Wakanda Forever Doesn't Know What It Wants To Be

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Directed by Ryan Coogler

Marvel/Walt Disney Studios, 161 minutes, PG-13

★★

 

 

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever made gobs of money, which guarantees there will be a third installment. Speaking from a critical perspective, that’s not a good thing. Wakanda Forever is a desultory effort stained by big-budget summer film clichés.

 

As most know, Chadwick Boseman was the original Black Panther. He tragically died of colon cancer, which certainly threw a monkey wrench into sequel plans. He appears in Wakanda Forever via stock footage that advances what one imagines was a rather hasty reimagining of the franchise. We see Shuri (Leticia Wright)  failing to recreate a heart-shaped herb to save her brother T'Challa (Boseman). This comes from the first film but as we know, the Black Panther died. The opening scenes of Wakanda Forever involve ritual mourning and Queen Ramonda’s (Angela Bassett) attempts to restore stability in her grieving homeland.

 

Fans know that Wakanda is a world power because it monopolizes a metal called vibranium, which allows scientific discoveries in advance of other nations. Queen Ramonda acts swiftly when she discovers that Western powers located vibranium on the ocean floor and are about to mine it. She also tongue lashes the United States and France who tried to condemn her actions at the United Nations. A greater challenge appears when an aquatic man with wings on his feet penetrates Wakanda’s defenses. He is Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), the leader of the underwater Mayan kingdom of Talokan that he formed centuries ago after killing a group of Spanish enslavers. He is a demigod born of a mortal woman and the god K’uk’ulkan. Namor offers an alliance with Talokan against the rest of the world, but Ramonda curtly dismisses him.

 

Alas, Wakanda Forever takes an unfortunate turn. A mad scramble ensues in which the Wakandans learn that another vibranium-locating machine is in prototype. Okoye and Shuri lead a team to find its creator, Riri Williams (Dominique Thern), an MIT student whose advanced engineering project was taken over by the CIA and the US military. This allows the scriptwriters to reintroduce Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), a CIA agent friendly to Wakanda, whom we met in the first film. You name it and paint-by-the-numbers tropes enter the film. The CIA, the Navy, and Namor’s agents pursue the Wakandans and Riri around Cambridge and Boston. We get car chases with crashing police cars in a film in which Wakandans use sci-fi spaceships to move from one place to the other! Did someone accidentally splice Wakanda Forever into the classically bad 1968 film Bullitt?

 

Namor captures Shuri and tries to curry her support by showing her the splendors and power of his Atlantis-like underwater empire. She is impressed, but like Ramonda, senses that he might be an expansionist demagogue. She is allowed to leave but when Namor shows up again in Wakanda he delivers an ultimatum: join an alliance with Talokan or face destruction. Ramonda stands firm and the ensuing war leaves Wakanda ruined and on the verge of collapse. This section is more like Star Wars than the ridiculous car chase in Greater Boston. Queen Ramonda dismisses Okoye (Danai Gurira), her head of the military, but is killed by Namor.  Another ritual and then Wakanda must address its leadership void and rebuild its compromised defenses.

 

Spy reports from Nakia buy some time. The former War Dog  has been living in Haiti where she fled after her lover T’Challa’s death. She is a teacher who is also hiding the son T’Challa fathered. This serves to reintroduce her from the first film, but it seems more like padding than instrumental to the plot. This is decidedly the case of a side story involving Ross and his ex-wife Valentina (Julia Louise-Dreyfus), the head of the CIA, who is either coming on to her ex-husband or seeking to entrap him.

 

All of the above simply stalls Shuri’s attempts to manufacture a heart-shaped herb as Riri marvels (get it?) over Wakanda. Queue more clichés: a near-annihilation oceanic clash between the Mayans and the Wakandans followed by a mano e mano rock-smashing clash between Namor and the new Black Panther. I’ll bet you know who that it is! Wright is fierce, but she’s also thin as a rail and I don’t for a nano second buy her instant herb-induced strength.

 

If you’re looking ahead to installment three, Nakia’s son Toussaint has a Wakandan name: T’Challa. I’m done after the overly long Wakanda Forever, which felt like an eternity.

 

Rob Weir