From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. In this latest revisit we’ve covered a few older films—Barbarella, Vampirella, and Sparks—and the recently released Thor: Love and Thunder, Samaritan, Black Adam, and finally Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Chadwick Boseman’s unexpected death in August of 2020 came as a complete shock to the entire world—not just to the general public, but to the folks at Marvel Studios in general and the people responsible for making the eagerly awaited sequel to Black Panther in particular. Indeed, Ryan Coogler had already written one draft of the script to the film subtitled Wakanda Forever when Boseman passed away.
In addition to absorbing the blow of losing such a young and vibrant talent, it was clear that Coogler would have to completely rejigger his plans for the future of the character. There were several ways to approach this unforeseen dilemma, though whatever decision Marvel made would have to happen fast, as they were already in preproduction. Re-casting was considered. It would hardly be the first re-casting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as the characters of Bruce Banner, James Rhodes, and Thaddeus Ross can attest.
However, none of those three examples are true comps for this situation. Boseman was incredibly beloved in the role, a huge role model, a strong actor, and also by all accounts a great person.
Ultimately, they decided to follow the comics’ lead and make T’Challa’s sister Shuri—already a breakout MCU character as played by Letitia Wright in Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War—into the new Panther.
(For an in-depth contribution to this discussion, I strongly recommend author/screenwriter Steven Barnes’ lengthy treatise on the subject on Medium.)
In addition, this movie introduced Namor the Sub-Mariner to the MCU. One of Marvel’s first-ever superheroes, Namor was created in 1939 by Bill Everett, appearing in Marvel Comics #1, alongside stories featuring the Human Torch (actually an android), the costumed detective known as the Angel, the Western hero the Masked Raider, and the jungle lord Ka-Zar.
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Namor was the hybrid son of a human sea captain and the water-breathing princess of the undersea nation of Atlantis. Having his father’s pale skin rather than his mother’s blue epidermis, he was an amphibian, and would sometimes make war on the surface world. Namor has been both an antagonist and hero over the last eight decades, including fighting alongside Captain America and others against the Nazis in World War II. His popularity declined after the war, as it did for most superheroes, but he was brought into the modern Marvel Universe in the fourth issue of Fantastic Four in 1962. Over the years, he has continued to be both a good guy and a bad guy, and has had his own series, both mini and ongoing, multiple times since the debut of the Sub-Mariner comic in 1968.
One thing that both Namor and T’Challa have in common is that they are monarchs of “hidden” nations. Coogler’s original notion was to have Atlantis (renamed Talokan) and Wakanda come into conflict amidst the chaos of T’Challa recovering from the five-year blip chronicled in Avengers: Endgame. That is maintained in the final version, but instead the backdrop is the outpouring of grief over T’Challa’s death, which happens at the very top of the film. Namor has been reimagined as a Mayan figure even more ancient than the comics’ scion of the early twentieth century. (Talokan is named after Tlālōcān, a paradise from Aztec legend ruled by a rain god.)
Back from Endgame are Letitia Wright as Shuri, Danai Gurira as Okoye, Winston Duke as M’Baku, and Angela Bassett in what was just revealed this week to be an Academy Award-nominated performance as Ramonda. Back from Black Widow is Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Back from The Falcon and the Winter Solder is Florence Kasumba as Ayo. Back from Black Panther are Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross, Michael B. Jordan as the image of Killmonger, and Isaach de Bankolé, Dorothy Steel, Danny Sapani, and Connie Chiume as the Elders of Wakanda’s tribes.
Introduced in this film are Tenoch Huerta as Namor, Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, Michaela Coel as Aneka, Mabel Cadena as Namora, Alex Livinalli as Attuma, María Mercedes Coroy as Namor’s Mom, Divine Love Konadu-Sun as Nakia’s kid, Richard Schiff as the U.S. Secretary of State, and Robert John Burke and Lake Bell as CIA agents. (The casting of Bell is an amusing touch, as she voiced Natasha Romanoff in the animated What If…? series)
Thorne will next be seen as the star of Ironheart. Louis-Dreyfus will next be seen in Thunderbolts. Freeman will next be seen in Secret Invasion.
“I am the Black Panther, and I have come for retribution!”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Written by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Produced by Kevin Feige, Nate Moore
Original release date: October 26, 2022
Shuri is working her ass off trying to find a way to cure T’Challa of the fatal illness he’s apparently suffering from by attempting to re-create the heart-shaped herb (which was destroyed by Killmonger). However, he dies before she can figure out a way to do so.
The nation mourns. Ramonda becomes queen, and she orders her daughter to continue to try to re-create the heart-shaped herb. But Shuri’s interest in doing so is gone, as she feels the Black Panther is a thing of the past.
One year later, Ramonda is facing pressure to share Wakanda’s vibranium with the rest of the world. She speaks before the United Nations, reiterating her position that it’s Wakanda’s vibranium, and no one else has a right to it. To accentuate the point, she has the Dora Milaje bring the mercenaries who were captured trying to steal vibranium into the conference chamber.
The U.S. government has a vibranium-detecting machine, and they’ve discovered some in the Atlantic Ocean. A SEAL team goes underwater to retrieve it, only to be ambushed and killed by water-breathing warriors, who also kill the CIA agents running the operation.
The CIA thinks that Wakanda is responsible for killing their team. The underwater warriors are in fact from Talokan, an undersea nation that, like Wakanda, has remained hidden—though unlike Wakanda, they don’t even pretend to be a regular nation, but instead stay completely off the radar of the “surface world.”
Ramonda and Shuri take some time to discuss their shared grief over T’Challa’s death. Ramonda has already burned her funeral robes, symbolizing the end of mourning, but Shuri is still wearing hers after a year. Their conversation is interrupted by Talokan’s monarch, Namor. He flies out of the water, having easily bypassed the Wakandan defenses, and delivers an ultimatum to Ramonda and Shuri: give him the person who created the vibranium detection machine, or he will truly invade Wakanda.
Shuri and Okoye are tasked with finding out who it is who created the machine. They enlist their favorite CIA agent, Everett Ross, who risks his job (not to mention his relationship with is boss, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who is not only the director of the CIA, but also Ross’ ex-wife) to provide them with a name.
The detector was created by an MIT student named Riri Williams. She thought that the vibranium detector was a theoretical thing, a school project, having no idea that the class for which she submitted the design was a cover for a covert CIA operation. Williams has also constructed her own Iron Man-style armor.
