Despite having been a big MCU fan up through
Endgame, after the rancid recent offerings from Marvel accentuating the decline that their products have been in since
Ant Man & The Wasp, through the fairly terrible
Black Widow and
Shang Chi, and culminating in the abominable
Eternals followed by the confirmatory
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and
Thor: Love And Thunder, I was loath to ever watch another Marvel movie.
But the allure of Wakanda and fond memories of Coogler's first film, combined with a random afternoon off while workers were at my house, led me back to the theater for one more shot.
And it was an interesting experience because of the highs and lows on display here. The film is certainly "better" than Marvel's last few outings... but really on average. The trick here is that the highs are high enough that they pull up the lows which are the same as all the recent fare has been. As rushed and pitiful as the villain and new secondary character introduction was in
DSitMoM (Wanda and America Chavez),
Wakanda Forever is every bit as bad if not worse with
Namor The Expositionist (whose every word is exposition) and Ironheart... seriously, you idiots tried to shoehorn
Ironheart into this already absurdly bloated thing?!
Yes, not only did Marvel try to use the
Black Panther name to bring yet another origin story of a major character and world into the MCU, despite having the entire Death of the Black Panther/who rules Wakanda/what is Wakanda's place in the World thing to address, they actually brought in a new super-hero origin as well, awfully ret-conned in a "well, our audience will literally accept anything at this point" kind of way in Ironheart, in the middle of everything they already had on their plate.
So the film is a bloated mess with little thought or care to how any of this plays.
Except that it also has some of the best personal drama in the MCU in years. Honestly, some of the character scenes almost seem like they're too good for the MCU and belong in an indie film. And then more fish-people come and attack a giant CGI battle-barge in the Atlantic Ocean.
Really, the emotional journey of Shiri almost makes this film worth seeing and Laetitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Lupita N'yongo, and Winston Duke make you not wanna get up and walk out when they're on-screen...
But on the whole, I gotta be honest, these dramatic highs simply can't drag up burden of lows this large and bloated.
Even though there was a lot to like, this will be my last Marvel film for the foreseeable future.