Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
Wakanda copes with the death of its King.
In many senses this is a depressing film, it doesn’t just address the real world passing of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman this film lives it and throughout the film Boseman’s death is never too far away, we are given many reminders of it.
However, I did enjoy for the most part that this film has a serious tone, too many of Marvel’s Phase 4 projects have really leant hard on the humour and it has hurt them. This for the most part plays everything very seriously and that is good and helps the film to feel impactful and maintain stakes. Although, an issue to this is the inclusion of Riri Williams, played by Dominque Thorne, who for the most part is annoying and forces in a lot of corny jokes where they just aren’t needed. Moreover, Williams is never specifically said to be the Iron Man replacement of the MCU but it feels like she is being pushed that way, and boy does she feel like a off brand version of the character.
I really liked that this film finally introduced Namor, played by Tenoch Huerta Mejia, into the MCU I think he is easily the best thing about this film and certainly is a scene stealer. A lot of the underwater scenes with him and his people are really cool and interesting and for the most part the effects hold. However, the CGI does prove to be glaringly bad on a few occasions which is quite poor when you think about how much money was pumped into this film.
The cast for the most part are a mixed bag Danai Gurira and Angela Basset give stirring performances and are very deserving of praise, but Winston Duke is mostly passed over and ignored and Letitia Wright is noticeably bad and clearly finds it hard to emote as throughout Shuri’s ride in this film her face barely changes scene to scene be it happy, angry or sad. Another thing that bugged me about Shuri in this film is that all of a sudden she can fight and it makes no sense, she becomes Black Panther and then whoops Namor despite being tactical support in the last film and for the early parts of this one. Where did this sudden training come from? It would have taken one line to have tied this off and not have it be an issue, but no, to me it reeks of the writers thinking that the audiences are too dumb to pick up on it. Another dumb plot whole is why does Wakanda not just tell the world about Namor and his people and how they are responsible for all the attacks rather than taking the blame themselves? It makes no sense and the film does not address it.
Overall, slightly worse than the first film but it does introduce Namor to the MCU so that’s pretty cool.
Pros.
Namor
The mature tone
The ending
Cons.
Riri is annoying and breaks a lot of the tension with dumb jokes
Wright can’t act and Shuri develops all these fighting skills out of nowhere
The poor CGI and plot holes
If you enjoyed this review, then please head over to my Patreon to support me, I offer personalized shoutouts, the ability for you to pick what I review next and full access to my Patreon exclusive game reviews. Check it out!
Another Millennial Reviewer 