Okoye and Shuri find Williams at MIT—but so do the FBI (tracking Shuri and Okoye thanks to Ross being caught talking to them and put in jail), and so do the Talokans. A huge fight ensues with Williams and Shuri both captured by the Talokans. Okoye returns to Wakanda in disgrace, Ramonda stripping her of her rank and kicking her out of the Dora Milaje for losing Shuri.
Ramonda goes to Haiti, where Nakia has been living since Thanos’ snap, and asks her to be a War Dog once again. She goes underwater to Talokan to effect a rescue.
Namor gives Shuri a piece of the herb that provides the Talokans with superior strength and endurance. Then he tells Shuri his origin story: He was born of a Mayan princess in the sixteenth century, who, while pregnant with him, ingested a vibranium-infused herb to try to cure her and her people of smallpox. It worked as far as that went, but it turned them into water-breathers. Namor, however, was born an amphibian, and he now rules Talokan, which—like Wakanda—has its wealth and power provided by vibranium, and which he has kept hidden from the surface world.
Until now. He proposes two options to Shuri, who is heir to the Wakandan throne: an alliance or an invasion. Nakia’s subsequent rescue is successful, extricating both Shuri (who, to be fair, Namor was going to let go anyhow) and Williams (who he most definitely was not going to let go).
Williams is completely blown away by how awesome Wakanda is. Her tour is interrupted by Namor’s arrival. He tears through Wakanda, kicking everyone’s ass single-handedly, including starting a flood that nearly drowns Williams—but she is saved by Ramonda, who sacrifices her own life to save the young woman’s.
Shuri is able to use the herb Namor gave her to finally succeed in reconstructing the heart-shaped herb. She goes through the ritual of ingesting it and traveling to the Ancestral Plane, hoping to see T’Challa. Instead, she encounters Killmonger, to her disappointment. Killmonger reminds her that T’Challa was noble, and when his father was killed, he refrained from revenge. Killmonger, though, took the path of vengeance.
Shuri decides to follow her cousin’s path instead of that of her brother. She declares herself the new Black Panther. She is accepted by all five tribes, though M’Baku of the Jabari advises her against the course of action she’s going to pursue to avenge Ramonda.
Ignoring M’Baku, she orders a counterstrike against Talokan, setting out to sea in a heavily armed warship. She gives the Midnight Angel armor to Okoye and another Dora Milaje, Aneka, so they can join the fight from the air, with Ayo now the leader of the Dora Milaje. In the meantime, Williams has used Shuri’s lab to gussy up her homemade armor into something fancier.
The battle is brutal, especially since they’re on the ocean, so the water-breathing Talokans have the advantage. Shuri and Namor wind up fighting on a nearby island, after Shuri traps Namor away from water for a time. Before she can follow Killmonger’s advice and kill Namor, she remembers her mother and decides to show compassion, asking for his surrender in exchange for an alliance. Namor agrees. (He’s functionally immortal, he can bide his time, and besides, Wakanda and Talokan are stronger together than apart.)
Everyone licks their wounds and goes home. Williams leaves her armor behind and returns to MIT. (Why she doesn’t stay in Wakanda and keep her fancy-shmancy armor is left as an exercise for both the viewer and for the writers of Ironheart.) The two Midnight Angels spring Ross from prison, taking a certain amount of glee in the notion of two African women rescuing the colonizer.
When it comes time to choose the new ruler of Wakanda, Shuri is a no-show, with M’Baku instead stepping forward to claim the throne and ask if anyone will challenge him. For her part, Shuri has gone to Haiti to visit Nakia, who reveals that she has a six-year-old son, born months after Thanos’ snap: Toussaint, son of Nakia and T’Challa. There on the beach, Shuri finally burns her funeral robes.
“T’Challa was truly noble—are you going to be like him, or are you gonna take care of business?”
Jesus fucking Christ, are they going to kill off every adult woman who’s a recurring character in the MCU?
Once was annoying. Twice was tiresome. But we’re up to six in the last ten movies: Gamora in Infinity War, Natasha Romanoff in Endgame, May Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Wanda Maximoff in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Jane Foster in Thor: Love and Thunder, and now Ramonda. Even if you give them a mulligan for Gamora, since we have an alternate version of her from Endgame forward, that’s still appalling. It’s at best lazy-ass storytelling, and at worst despicable misogyny.
This is particularly galling in a movie that, in general, does really well by the women in it. We’ve got a ton of great characters in this movie, and a plurality of them are female. Okoye is probably my favorite character in the entire MCU (I go back and forth between her and Peggy Carter), Ayo has slowly built up from first Dora Milaje on the right in Captain America: Civil War to a powerful character in her own right (both here and in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Nakia remains superlative, Namora is fantastic as the Talokan equivalent of Okoye, and de Fontaine is slowly building into a most interesting character whose loyalties are still not clear.
And then we have the triumvirate of fabulous in Bassett’s Ramonda, Letitia Wright’s Shuri, and Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams.
Williams is a fabulous character, the opposite of Shuri in pretty much every way, and it’s so excellent to see that we can have two young Black women who Do Science who are totally not alike. Shuri is royalty, confident, always thinking three steps ahead. Williams, though, is from a much less privileged background and has had to fight for all her chances, and she’s much more seat-of-the-pants. It’s like people of color can have different personalities or something! (Also I love that her unknowingly creating a weapon for the government while at a major science institute reminded me of the plot of Real Genius.)
