Film Review — Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Overlong, cluttered, predictable, and dramatically stale, but bookended by a couple of quite moving sequences
With superhero fatigue well and truly biting, I went to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hoping for something that would pull me out of my cynical mindset. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Wakanda Forever is a rather dull film bookended by a couple of quite moving sequences. It’s an exceedingly frustrating experience for many reasons, not least of which is the sheer length of the thing. I believe a film should be as long as it needs to be. I’ve seen 90-minute films too long and 5-hour films too short, but in Wakanda Forever, I felt painfully aware of every one of those 161 minutes. This is a crying shame, as the original Black Panther was such a vibrant, thrilling breath of fresh air, as well as a cultural milestone.
Given the death of Chadwick Boseman, director Ryan Coogler and screenwriter Joel Robert Cole were faced with quite a dilemma for the sequel. I believe they were correct not to recast the part, and in fairness to them, they pay quite a moving tribute to Boseman during the aforementioned opening and closing, in a manner that reminded me of the Paul Walker tribute in Furious 7. The problem is that sandwiched between those moving scenes, we have a deeply…
