Return to Wakanda

This past weekend, the theaters were once again ruled by Marvel, as the much-anticipated Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrived to huge audiences. I mostly enjoyed it, but found it to be an uneven movie with high highs and low lows.

The highest of the highs was how many significant characters in this movie were women. The movie's main villain was a man... but beyond him, you have to go pretty deep into the cast list to find another one. This is Letitia Wright's movie, and she steps into the lead role wonderfully. Angela Bassett commands the screen in every scene she's in. Danai Gurira gets to shade her formerly "all badass, all the time" character with meaningful emotion. Lupita N'yongo and (perhaps this is a spoiler for you?) Julia Luis-Dreyfus appear in a more limited fashion, but the former brings the heaviest-hitting drama as the latter twirls a figurative mustache in a fun way. And new-to-the-franchise Dominque Thorne has a significant role to play as well.

In my mind, all that makes this by far the most feminist MCU movie to date -- more so than the films that were explicitly touted to be that: Captain Marvel and Black Widow. And of course, it can be no coincidence that director and co-writer Ryan Coogler was, once again, the one to really "level up" the MCU in representation and diversity. Of course, he did all that while having to delicately navigate the death of Chadwick Boseman. As you would expect, the movie makes a major element of that loss -- and the scenes addressing it are generally the most impactful of the movie.

So all that is clearly in the "plus" column. But there's a lot about the movie that I'd put just as clearly in the "minus" column. (And here's where the spoilers really begin.) It feels like we're approaching a point where more characters in the MCU have an "Iron Man suit" than don't, and the familiarity is starting to breed contempt (or at least boredom) for me. All action sequences with a besuited character are feeling pretty interchangeable to me, and I feel like I've seen everything that can be done there.

The tactics, small and large scale, are laughably bad throughout the movie. When facing enemies who must wear face masks to breathe, not once do we see one of those masks ripped off. And the inevitable final (CG laden) showdown to end the movie? The narrative suggests that the Wakandans could pick anywhere they want that to happen, but they choose to play an "away game" on the enemies' home turf of the ocean. Seems pretty dumb to me.

The pace dragged a lot in the middle of the movie, and I think a lot of that unfortunately had to do with the go-nowhere CIA subplot. Julia Louis-Dreyfus' role here affects nothing in this movie's narrative. This felt like the most transparent "we're just setting up the next phase" subplot in the MCU since Thor went for a cosmic spa day during Age of Ultron. This was more entertaining, because Julia Louis-Dreyfus is, of course, entertaining. But it's 10-20 minutes of unnecessary distraction that could be lifted from this movie to speed things along.

So with heavy weights on both sides of the scale here, I'd give the movie a B-. I do understand the reactions of people who enjoyed it a great deal more; there is a lot to like here. But I found my attention wandering for long stretches (where perhaps other people were more able to coast on the high highs).