Thrust unexpectedly into the lead role by the death of her costar, Wright shines in this movie as a person in a thousand kinds of pain and no idea how to deal with it. One of the themes of several of the Marvel movies—particularly the ones featuring Thor and the Black Panther—is that being a political leader and being a hero are almost mutually exclusive callings. We already know that Shuri is a capable hero when she’s in her right mind based on Black Panther and Infinity War, but as a leader, she fails pretty spectacularly—for the same reason that she fails as a hero for a portion of this movie. She’s hurting so badly from T’Challa’s death—and her own sense of guilt over not being able to save him—that she’s not thinking straight. This results in a spectacularly wrong-headed assault on Talokan in which Wakanda nearly loses. Indeed, were it not for Shuri’s direct triumph over Namor, Wakanda’s forces—who are not pushovers—would’ve had their heads handed to them. Attacking someone who breathes water from a small ship (small, that is, by comparison to, y’know, the entire friggin’ ocean) in the middle of the Atlantic is not a well-thought-out strategy. Nor is it wise to choose a battleground where you can’t use your battle rhinos. (Yes, this makes three movies in a row with no battle rhinos. What the hell, people? I WANT MY BATTLE RHINOS!) M’Baku even told her that it was a bad plan, but he went along with it, because Shuri was queen at that point, and he does as he’s told. At least until he can challenge her, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Finally, we have Bassett, and what the hell were they thinking killing her off? I was wondering for four movies why Ramonda wasn’t the one who took over ruling Wakanda when T’Chaka died, and this movie just proves that I was a hundred percent right to ask that question, because she’s phenomenally good at it. In fact, she’s demonstrably better at it than any of the other four members of her family we saw in the job (T’Chaka, T’Challa, Killmonger, and Shuri). The scene where she owns the UN, punctuated by the Dora Milaje dropping off the zip-tied mercenaries, is truly epic, her ranting at Okoye for losing her other child is devastating, and she generally brings a tremendous gravitas to the proceedings.
Killing her off doesn’t even make story sense, because the last thing Namor would want is a martyr. He wants to demoralize Wakanda, not piss them off. And then they gave Bassett a (deserved) Academy Award nomination, making the decision to kill her even stupider, in retrospect.
This movie is a superlative meditation on grief and grieving (the second one in Phase 4, following WandaVision). T’Challa’s passing is a miasma that suffuses the entire movie, warping everyone’s behavior in one way or another.
And Tenoch Huerta is a revelation as Namor. His portrayal isn’t quite perfect—he’s lacking Namor’s trademark haughty arrogance—but he has the charisma and anger and determination. I absolutely adore the decision to rethink his origin into something more Central American, and I very much look forward to seeing more of him going forward.
While it seems like the irrelevant doings of unnecessary White people, I enjoyed the bits with Ross and de Fontaine, at least in part because we finally know what the latter’s job is (it wasn’t at all clear from her appearances in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Black Widow), and besides, it’s never bad to have Martin Freeman around…
It’s also never bad to have Michael B. Jordan. I like that Killmonger’s ghost hangs a lantern on the fact that Shuri is going through the exact same thing that her brother went through in Civil War, but also they make the cameo work by using Killmonger as a symbol of Shuri’s anger. She doesn’t want to be a hero like her brother, she wants, like her cousin, to burn it all down. So of course Killmonger is who she sees in her heart-shaped-herb-induced vision quest…
Last but not least, Winston Duke continues to steal the show as M’Baku. The ending seems to indicate that M’Baku is making a play for the throne. Civil War already made it clear that the monarch and the Black Panther do not have to be the same person, and I’m totally okay with Shuri sticking with the role of hero over queen.
Though we do have T’Challa’s son in the mid-credits scene, and I have to admit I had trouble even buying that whole thing. I find it impossible to credit that Nakia kept the kid a secret. Maybe during the Blip when T’Challa was dusted and the world was in chaos, I could see it, but afterward? Especially after he died? It makes no sense, as the boy should be raised in Wakanda where he can grow up and learn things in a technologically advanced haven, not a politically unstable island nation. Plus, the kid’s very existence feels like an attempt to reassure the audience that we won’t have icky girl cooties on the Panther suit for long…
Finally, is vibranium gonna be the thing that ties everything together the MCU together the way the infinity stones were? Because that got real tiresome—by the time we got to Doctor Strange’s revelation that the Eye of Agamotto was an infinity stone, I was ready to riot—and I’m not eager for that to be repeated…
To sum up, this is a movie that was made under the worst possible circumstance, and it winds up celebrating what made the one actor who couldn’t be in it so great. Regardless of how you feel about the greater issue of whether or not they should have re-cast (and I keep going back and forth on the subject, myself), the movie they did make is a powerful, brutal, brilliant movie that celebrates life and reminds of us of how hard death is to deal with—and the price of dealing it, too.
***
This concludes our semi-annual revival of the great superhero movie rewatch. The first half of 2023 promises Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Shazam!: Fury of the Gods, all of which (and possibly more) I’ll be looking at in June.
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s latest comic book work is the Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness five-issue comic book miniseries The Beginning, issue #2 of which will be out in February from TokyoPop. It’s the prequel to the Netflix animated series, and features fan-favorite character Leon.
I had a hard time with this movie because I continued to get thrown out of it every time Letitia Wright as Shuri was on screen. Having someone who is so decidedly anti-science in real life portray “the best scientist ever” snaps all my suspension of disbelief. I *tried* to ignore that and just enjoy the movie, but it robbed a lot of the excitement/joy. Add on top of that that my reaction to Ramonda’s death was “WTF?!” and I ended up ranking this close to the bottom of the pile.
teancom: I totally get that. I was hugely disappointed in Wright’s anti-vax attitudes, and I can understand why you, or anyone else, wouldn’t be able to separate art and artist.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I ended up watching this over the holidays at the behest of family, without ever having seen the original Black Panther (or really any of the recent MCU movies.) I will say, it was definitely odd to have the whale-riding, spear-armed blue people be the antagonists, while the the people flying around in high-tech armored suits are the good guys.
(Also, I am sorry but I cannot take Namor seriously in those little green shorts. Which must be a unique mark of rulership or something, as the rest of his people all seem to wear loincloths…)
Putting aside the cultural touchstone elements of a Black Panther movie, this film highlighted to me what a creaky edifice the MCU has become. In this world, the blip might as well have never happened — this would have been the second funeral for T’Challa, since he’d already “died” for everyone in the Snap, and they must have had a power struggle and had someone else rule Wakanda for five years, someone who just… gave up power after everyone returned?
We also wind up with yet another hidden society (yet so aware) so powerful (yet so fearful) it could apparently wreak destruction on the surface world. Its hidden nature would be more plausible if the world’s governments and security agencies hadn’t already just faced the likes of Hydra, Wakanda, the Eternals, the Ten Rings, the Red Room, Wanda, space invaders, Wanda again, etc. There should be utter suspicion about what else might be out there, not, “Who’d have thought there’d be underwater people?”
I’m also boggled that the high-tech underwater warriors repeatedly decide to assault the Royal Sea Leopard by climbing up the hull rather than use — or at least attempt — the traditional method of sinking surface vessels with torpedoes or mines or missiles.
