Plot Summary – Queen Ramonda, Shuri, M’Baku, Okoye and the Dora Milaje fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death. As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with Nakia and Everett Ross to forge a new path for their beloved kingdom.

★★★★ 

Watched 10 Nov 2022

I was overall really satisfied after watching this movie and I’d say relieved as well. This movie has gargantuan expectations and a really big tragedy to deal with and I think it deals with it extremely tastefully. I was genuinely moved by the emotion and heart of the movie. I was really scared that Marvel would find some way to make the whole film seem disingenuous but to their credit, they handled it with a lot of care and nuance. Grief is something that is very difficult to cover and I think that this film particularly excels in its quiet moments of pondering and conversations about grief and morality. The ‘antagonist’ if I can even call him that, is also extremely well developed and compelling. Coogler is just really good at writing compelling foils to our main characters. To continue about Coogler, I think he’s done a fantastic job wherever he needed to. The script is very well-written and poignant, and it feels like a real movie. The shots are well done and nothing feels artificial even when most of the movie takes place in hyper-realistic landscapes and locations. The acting is also phenomenal. Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta, and Lupita Nyongo are all really great in their roles, but the standout performance for me was Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda. Her performance is so emotionally effective and you really feel for her character throughout the film. I also really liked every music choice in the film and the score was extremely unique and brought a wholly unique vibe to the film. I think the film’s shortcomings come with the fact that in the end, it can’t help but be a Marvel film. It adds a completely unnecessary character or two that I felt slowed down the pace or added extra scenes that did nothing but further the MCU mammoth. Also, the ‘classic Marvel jokes’ got quite repetitive and unfunny towards the end of the second act and cut a lot of the effectively built tension. Otherwise, I think this is a mature, well-written, well-acted, and well-directed film that lives up to what it has to accomplish, even if it feels a bit corporate at times.