declares war on Wakanda, then suddenly takes off and gives them a week to decide whether to join his war against humanity or not. Why, that turns out to be just enough time to evacuate the population of Wakanda, come up with a plan and build exactly the technology needed to fight back...
Also starring Letitia Wright (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Danai Gurira (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Winston Duke (last seen in "Us"), Angela Bassett (last heard in "Wendell & Wild"), Tenoch Huerta Majia (last seen in "The 33"), Martin Freeman (last seen in "The Operative"), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (last seen in "Black Widow"), Dominique Thorne (last seen in "Judas and the Black Messiah"), Florence Kasumba (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Michaela Coel, Alex Livinalli, Mabel Cadena, Michael B. Jordan (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Isaach de Bankolé (last seen in "French Exit"), Danny Sapani (last seen in "Black Panther"), Connie Chiume (ditto), Dorothy Steel (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Sope Aluko (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Zola Williams (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Janeshia Adams-Ginyard (ditto), Jemini Powell, Gerardo Aldana, Richard Schiff (last seen in "Gun Shy"), Gigi Bermingham (last seen in "Save the Date"), Robert John Burke (last seen in "Adrienne"), Lake Bell (last heard in "Cryptozoo"), Judd Wild (last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road"), Amber Harrington, Michael Blake Kruse, Kamaru Usman, Travis Love, Luke Lenza, Maria Mercedes Coroy, Irma-Estel Laguerre, Manuel Chavez, Kevin Changaris, Divine Love Konadu-Sun, a cameo from Anderson Cooper (last seen in "Mayor Pete"), the voice of Trevor Noah (also last seen in "Mayor Pete"), and archive footage of Chadwick Boseman (last seen in "Message from the King").
RATING: 7 out of 10 white funeral robes
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