That’s where I am with this. I’m the same age as Tomei, only a bit younger than Bassett, and I was thrilled to be able to say “Look! Every woman over the age of 50 is not, in fact, a victim! Some of them are Angela fucking Bassett!” And then, welp . . . .
krad, I wanted to say that you’ve done a fantastic job with the reviews on the MCU films, and Godspeed to everyone else staying on the train, but this is my stop. Paying money to be depressed by entertainment is not a healthy use of my time, and a dear friend’s recent diagnosis with colon cancer has driven home that we don’t get much of that.
Maybe they introduced T’Challa’s son during reshoots as a reaction to all the bad press Letitia Wright was garnering, so that they would have a plan B if she kept blowing up in their face.
I do wonder if they reworked Atlantis as a result of Tenoch Huerta being cast as Namor, or if they cast him as Namor as a result of their reworking of Atlantis. Either way is fine with me, and it at least lessens audience confusion between this and that other big superhero franchise with a guy from Atlantis.
I did not get the sense that Shuri wanted to be Queen. My interpretation (at least provisionally) of the ending was that M’Baku didn’t challenge her, so much as do her a favour, to give her the opportunity to deal with her grief. There’s nothing on-screen to confirm or contradict, but I would be quite comfortable imagining that they actually discussed it and agreed.
What the film does show is that their relationship has become deep: he can tell her things that she can’t or won’t hear from others; and he seems quite protective of her. He seemed to be playing the role of surrogate brother. It would be quite a reversal for him to suddenly transform into a rival or antagonist without some basis for the change. (That’s possible, of course, but it would be disappointing for me.)
I agree with all this, but it’s sad that the bad habits of the MCU are detracting from so much that’s good here. I’m still watching this stuff. It’s doing some things that the first ten years of the MCU would not — diversity, weirder characters — but sadly making some bad storytelling choices over and over. I was much more disappointed by what they did to Wanda than this, though.
Haiti in the movie, and a son named Toussaint, makes perfect sense. Wakanda is a comic-book version of a theme that has come up many times in African-American literature — the dream of an uncolonized Black nation. Sometimes Ethiopia or ancient Egypt is used symbolically for that dream. Haiti has also been that symbol, because it was born from the only successful slave revolt in modern (any?) history. The Haitian Revolution was as consequential as the American and French revolutions that came just before it, but today we have mostly forgotten it. Not a coincidence — white supremacist culture and education has been the rule in most of our history. For Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, and many others, Haiti was the symbol of Black freedom. It is meaningful to connect it to Wakanda.
They seem to be setting up the first arc of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s run on the comic with the Midnight Angels’ revolt and bringing democracy to Wakanda. They might be using Okoye in Aneka’s role; at the end of this movie she is a ronin and Aneka seems to be her lover, if I remember correctly.
A well constructed movie, especially considering the loss of Chadwick Boseman in midstream. I loved their approach to the Sub-Mariner, and the actor suited the role quite well. The Riri Williams origin felt a bit like an awkward add-on, although I liked the character, and the deFontaine storyline was almost completely superfluous.
Thank you, krad.
I was so upset when they killed Ramonda. It made the 2nd half of the movie a lot harder to watch.
I deliberately have not seen Spiderman: No Way Home because I was furious that they killed Aunt May.
Ugh.
Some things I loved about this movie: all of the female characters and relationships. Great stuff.
The music, particularly when the Dora Milaje show up.
There were a few spectacular fights/action scenes.
The designs for Namor and his people.
And of course, the deeply moving tribute to Chadwick Boseman and T’Challa.
Some things I didn’t like:
It was too bleak for me (not the sadness over T’Challa’s death – that felt appropriate).
Queen Ramond’s death. Terrible choice.
Namor’s winged feet.
@6
Ryan Coogler has said that the first draft of Wakanda Forever – completed prior to Chadwick Boseman’s passing – had T’Challa’s son. He was to be a much bigger part of the movie.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/arts/ryan-coogler-black-panther-wakanda-forever.html
I totally did not understand Namor’s insistence on forcing an alliance with Wakanda. They’ve shown that they could totally kick anyone’s butt so why force Wakanda into an alliance under threat of death and destruction? Especially after killing their queen?
Also, I just could not deal with the visuals of Shuri fighting. Letitia Wright is so thin, where is the leverage she needs to throw Namor – a bigger, more bulky guy – around like that? She doesn’t have the weight! It’s a matter of physics, people! Okoye seemed to have more heft (or, at least her costume did) so I could buy into her fights, but not Letitia’s.
I can’t imagine the pressure it must have been not only to live up to the first Black Panther, but also to deal with the sudden loss of Boseman on top of that. In a way, this was even worse than Carrie Fisher’s passing halfway through Star Wars. That it turned out as good as it did is nothing short of a miracle, and also the hard work of Coogler, Cole, Wright and everyone else involved. Definitely not Rise of Skywalker material.
For the most part, this is a worthy sequel. It really can’t avoid the big gap left by his loss, and it chooses to tackle the issue head-on. A story about loss, grieving, revenge and moving on. It’s impressive just how well Shuri’s arc complements Killmonger’s own arc from the first film. Plus, with the new underwater realm, it sets up potential plot threads that will undoubtedly shake the MCU going forward. A solid choice to wrap Phase 4. I’ve never heard of Namor or read any of these comics, so I’m going in blind this next phase (unless we start seeing more mutant-based stories, which I have more familiarity).
Still, the movie falls a bit short of the first in terms of villainy. I understand where Namor is coming from, but I find it harder to sympathize with a character whose grievances stem from persecutions that happened centuries before. It was easier with Killmonger since institutional society racism against African-Americans remains a very current (and unfortunate) trend. And Killmonger set the bar so high, it was always going to be an uphill battle for any sequel. Namor is still a better villain than say, the aliens from Thor the Dark World, or Ikaris from Eternals.
I didn’t have much of a problem with Ramonda’s sacrifice, though. At the very least, I don’t think it’s a case of fridging. For one, her death spurs Shuri’s arc, rather than a male hero’s (and the movie rightfully puts the focus on Shuri, as it should be). And it plays into the movie’s theme of mortality, losing your closest ones, and learning to deal with it. It’s not like May Parker or Jane Foster, where the deaths are more incidental than thematic. Sure, losing a good character like Ramonda is a blow, but not a crippling one.
