WAKANDA FOREVER: A Good Movie With The Wrong Villain

The World asked for it, and finally the universe delivered to us the sequel to Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther movie; Wakanda Forever, albeit without its main star, Chadwick Boseman who sadly passed away prior to the script even being written.

It is a movie that was inspired by the actor’s passing and as well served as a fitting tribute to his portrayal of the now famous ‘Black Panther’.

Like the T’Challa character said in its first introduction to audience in Captain America: Civil War, ‘the Black Panther is the protector of the Wakanda people’, and clearly we saw that from Wakanda Forever, as T’Challa’s passing exposed the country of Wakanda to weaknesses and enemies, which the movie sadly tried hard but somehow couldn’t make its audience understand.

The film felt like a plot device to introduce the character, Namor to the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and by a stretch, the word, ‘Mutant’ which was a foreshadowing of the iconic Marvel team, the X Men.

Of course, the story worked well trying to build the character of Namor as an unwitting villain created out of circumstance, and the word villain is even a stretch based on what the story tried to portray as Namor judging by his introduction was more of an antagonist than a villain.

The idea was to not build the character as a full on bad guy, thus giving him a sense of morality somewhat to make him likeable, but alternatively the movie ended up doing just the opposite–turning Namor into a full on bad guy only to then retcon it yet again, doing the character great disservice in the end.

Somehow the story, found itself rather portraying the character as nothing but a vengeful villain if anything. That also could have worked for the story if Wakanda Forever had kept things consistent with Namor’s goals or better explained what Namor wanted.

At one point in the film, Namor is fearful of his kingdom being unveiled to the world as he is keen to maintain its secrecy by any means necessary to protect it from the surface world, and that included trying to shut-down the scientist who invented a device that could track the location of Vibranium, and thus reveal his underwater world to the world as they too like the Wakandans possess Vibranium.

But where this goal falls flat is the character ironically risking the exposure of his world or country to go into a war with a nation already exposed to the international community, who are after the Vibranium both parties want to protect.

In essence, the story introducing Namor falls flat in its entirety leaving Wakanda Forever a film without a villain with a good motive compared to the first, but with the spectacle.

A positive though is that the film gives its main characters a better development and character arcs that does justice to the first film in the franchise.