My wife was so excited to see this. I was not. I’m just so burned out on the Marvel movies, even though I did like the first Blank Panther. And the movie started with a wonderful tribute to Chadwick Boseman, and ended with one. They did a terrific job dealing with grief throughout. The world of Wakanda is still interesting, with great costumes by the talented Ruth Carter and top-notch production design. Yet that played better in the first film. Now we get an underwater world in a place called Talokan that makes us all think of Aquaman. And the blue people living there, makes us think of Avatar.
Writer/director Ryan Cooger kind of dropped the ball here. He put us through almost three hours of fighting scenes and uninteresting dialogue. A lackluster villain (my wife hated everything about him and she loves the Sub-Mariner character this is loosely based on), with an uninteresting backstory. Things started out promisingly with the powerful women of Wakanda. And finding out about a scientist, who is a young Black woman (Dominique Thorne), running things as an MIT student…a nice addition to the cast. It’s a kick watching her work on a muscle car, and an Iron Man type of suit; and making money on the side doing other students’ homework.
It’s one year after T-Challa’s sudden passing. His mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett, who is always excellent), takes the throne and re-establishes Wakanda’s opposition to giving their valuable vibranium to the rest of the world, for fear of what they’ll do with it. We see some mercenaries try to attack one of their plants. We also see the Navy find something deep on the ocean floor (unfortunately, we only get to see the talented Lake Bell briefly in those segments).
Shuri (Letitia Wright) feels guilt about her brother, and holes herself up in the lab. Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) has gone to Haiti to help the children there.
The blue villain named Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) has wings on his ankles that allow him to fly. He rules a Mayan-like civilization. I felt like I was watching Michael Jordan (not Michael B. Jordan) in a bad Nike commercial. Some of the CGI watching those segments was disappointing. Namor gives the Wakandan people an ultimatum – stand with them to destroy the rest of the world, or they’ll be destroyed along with the rest of the people on Earth.
Had this been more of a character driven drama, with political elements – instead of people flying through the air ramming spears into the windows of planes – it might have worked better.
I always enjoy seeing Martin Freeman in anything. He’s helping Wakanda, and trying to hide this from the CIA. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss was miscast as his wife and boss, a character that’s also horribly written.
There were also scenes where Namor is explaining his reasoning, and it seems a lot similar to Wakanda’s. And I felt the same way I felt while watching Avatar when he explained his logic and I wondered – am I going to be rooting for him against the people of the United States? He makes a strong point. I did wonder why all his warriors had things that looked like Horseshoe Crabs on their faces, but I digress. And maybe cinematographer Autumn Durald just didn’t do enough with the dimly-lit scenes with those characters. The visuals should blow us away, considering the budget for the film.
The score by Ludwig Goransson sometimes did a good job of putting you in the place of the characters. Other times, it was just annoying. I also didn’t care for the song selection (Freeman jogs, while listening to the annoying Red Hot Chili Peppers “Can’t Stop”).
The whole thing was corny and lacked a clear sense of purpose.
Both my wife and I were disappointed. I told her I was giving it 1 ½ stars out of 5 and she said “Oh no, you can’t go that low with the stars.”
I replied, “What would you give it?”
She paused for about 10 seconds and said “2 stars maybe.”
We’ll compromise. It gets 1.75 stars out of 5.