I think the main problem I have with Write in the role is she doesn’t have the physicality for it. They had several women who do (including Basset) but she she is tiny! They maybe could have sent her to the same fitness trainer that Portman and Thompson went to for Thor Love and Thunder?
Maybe it’s the Black Panther’s suit and/or the ingesting of the heart-shaped herb that gives the character its super strength. Thus, this compensates for the actual person’s (actor’s) slight frame.
Ha Nguyen: remember, the heart-shaped herb — as garreth said — gives one enhanced strength, speed, and agility, which makes up for Wright’s slight frame.
Plus, y’know, it’s Marvel: convenience physics rules…..
—Keith
And yet we are told by some reviewers that this movie is bad because it has too much female energy and not enough of the male. I guess the showrunners decided to fix that by killing as many women as possible. Sigh. I hope those reviewers are happy now.
Quoth Eduardo: “I didn’t have much of a problem with Ramonda’s sacrifice, though. At the very least, I don’t think it’s a case of fridging. For one, her death spurs Shuri’s arc, rather than a male hero’s (and the movie rightfully puts the focus on Shuri, as it should be). And it plays into the movie’s theme of mortality, losing your closest ones, and learning to deal with it. It’s not like May Parker or Jane Foster, where the deaths are more incidental than thematic. Sure, losing a good character like Ramonda is a blow, but not a crippling one.”
Y’know, I deliberately did not refer to Ramonda’s offing as fridging because I have grown well and truly sick of the constant replies in the comments of, “Well, I don’t think this was really fridging” every damn time I use the term. And here you are saying, “Well, I don’t think this wsa really fridging” when I didn’t even say that it was!
Sigh.
Anyhow, I’d be more willing to buy your argument if we were just talking about BP:WF on its own out of context, but as I made clear in the very second paragraph of the review segment of the above article, the issue isn’t just that Ramonda was killed, it’s that she’s the sixth recurring adult female character in the last ten movies to be killed. The problem here isn’t the individual murders, it’s the cumulative effect of 60% of the films since May 2018 doing the same goddamn thing.
And I don’t buy your argument anyhow, because the movie didn’t need someone else to be killed to make the theme work. T’Challa’s death at the top of the movie provides all the grief and mourning necessary. Ramonda’s death is just piling on unnecessarily.
Well, that and doing the same thing that having Toussaint/T’Challa Jr. does: reassure the Forces of Toxic Masculinity that we won’t keep girl cooties on the franchise for too terribly long. We’ve got a new Black Panther in the wings and the next monarch of Wakanda will be the leader of the Jabari tribe, and look, they’ve both got penises!
Feh.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I don’t have a problem with Shuri being petite. For a baseline human, yes the weight class matters, but for superhumans, I am going to assume that the increased strength comes with increased density. Her muscles don’t bulge so it must be that her muscle fibres are made of denser stuff with higher tensile strength and elasticity.
As far as M’Baku goes, I’d like to see him come into conflict with the Black Panther. I think that would make for more interesting stories than purely externally-based threats, or yet another vibranium story.
This is now available for streaming on Disney+.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This was very good. It was, of course, very disappointing not to get to spend another movie with T’Challa, but on the other hand, it was refreshing to see an action movie so completely dominated by women, particularly women of color. And they were all so distinct in personality and viewpoint. I really liked Riri; she was a lot of fun and I liked her attitude.
Namor was engaging, and I actually prefer it that Huerta made him more relaxed and likeable rather than going for the character’s usual domineering arrogance, which I’ve never found very appealing. But he was true to Namor’s character in that he was vengeful and unyielding toward the surface-dwellers, quick to use threats and bullying to get his way and looking for any excuse to go to war. I like how they even derived his name from “sin amor” as a name he chose to commemorate his lack of love for the surface dwellers. (Although it annoyed me that the other characters pronounced it the traditional Marvel way of “Nay-mor” even though he himself pronounced it “Nah-mor.” It seems rude to me not to pronounce someone’s name right.)
Oh, and I thought the plot point about Namor drawing oxygen through his skin was a clever way to justify why he wears so little clothing.
I disagree with Keith about Ramonda being a great queen. I think her decisions were compromised by her personal feelings. Her fear of losing her daughter after losing her son made her recruit Nakia to infiltrate Talokan, which led Nakia to kill those women, provoking a conflict that could perhaps have been avoided if Shuri’s diplomacy had been left to work. And her defrocking of Okoye was an unwarranted overreaction, a decision rooted in anger and recrimination rather than a responsible leadership decision.
As for Ramonda’s death, it did feel excessive, but I suppose it was necessary to drive Shuri to the point that she felt she had no family left, nothing to keep her going but vengeance.
One plot hole I wonder about is how Griot didn’t know (or didn’t tell Ramonda) that Shuri asked to be taken to Talokan rather than being kidnapped, given that he was translating between Shuri and the Talokans when she did so.
I praised the women in the film, but Winston Duke was just amazing in every scene. His choices of how to deliver his lines are fascinatingly rich. And yes, I think it’s clear that he and Shuri agreed to let him take the throne, because he stepped out of the aircraft that was supposed to be delivering her and passed on her regrets for not being there.
Ross was nice to see, but I remain unsure what the point of the Valentina character is. Louis-Dreyfus was okay in the role, but Marvel’s apparent attempt to set her up as the next Nick Fury just isn’t doing it for me. (Anyway, I think it’s pretty clear by now that Wong is the new Nick Fury.)
On the question of separating the art from the artist, I was able for the most part to focus on Shuri and not think about the activities of the person performing the role of Shuri. However, I did note an amusing irony that Coogler and the screenwriters required a science-doubting anti-vaxxer to play a character who was desperately fighting to use science to devise a cure for someone’s disease.
Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention the nice touch that they used different-colored subtitles for different languages. The Wakandans’ Xhosa was yellow, Mayan was blue, Spanish was white. (I forget what the French was.)
@6/David Pirtle: “I do wonder if they reworked Atlantis as a result of Tenoch Huerta being cast as Namor, or if they cast him as Namor as a result of their reworking of Atlantis.”
I figured they reworked Atlantis to stand apart from the Aquaman movies. And doing that gave them a chance to explore yet another underrepresented, colonized culture.
@13/Ha Nguyen: “I totally did not understand Namor’s insistence on forcing an alliance with Wakanda. They’ve shown that they could totally kick anyone’s butt so why force Wakanda into an alliance under threat of death and destruction? Especially after killing their queen?”
