Jason's Review of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2022 ★½

Watched Nov 26, 2022

There’s maybe about 30 minutes of really good stuff here. That includes the moving opening scene and the surprisingly frightening scene that introduces our new villains. A few little moments here and there afterwards. That leaves about two hours of utterly forgettable, bloated and poorly-plotted dead air. And I’m sorry, I like Letitia Wright as an actor, but she does not cut a convincingly heroic figure as Black Panther. She looks like a toothpick when she puts that suit on. It’s more like “Angry Kitten.” Not very imposing.

I loved the first Black Panther film, it’s a true masterpiece that stood almost entirely on its own, especially among the sameness of most Marvel films. This feels not only inessential, but like a waste of time. They were dealt a pretty impossible hand, I know that. But it shouldn’t feel this pasted together getting around the inevitable absence of its central figure. Making it a punishing 162 minutes only exacerbates that. And don’t get me started on that embarrassingly cheesy and “aw shucks, how convenient” exposition dump of an end credits scene. That’s just plain bad writing. 🙄

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