Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Sucks

you make sure that you use your body to block us from anybody who would be coming in that theater to do us harm this is a sickness oh boy I'm gonna catch some Flack for this one black panther wakanda forever is a mess of a film that tries to do too many things at once and can only muster doing one of them well which is honoring Chadwick Boseman the film shines in a few moments particularly the scenes bookending the film and hinges on the hope that those scenes can manipulate you into thinking the other parts of the movie are good or at least hoping you'll forgive them but what's left is an unfortunately clumsy and shallow film that was clearly made with the best intentions but can't get out from under the large shadow cast by our Fallen Hero and can't escape the horrible writing that continues to plague the mcu's phase four is this eternals level bad no not really but it's Black Panther and it shouldn't be like this I'd be interested to know what the original script was like before Bozeman passed because what we're stuck with it now is a film that tries to a honor t'challa B build up a new lead character C introduce and establish a new antagonist D introduce another new hero e try and nudge the MCU as a whole forward at least a little bit each of these things could take an entire movie but we shove all of these requirements into this and what do we get a disjointed mess trying to do so many things in one film that you end up with a bloated run time that despite trying to accomplish so much becomes a snooze Fest at its best this is from a person who enjoyed the original film in spite of its flaws this doesn't hold a candle to that movie it's clear that black panther isn't just a mantle to pass down for us as an audience t'challa is our hero you can't just put anyone in there did it happen in the comics yeah sure but ironheart was in the comics too character replacement didn't go over well it doesn't work well on film and it doesn't just create a void it creates a host of new problems I I'll break this down bit by bit but to give you an overview the plot is full of idiotic choices and conveniences that break the film under even the slightest scrutiny the people of wakanda should probably be the bad guys of the movie when you take their choices into consideration which in reality is the typical MCU phase 4 Trope again we'll get to that I mean seriously the wakandans won't even help out their neighboring countrymen but they are the most righteous people in the entire world and our replacement main character simply isn't built or fit to lead a movie of this size in either performance or physical frame and the antagonist of the film is God what a joke and I still can't pronounce his name right because it's spoken eight different ways in the movie well pan no my name is Pam are you saying pan or pam pam Panda Riri Williams AKA ironheart is at least not as insufferable as their comic book counterpart but that's not saying much she she ends up being yet another character no one really asked for that's a b-list version of an A-list hero and the CGI it's an improvement over the originals but that's not saying much it still looks laughable at times and downright goofy at its worst you can feel the strain and weight of expectations in this movie and with Bozeman gone a studio frantic trying to Cobble together a film you can almost sense Kevin feige going what can I do what can I do well first of all act like a man what's about from the audience score to Critic reviews I get that you're supposed to like this film it definitely feels like you're not allowed to criticize it but I'm not going to just let things slide that I see with my own two eyes much like my rings of Power video getting demonetized my mouth sure gets me in trouble millions of people in person and in Virtual form have told me you're the worst shut the [ __ ] up who cares what you believe quit speaking to you but I'm gonna do it anyway speaking of which the situation 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well done it hit me in the fields man the meninas is a little too much though and I wonder if they could have done this differently because he's essentially suffering in silence and doesn't ask for help with his unspecified illness kind of like Bozeman apparently did in real life not telling anyone about his cancer it felt a little too much like the real world seeping into the movie when the characters discuss it whether it was right or wrong the respect they have for him comes out on the screen next the queen of wakanda meets some folks at the UN to explain to them that they won't be letting anyone get their hands on vibranium because only wakandans know best this sounds an awful lot like the weird moral ineptitude that Marvel has been pushing with its characters since phase four started like trying to make Wanda sympathetic despite her enslaving an entire town and killing dozens of people across the Multiverse if my suspension of disbelief was a bridge it would have snapped by now we then hilariously jump right to a US ship plundering the depths of the ocean where they've discovered more vibranium and they're using a vibranium detector to find it what an incredible MacGuffin what an incredibly creative name what a coincidence they found vibranium right after wakanda said they wouldn't be giving any up then Namor Namor Namor whatever and the not atlanteans attacked the ship and provide an untimely end to everyone aboard turns out the not atlanteans have access to vibranium just like the wakandans and they don't want their Underwater World to be discovered so they want to off the inventor of the McGuffin I mean of the vibranium detector and so the plot is off and running unfortunately it's built on an incredibly shaky Foundation did I say shaky I meant it's a nine on the Richter scale and it's fallen into the ocean see if the US had a ship out there and they discovered vibranium then it's too late who cares if they have another detector they already know where the vibranium is based on where the ship is but no we have to one introduce multiple new characters and two have a reason to make him movie Namor Namor blah blah blah sneaks up on shuri and her mother and he tells them hey you have to help me find the scientist who made the vibrania machine and they're like get [ __ ] and he's like nah I won't actually because I'll wait some kind of War on you if you don't get her I don't want the above world to know about my below