I saw it as Namor offering them his mercy. He didn’t need them as allies, but he thought he’d be kind enough to offer them the chance to ally with him rather than get wiped out along with the colonizers. He probably identified with them, since they’re both secret havens against colonialism protected by vibranium. So he figured maybe they’d see things his way and want to be his pals.
@14/Eduardo: “I find it harder to sympathize with a character whose grievances stem from persecutions that happened centuries before.”
But he’s centuries old, so he personally lived through those persecutions. And really, the world is still suffering from the aftereffects of those persecutions. The racial ideology invented to justify slavery and oppression is still causing widespread violence, suffering, subjugation, and death today. The fact that it started centuries ago doesn’t make it any less immediate, because it’s never stopped.
@20/vinsentient: “Her muscles don’t bulge so it must be that her muscle fibres are made of denser stuff with higher tensile strength and elasticity.”
It’s a myth that muscles need to bulge in order to be strong. That’s mistaking the fashion of bodybuilders for practical performance. Muscles are basically cables. They’re long and thin. They don’t need bulk.
I thought the core of the movie was great, but as with a lot of Phase 4, it was marred somewhat by the desire to throw so much extraneous shit into the mix that muddled the core themes and character arcs.
Exhibit A is Riri. She is a literally the walking, talking, MacGuffin of this film – an object that Wakanda, Talokan, and the U.S. agents fight over. She plays a part in two big action scenes of the movie, but other than that, she’s pretty much sitting there through most of the movie, watching other people do things. She was pretty transparently bolted on here due to studio edict, which is kind of a head-scratching move, because Disney+ has introduced several shows now not carried by Phase 1-3 mains, and they’re doing fine. Sure, she was an entertaining character, but storywise, she was extraneous.
Exhibit B is whatever the heck was going on with Ross and De Fontaine. It wasn’t bad, but it was the least interesting portion of the movie. Some of it was just there because of the need to set up Riri, but a lot of it feels like they’re still trying to set up the pieces of whatever they’re going to do with Thunderbolts (which seems like it will be a partial sequel of both Black Widow and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).
In both cases, it’s really to my mind just…bad…to try and set up future elements of your franchise within the main body of a creative work. Put that stuff in the post-credits scenes, or make it integral to the core narrative.
Other than that, I agree with your review.
@24: I never thought about it that way, but that’s exactly what chafes me – the overstuffing with unnecessary plot hooks. It’s messy and distracting and I wish they would quit it.
@24/Karl: I don’t think Riri was extraneous. She represented what the Black Panther films mean to their audience, and in-universe, what Wakanda means to Black Americans — an inspiring vision of a truly free, uncolonized African society as advanced as any in the world. I think it might’ve been stronger if Riri had overtly been a student of the outreach centers Wakanda established before the Blip, but we did see how much she admired the Wakandans and was inspired by them to develop her vibranium detector. If she hadn’t been there, then all the significant American characters would’ve been white, and that all-important interplay of the African and African-American viewpoints wouldn’t have been represented. (Although the film did touch on another part of the African diaspora with the scenes in Haiti.)
Moreover, Riri was more than a MacGuffin, because what mattered was not just that Shuri and Namor were fighting over something, but why they were fighting over it. If it had just been a matter of destroying the detector, they would’ve been on the same page. But Namor wanted to kill a human being, and it was important for that human being to be someone we and the characters could connect to and recognize the importance of protecting at all costs. She had to be someone worth risking war over. It worked for the story that she was someone young and innocent and heroic, and that she was someone that Shuri could bond with and feel an affinity for. And Riri Williams was an ideal choice for that role. She wasn’t just tacked on for Marvel continuity purposes the way Val was; she was the right character to use there.
Especially since Shuri had to step up and take over the role of Black Panther, moving beyond her role of the young tech genius. Riri’s presence enhanced that arc because she was the embodiment of the person Shuri used to be but couldn’t be any longer. Having Riri there in that role helped Shuri accept that she could entrust it to someone else and move beyond it.
One more point:
@24/Karl: “She plays a part in two big action scenes of the movie, but other than that, she’s pretty much sitting there through most of the movie, watching other people do things.”
A character doesn’t have to be onscreen a lot to be essential to the story. Look at Orson Welles in The Third Man. Harry Lime is only in a handful of scenes throughout the movie, but everything the characters do is about him and in response to him, so he’s the most important character even though he has very little screen time. By the same token, everything that happens in this movie is about Riri. She invents the detector that creates the crisis, she’s the reason Shuri convinces Namora and Attuma to take her to negotiate with Namor, and the two nations go to war over the issue of whether she should live or die. Oh, and telling Shuri and Okoye about her is the reason Ross gets arrested. Yes, other people are doing things, but they’re doing them because of Riri. Far from being extraneous, she’s the (Iron)heart of the whole damn story.
@26, 27/Christopher: I agree with you in part: Riri is not a MacGuffin. But I don’t agree that she is the heart of the story. This story is fundamentally about grief, and how emotions affect judgment and the use of power. She is largely peripheral to that. That’s the sense in which I agree with @24/Karl. One could have written her out of this script without changing very much. There are plenty of other things that Wakanda and Talokan would have (and did!) disagree(d) about that could have driven the same plot with most of the same character beats.
I do agree that she serves as a point of reference for the continuing underlying theme of how Wakanda relates to Blackness in the rest of the world, and vice versa. But I don’t think this film really did much with that theme. So perhaps that was a missed opportunity, or perhaps it was just a reminder to be elaborated upon in the future. But I think it does contribute to the sense of having “too many notes” that, to me, is a weak point in the film. (Although, to be clear, it’s a relatively minor flaw in what is, in my opinion, a substantially better film that any of the other recent MCU installments.)
@28/Keith Rose: “This story is fundamentally about grief, and how emotions affect judgment and the use of power. She is largely peripheral to that.”
I don’t agree. Part of a story about grief is how the grieving character finds a motivation to move on. Riri gave Shuri something positive to fight for, which helped her look beyond her own pain and loss. And the way Namor and Shuri respectively reacted to Riri illustrated their different choices of how to deal with grief, because Namor let his grief at the persecution of his people drive him to vengeance against anyone he saw as a threat, even a young student who didn’t deserve it, while Shuri found something more positive to work for.
