Wakanda Forever
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
Black
Panther has had a very unique build-up on the internet. While, like
previous recent MCU movies, everyone and their brother has been looking forward
to it, this one has been made special for one reason and one reason alone: it’s
the first major superhero movie to star a black actor.
Unless you count Shaquille O’Neal’s
cinematic magnum opus Steel of course.
All joking aside, to say Black Panther had a lot riding on its
shoulders in the weeks leading up to release would be the understatement of the
century. People showed up in traditional African garb for this movie. You
really can’t get more excited than that.
The good news is that Black Panther lives up to all these
expectations and then some, creating a movie sure to please those who were
counting down the days to it. The better news is that it’s not only one of the
best MCU movies ever made, but potentially one of the best superhero movies
ever made, period.
Let’s start with the real star of the
show here: Wakanda. A secretive advanced nation hidden in Africa, Wakanda is
one of the most captivating settings I’ve seen in a movie for a very long time.
It felt to me a lot like how after you saw Hogwarts for the first time in the
first Harry Potter movie and you
immediately thought “I wanna live there!” It’s the same story here.
Wakanda is brought to life by the ultimate
unsung heroes of the movie: the set and costume designers. Utilizing an
incredible blend of traditional African designs and more futuristic looks, this
is a movie that truly looks like no other. Every single costume is mind-blowingly
good, and even extras stand out with some of the more unique designs that the
department came up with. While I wasn’t too keen on Black Panther’s new suit
when I initially saw it in the previews, now that I’ve seen the movie I can
safely say it fits in flawlessly with the look of the rest of Wakanda.
Moving onto the story, Black Panther is, again, one of the most
unique movies in the MCU in this department as well. It doesn’t have the
high-energy moment-to-moment action that made Thor: Ragnarok so invigorating, instead taking a slower approach,
spending more time exploring T’Challa and his friends as people rather than as
superheroes. The story is extremely brilliant, weaving in some very topical
political subjects of current-day Africa that fit the story extremely well. The
movie’s biggest question is that why, with all their technology, do the
Wakandans not go and help the rest of Africa become more than a cluster of
third-world countries?
Fear not, though, because T’Challa
gets plenty of awesome moments both in and out of the Black Panther suit to do
what MCU heroes do best. The action sequences and humour both being
pitch-perfect are to be expected from Marvel movies at this point, and Black Panther is no different. A chase
scene through the streets of South Korea blends them both perfectly, with
several scenes that left my theater in stitches.
But I haven’t even touched on the best
part of this movie yet: the characters themselves. It’s hard to know where to
start where to start when talking about them because there’s so much to say,
but I’ll do my best.
Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa is just
as good as you remember him being in Civil
War, if not better. There’s something about him that every time he appears
on screen with or without the suit you really want to root for him. As a king
who has to start making tough decisions in the wake of his father’s death, you
really relate to what he goes through over the course of the movie, even though
we’ll likely never be put in the situation he’s in. Thanks to the way the movie
is structured we see T’Challa immediately as more a man with superpowers than a
superhero that also has a normal life, similar to how Spider-Man: Homecoming balanced Peter Parker and Spider-Man
perfectly. He’s awesome as the Black Panther, but he’s also awesome when he’s
just King T’Challa.
Michael B. Jordan creates one of the
MCU’s best villains in Erik Killmonger, a man who invades Wakanda with the
intent to take it in a new direction for the future. Again, drawing comparisons
to Homecoming, they definitely made
the right choice in tying Killmonger’s story to T’Challa’s. A lot of it goes into
spoiler territory so I won’t touch upon it too much here, but in the end you
understand where Killmonger is coming from and why he wants Wakanda for
himself, and sometimes he even gets a strong point across about the political
direction the country should take that ties in well with the overall themes of
the movie. For me he definitely ranks up there with Loki, Ego and Vulture as
one of the best Marvel villains.
But while our hero and villain are
both amazing in their own right, the true superstars of Black Panther are the women. This movie is the feminist superhero
masterpiece that Wonder Woman wishes
it was. Lupita Nyong’o is awesome (surprising literally no one) as Nakia, T’Challa’s
former lover and a spy for Wakanda. Unlike some of the other superhero
girlfriends Marvel’s used in the past, she actually has a major stake in the
plot and has a lot to do to further the story. She carries the story on her
shoulders for a pretty hefty chunk of time, and I’d even go far enough to say
her screentime is close to even T’Challa’s. Danai Gurira as Okoye, the leader
of T’Challa’s royal guard, is also fantastic, and has excellent chemistry with
Boseman. There’s a scene towards the end of the second act where she needs to
make a crucial decision, and she performs it perfectly. She’s also one of the
strongest female characters I’ve ever seen in a completely literal sense. By
the end of the movie it’s clear that she could lay you out on the ground and
stomp you into next Tuesday if she wanted to. If you’re a woman looking for a
badass role model in a superhero movie, look no further.
And finally there’s the true scene
stealer in Letitia Wright as Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, princess of Wakanda and
comparable to Tony Stark or Rocket Raccoon in her levels of technological genius.
Her amazing rapid-fire sense of humour dominates every scene she’s in, and she
quickly becomes the kind of character you really want as a best friend. The
fact that she’s already confirmed for Infinity
War just makes me even more excited for that movie than I already was.
And that’s just the main characters.
There’s also Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis returning as their characters from Age of Ultron and Civil War respectively (and it’s nice to see Bilbo and Gollum facing
off again) as the only real white main characters in the movie, and they’re
both hilarious. Freeman especially is surprisingly integral to the plot, and
adds a lot of charming humour as he discovers Wakanda for the first time.
Forest Whitaker has a surprisingly big role to play in the story, as do Daniel
Kaluuya and Winston Duke. They’re all fantastic as their characters,
particularly Duke as M’Baku, leader of a tribe of defectors from Wakanda. I
wouldn’t mind more of him and his gorilla-themed people anytime soon.
There’s so much more to talk about,
but I’ll stop here for the sake of leaving some surprises. Black Panther is the first movie to completely pull me out of the
theater and into its world since I saw Moana
for the first time back in 2016, if only because of the beautifully
well-designed world and mind-blowing costume design. It helps that the
characters and story are both just as amazing as you’d hope too. For years I’ve
maintained that Guardians of the Galaxy was
the best MCU film, but now I think I might be ready to pick a new favourite. My
advice? Grab your friends and family and go see this movie in IMAX as soon as
you can. It’s well worth your time.
Wakanda Forever indeed.
FINAL SCORE
10/10
Legendary
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