world so my people can't go get her so Sherry and the woman from The Walking Dead decide they're gonna go to America and find the scientist turns out it's Mary Sue I mean Riri Williams who has no explanation about why she's a hyper-intelligent 19 year old who seems to be smarter than any person on Earth but here she is all the same the only piece of credit I'll give here is that this movie at least doesn't [ __ ] on the memory of Iron Man like the other movies and shows have done to our Legacy Heroes no one up to this point has escaped it Hulk Captain America Iron Man all have been crapped on in order to make their unlikable Replacements look cool for the awakened Society at large did not go to law school figures in student wants to become a vigilante that is for billionaires and narcissists and adult orphans for some reason if a billionaire narcissist save the entire universe what does that make a drunkard like you we escape that kind of BS here without Nary a mention of Stark thankfully but Riri is by and large a Mary Sue no doubt about it she's incredible at everything smarter than everyone seems like even smarter than shuri because of course she is they work around her super villain origin story from the comics where she begs her teacher to victimize her and tell her she can't do something so that she can prove her teacher wrong oh wait I made that class because I said I'll never be able to do it never mind during their escape Walking Dead girl kills a bunch of innocent policemen who are just trying to do their jobs yeah again remember when I said it's hard to take wakandan seriously as the good guys you're such a bad person this is how Marvel works now these are our main characters so they are good guys anyone who is chasing them are bad guys it's that simple just don't think about it okay don't ask questions just consume product and then get excited for next product Walking Dead Girl Fights not atlanteans who show up even though Namor Namor Nana doesn't want his people to be discovered or seen by the surface world so of course they get seen by humans so wait they're here now so I guess they don't care about being seen by humans so they could have just gotten reread by themselves so why send them with condens wait wait wait don't ask questions just consume product and then get excited for next product and then shuri demands to meet Neymar and now and goes off with them along with Riri and yeah I kind of laugh in my head every time I say her name Sherry meets them and asked him his origin story for the audience's benefit he's a mutant you see and calls himself the boy without love even though he had a mother who loved him for decades before she died of old age sure he asks him the tough questions like do not atlanteans use the toilet or does pee and poop just float around everywhere and he waxes philosophical one question that I get asked a lot and I think it's an important question is is it okay to [ __ ] your pants and I think we have to ask ourselves firstly is it okay to ship and the answer to that is yes of course it is okay to [ __ ] then he starts talking about the plight of his people I get young men coming up to me all the time and their pants are covered in poo poo and most of it has usually come from their own butt and it's a travesty it's very upsetting sometimes they've come hundreds of miles just to see me and they're covered in [ __ ] then he brings her further down the depths and she sees a really lame underwater city honestly you don't see much it comes off kind of silly Aquaman did this far far better and even the gungan city from Phantom Menace 23 years ago looked better than this because it looks so lame and forgettable it doesn't give off the sense of power the film tries to make you believe it has either next t'challa's girlfriend finally shows up to remind you to be sad about Chadwick Boseman and she goes undercover to get shuri and Riri back she kills and not atlanting in the process and sure he is like wait this will be an act of War let me save her and t'challa's girlfriend is like no don't do that we need the plot to move so Neymar finds the dead not Atlantean is like the [ __ ] you did and attacks wakanda and some goofy ass trite way and kills the queen then flies off because it's always a brilliant idea to piss someone off then let him regroup so then shuri's like the [ __ ] you did and uses her own MacGuffin to recreate another McGuffin I mean her magic machine that creates the magic herb so she can become Black Panther and Duke it out with Namor Namor the script tries to make us question whether shuri will seek ultimate revenge or not not but come on seriously they come up with what sounds like a cool way to trap neymore but then it turns out to be just a room on a ship with heaters for real when I saw this in the theater I chuckled a little that's the best they came up with it's so anti-climactic the camera zooms up in awe to [ __ ] space heaters wakandans and not lanians duke it out Riri is flying around in his suit straight out of the Nintendo 64 era of graphics and shuri beats Neymar and makes them yield I mean after a heat full on impales her with his spear then she's just totally fine this was a few eye roll inducing moments back to back in the theater they call a truce by basically retreading t'challa's Moment of clarity with Zemo from Captain America Civil War and we move on the movies bookended by a nice Montage of t'challa as shuri sits alone mourning her brother and honestly it's emotionally impactful and manipulative I'm not going to forget that the rest of movie I just saw was ridiculous just because it ends on an emotionally impactful moment that had nothing to do with what I just saw but that does lead us into discussing what the film does well and very well actually which is honoring t'challa and in The Meta Chadwick Boseman Sherry played by Leticia Wright is the focus of these scenes and brings the level of maturity we did not see from her both as a character and as an actress in her other MCU appearances in fact I think I was one of the few people who thought she was an incredibly annoying and unlikable character in the other films but here she brings some real chops that I can appreciate in the wake of Bozeman's passing the way they handled t'challa's death is understandable and honorable and I'm not sure if anyone else has this in their theaters but the projectors in mind covered every wall during these scenes it's hard to describe but basically you were surrounded 360 degrees by the film