Granted, though, it might have better tied Riri into the theme of moving on from grief if there’d been more than a throwaway mention of her armor being inspired by Iron Man. If she’d said something about trying to carry on Tony Stark’s legacy now that he was gone, that would’ve resonated better, and might have been a factor in what inspired Shuri to resurrect the Black Panther.
“One could have written her out of this script without changing very much.”
I’ve already argued why that’s not the case. If the MacGuffin were just some impersonal machine, there’d be no reason for Shuri to be at odds with Namor about it, since a vibranium detector would be bad for Wakanda too. If the inventor had been some middle-aged white guy, the personal resonance for Shuri wouldn’t have been there, and again, the incentive for Wakanda to risk a devastating war to protect the inventor would not exist. There is no reason for conflict, and therefore no story, if the inventor is not exactly who she is, a young African-American genius with a huge amount of potential that she deserves the chance to fulfill. Riri is exactly the kind of person that T’Challa brought Wakanda out of hiding to help in the first place. That’s why protecting her was so important to Shuri and the Wakandans, why it was the reason Shuri changed her mind and chose to resurrect the Black Panther after all. Because protecting Riri is preserving T’Challa’s legacy.
“I do agree that she serves as a point of reference for the continuing underlying theme of how Wakanda relates to Blackness in the rest of the world, and vice versa. But I don’t think this film really did much with that theme.”
Oh, on the contrary. This was very much a story about the impact of colonialism and the clash between different responses to it on the part of the peoples it’s victimized. Wakanda and Talokan are both kingdoms that isolated themselves from imperial conquest to keep their peoples safe and strong, and now that Wakanda has stepped forth and revealed itself, that’s led to renewed attempts by colonial powers to expand and exploit others’ resources, which has led to Talokan being endangered. So it’s directly a story about the consequences of T’Challa’s choice of engagement over concealment, and the impact it has on those who didn’t make that choice. It’s an intersectional story about how different non-white societies can come into conflict as a result of the impact of colonization.
It engages with racial themes in subtler ways too, ways that aren’t spelled out in big block letters for people distracted by their cell phones, but that are woven into the story if you pay attention. As rm said in comment #9, the use of Haiti in the story was a meaningful tie to a very important part of Black history, as was naming T’Challa’s son Toussaint. And there’s the way the American government, represented by a white Secretary of State and CIA director, stole Riri’s research without her knowledge and without giving her credit, and the FBI’s heavy-handed, armed pursuit of Shuri, Okoye, and Riri.
Granted, though, it might have better tied Riri into the theme of moving on from grief if there’d been more than a throwaway mention of her armor being inspired by Iron Man. If she’d said something about trying to carry on Tony Stark’s legacy now that he was gone, that would’ve resonated better, and might have been a factor in what inspired Shuri to resurrect the Black Panther.
I think that direction was taken with Peter Parker
The revised plot would have been different in the details, sure. Shuri could have gone with Namor because she was curious but, for some convenient reason, have been unable to communicate with Ramonda. Or Namora and Attuma could have kidnapped Shuri as a bargaining chip. Ramonda would still have sent Nakia, because she was terrified of the prospect of losing another child. Misunderstandings ensue. Nakia kills some Talokans. Namor retaliates, killing Ramonda. The rest plays out identically.
Because I don’t buy that the war was about Riri, in particular. It is Ramonda’s death, in the wake of T’Challa’s that changes Shuri’s attitude. In fact, at that point, Shuri was quite willing to put Riri (an underage foreign civilian?) in harm’s way, along with everybody else around her, in order to pursue her revenge.
On your other point: I would draw a distinction between colonialism in general (which I agree is central) and Blackness specifically, which was central to the previous film but, I think, less so to this one – precisely because the frame has moved to a broader view of colonialism. Yes, the tie to Haiti is meaningful, but it’s mostly just floated without any particular development. I’m not saying it’s not important or resonant as a symbol, but I see it more as a marker for where the story could go next, rather than the core of this particular story. And that’s fine. More than that, it is a good thing that the film makes space to present more than one conception of race and colonialism, and to ask questions about how they intersect and interact. It just can’t do everything at once (and should not try to).
Which is to say that I think we agree more than we disagree on the bigger picture.
Having finally seen it …
This was a big one for me. Ramonda didn’t need to die to be taken out of the way for the plot beats to continue – having her on life support hanging by a thread would have done the same thing and given a good reason for her to be retired to advisor at the end of the film. You’d have to handwave why Wakanda’s magical healing didn’t work quickly on her, but that’s fine. Unless Bassett has had enough of the role, and wanted to leave.
But having M’Baku in charge is definitely a good thing – he’s always been the most clear headed and sensible of the Wakandans, and it feels a logical progression.
Overall I enjoyed it, but there are definite issues – who does Nakia trust to look after Toussaint while she goes off on a potentially deadly mission for example?
@30/Keith: “The revised plot would have been different in the details, sure.”
It doesn’t matter if you could construct an alternate plot with the same beats, because story is not exclusively about plot. Plot exists to reveal and advance character, to express and explore ideas. It is a means to an end, not the end in itself. What matters is not simply what happens, but why it happens, and what it means to the characters that it happens.
So yes, you could construct an alternate plot that would play out the same way without Riri, but it would be a hollow construct, similar on the surface but lacking substance and purpose. Riri is key to what the story is about, on the level of theme and character.
“Shuri could have gone with Namor because she was curious”
Which would be less interesting because there’s less at stake than if she’s striving to save an innocent person from being killed.
“Or Namora and Attuma could have kidnapped Shuri as a bargaining chip.”
Which robs her of agency as the protagonist. The fact that she chooses to put herself at risk to negotiate for another’s life is a key part in establishing why she’s worthy of being the Black Panther. It also puts her in the position of being an equal to Namor, one leader seeking parlay with another. If she were his hostage, there’d be a power imbalance that would change the way the scenes played out (especially the hint of an attraction I think I sensed between her and Namor) and would not serve Shuri’s character well.
“Because I don’t buy that the war was about Riri, in particular. It is Ramonda’s death, in the wake of T’Challa’s that changes Shuri’s attitude.”
First: I’m not just talking about the war itself, I’m talking about the initial conflict that led up to it, the clash of philosophies over how to deal with the detector and its inventor. As I said, if it were just about the machine, then Wakanda and Talokan would be on the same side. It’s the person that they’re divided over. The inventor has to be a key factor in the story, and Riri Williams is the best character to be that inventor.