is this some new format I didn't buy a special ticket either way it was effective and utilized perfectly to get grief out of you I mean I miss Chadwick Boseman the original black panther film was a cultural moment that I can appreciate I understood it it meant a lot to a lot of people despite the movie's shortcomings in story writing we often talk about how we don't need to see our own skin tones on screen to connect or relate to someone and that's true and I stand by that but sometimes it can really matter I feel like black panther was one of those times I live in an incredibly diverse City now and lived in a different but equally diverse City when Black Panther came out in 2018. during the summer of that year I was at a park and a class of young kids were all gathered around a slide almost all of the African-American kids in the group were wearing black panther shirts and were laughing and having a blast crossing their arms and yelling wakanda forever as they went down the slide and I realized these kids had their hero we can talk about blade Falcon War Machine all we want that there's always been representation present but let's not kid ourselves these characters are not in the upper Stratosphere of superheroes these characters are cool but they're no Spider-Man they are not Batman they are not Iron Man but black panther black panther is he's an A-list superhero King t'challa is everything you could ask for in a superhero and he's in that upper Stratosphere a rich history an awesome and tragic background great villains and a seriously Kick-Ass costume Bozeman did an incredible job bringing the character to life he was a literal icon after the first movie came out and his passing is tragic for so many reasons and yeah I think he was robbed of a best actor Oscar and I want to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman was taken from us far too early and again thank you all very much I really did not expect this I love Anthony Hopkins and his performance in the father was apparently amazing but come on he already had one as far as Leticia writes she is a lot better as Sherry as she ever has been but she's simply not made to lead a franchise like this not necessarily because of her acting which has improved but because the character is who she is shoe horned into the starring role because of a tragic loss and you just feel it throughout the entire film and she quite frankly looks ridiculous in the Black Panther suit Angela Bassett really Nails it as Queen ramonda she puts on a tour to force and God damn she is legit in this Winston Duke as mbaku is a huge highlight and I side relief every time he came on screen because he's one of the few highlights he's used in good effect as a strong character and as some comic relief Lupita Nyong'o is underutilized for such a brilliant actress she was my vote to take over the Black Panther role her character is a spy after all and she easily could have slipped into it it doesn't hurt that she's uh she seriously wasted in this film and it's a damn shame Dana Guerrero who plays Okoye is fine as she usually is but her character just sucks they can't help but point out the character's flaws in the script either which is humorous because if you need to address how shitty she is but ignore all the other flaws in your narrative why even bother and okoya sure turned Freeman's character into a beta he saved up a Condon and took a bullet to the spine then they turned him into a lap dog and have him turn against his own government because they saved him with zero effort because they have the ultimate McGuffin vibranium then when okoya rescues him from a prisoner transport she says a colonizer in Chains now I've seen everything in my theater erupted in cheers and yells of Yeah by people who are sitting there holding iPhones eating popcorn in an air-conditioned theater the social engineering is strong with this one and finally tenachowerta is Namor I'm sorry this dude was awful maybe it was the writing you can't really tell sometimes but he was horrible in this role okay clearly the writing had something to do with it but it was a seriously rough performance and the character came off as stupid his lines were delivered in cringe fashion there were constantly moments where you didn't know what kind of emotion he was trying to portray and it absolutely was not meant to be a deceptive character trait either it was just silly acting there have been comments about his physicality and appearance but I didn't really care about that I read somewhere that it was a specific look they were going for and he looks like a bodybuilder who's in bulking mode I'm not here yelling I think he would have looked better as a cut anymore but it is what it is do you boo-boo but Neymar himself is poorly translated from comic to film here I don't know how someone at some point didn't go hey I know he has wings on his feet but like it looks stupid as [ __ ] can we just not you know how they didn't have wings on Captain America's helmet and they just painted them on figure something else out to make him fly because it really does look stupid and they proudly display it during his introduction too it just looks embarrassingly bad inept writing that carried over from the original black panther harms this film more than anything else like a great script can transcend bad acting a great performance and great characters can sometimes transcend a bad script my colleagues might not agree but I think the original black panther is one of those times t'challa is played by Bozeman was fantastic iconic and I have an appreciation for the cultural impact it had but this what do we do with this we're left with no one to carry this film no one here is anywhere close to Bozeman the film was destined for failure because of it in my opinion you can't ignore it and you can't lean into it too much because then it's just about the ghost of a Fallen Hero the film is stuck and it stays where it is trapped in the MCU narrative while spinning its Wheels unable to move forward in any meaningful way it's a poor way to cap off phase four that's already dishearteningly horrible Messi storytelling seriously goofy CGI and a plot sitting in a foundation of pudding makes for another MCU [ __ ] show but unlike Doctor Strange or Thor 11 Thunder I'm not mad I'm just disappointed till next time GG's Gents

Channel: The Movie Cynic

Views: 370,466

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Id: LqDpVelACsI

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 14 2022