Second: Ramonda died because she chose to sacrifice herself to protect Riri. Riri was Namor’s target, and Ramonda chose to place herself in harm’s way to save her. If Riri hadn’t been there, Ramonda could have reached the surface and survived. So Ramonda’s death wasn’t something Namor did to her, it was a choice she made on Riri’s behalf.
After all, these are superhero stories, not just action stories. That means that they need to be about more than just people fighting and trying to kill each other. Superhero stories, when done right, are about people putting themselves in harm’s way to protect other people, to defend their lives and their rights. So the person being protected is not, should not be, incidental to the story. They’re the whole reason the story happens.
@33/Christopher: I don’t really want to argue about this, so I will just say that I understand the functions of characters in stories. What I am saying, and I think others have said variations on the same thing, is that if the authorial intention was to make Riri such a central piece of this story, it did not succeed for me.
All of this only works to the extent that the audience is invested in Riri as a character. Or, at least believes that the other characters are, in a way that reveals something interesting about them. This seems to have worked for you better than it did for me.
I certainly agree with your last paragraph: the person being protected should not be incidental. But I, at least, am not talking about theory. I am simply saying that the film did not elicit that investment from me and, as such, did not achieve that objective. My emotional reaction to the film would have been more or less the same if Riri had been written out, and that should not be the case. That’s why I consider this a weakness in an otherwise successful film.
Of course, different people will react in different ways to the same material. I am white; I come from a place of privilege. So, while I certainly recognize the contrast between Riri’s background and Tony’s on an intellectual level and appreciate the narrative intention behind it, it doesn’t necessarily carry the same emotional weight that it might for somebody with a different lived experience.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but this is not a problem. There is no shortage of characters in the MCU (or the genre more broadly) for me to identify with. If there is an audience that connects to Riri and, consequently, considers her as the emotional core of this story, that’s great.
It just doesn’t really get there for me. So her beats, even the big ones that you refer to, come across to me as narrative devices that advance Shuri’s story, without carrying quite enough weight of their own. Heroes gotta hero, so the choices in those moments aren’t really in question. Of course it matters that Shuri and Ramonda choose to risk themselves to protect somebody. But, for me, in those moments, the film hasn’t given me quite enough reason to care that it is Riri in particular who is at risk.
But this is a relative thing. To be clear, I liked this film; I think it was the best of Phase 4.
So we finally got a chance to see it, and I enjoyed it (especially the music) although I found myself zoning out/going for breaks during the many fight scenes and chase scenes.
One thing that I kind of think could have been interesting (although a different tack for the story to take) would have been if Shuri was in fact more sympathetic to Namor’s plight and stance on isolationism…for a minute I thought that might be where they were going to go with it. (Which might also play into the similarities with Killmonger…)
FWIW, I didn’t totally get the big insistence (on Namor’s part) that he get to kill Riri – the government already stole her research, it’s not like they can undo that. And given that her research was stolen (by colonizers, so to speak), I actually was interested in what Riri’s take on this whole thing was, and I feel like we never really got that. I think it might also have been interesting if SHE had decided she was sympathetic.
Regarding Ramonda – I can see how her death is part of the catalyst for Shuri’s grief and vengeance but I like the idea above that she just could have been gravely injured. That said, when there are so many good female characters in the movie, in a way, it makes the odds more likely that when a character is killed, it’s going to be a woman.
However as I think about it more, what I actually find more irritating is the (whether intentional or not) the whole set up that Shuri is too irrational/emotional/driven by grief to be queen (which in a way is true, as you say – and I actually think it is an important distinction between heroes and leaders) so the sensible male will take over (even though obviously plenty of men act on rage/injured pride/honor). Maybe it would have felt better if they had managed to keep Ramonda alive and continuing as queen. But I also felt her completely stripping Okoyoe of her rank was also an act that was very much emotionally driven as Okoye did everything she could and it wasn’t due to dereliction of duty or a lack of competence that she was captured.
@35/Lisamarie: “FWIW, I didn’t totally get the big insistence (on Namor’s part) that he get to kill Riri – the government already stole her research, it’s not like they can undo that.”
That’s kind of the point, I think — that however justified Namor’s fears, he chooses the wrong response, and that’s what makes him the antagonist.
If Namor thought about it coolly and rationally, he’d understand that you can’t erase an invention by killing the inventor. History shows that new scientific breakthroughs happen when sufficient foundations for them have been laid, so if one person doesn’t make the breakthrough, someone else will do it independently not long thereafter. Many things have been invented by two or more people/groups around the same time.
But Namor is not a character known for his calm, rational decision-making. He was introduced in the comics as an antihero, essentially a terrorist leader waging vengeful war against the surface world in retaliation for our abuses of the sea. His go-to response was lethal violence (although that was not atypical of the pulp heroes that early superhero comics were inspired by). And in subsequent comics, he came to be defined by his arrogance, his entitlement, his mercurial temper. He’s the king and everybody’d better stay out of his way. “Imperius Rex!”
In the movie, we see very much that what drives Namor is his anger, his hate for what imperialists did to his people. So when he sees Talokan threatened, his impulsive reaction is to seek revenge, to fixate on the person he blames for the threat and to kill her. He’s too blinded by rage and pain to see that meeting violence with violence isn’t the answer. This parallels the way Shuri’s anger and pain drive her to seek vengeance, but she ultimately rises above it and chooses compassion instead, and that’s what makes her the hero.
This is a solid one in the win column for Marvel. I enjoyed most aspects of it, even as clouded as it was with sorrow over T’Challa’s passing (Boseman’s too). The moment where Namor grabs the chopper by the tail and spins it around feels like a comic panel come to life.
The performances are all excellent. At a time when the Marvel films seem to have shrunk in scope and stature, it was nice to see this one show a lot of the excellence that was a hallmark of the first three phases of the saga
Some people have already asked this elsewhere, so just to let folks know…..
While my trend since 2020 has been to revive “4-Color to 35-Millimeter” in both the summer and winter, this year I’m holding off until December for the next revival. This is partly due to a light enough slate of movies (now that we’re past the post-COVID logjam), and partly due to me already doing the Enterprise Rewatch and reviews of new episodes of both Secret Invasion and Strange New Worlds right now, and I’d like to sleep at least occasionally.
So we’ll revive this feature in December, starting with Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, and go from there. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’m glad Nah-mor’s in the MCU. Now Marvel has no excuse to make a fantastic four movie!!!