That was a really great episode that tied everything off nicely... & then we had that ridiculous epilogue, which might as well have been replaced by a scene where they actually jump over a shark, because WHAT. Two characters get together purely because they're the main characters, even though they don't belong together. Then suddenly it's 2 years later she's hanging out in Asia, & then he shows up (& I guess they were married or something cos she mentions a ring?) saying their whole team got kidnapped & a box got left behind, & they both have to touch it to open it, & then they both touch the item inside it & a picture just appears on metal, & then they hold it next to the tattoo it depicts & ALL HER TATTOOS START GLOWING like WTF.
I don't know what's worse, the ridiculous sci-fi tech on display (I know they pull a lot of shit that isn't possible on this show, but this is just stupid), or the fact that the setup is that most of the interesting characters are out of the picture & we're left with just two characters, only one of which is interesting. Seriously, Kurt is by far the least interesting character, probably because the whole plot is based around things from his past, so the writers didn't bother developing his character beyond 'angry guy who shouts a lot', & this would be fine (plenty of other interesting characters after all, & if that's his thing then hey that's his thing) were it not for the fact that the bloody show keeps presenting him as if he was anything other than dull. I'd much rather have him be the one who got kidnapped & everyone else had to get together to find him.
Unless that whole bit turns out to be a dream sequence or something...
Holy Mother of... That cliffhanger! Oh my God! His wings!!! I can't believe it. that ending confused the fuck out of me. So many things happened in the episode. The wings, that desert, and mom's in an alternate universe. Let's Supernatural this, boys!
as much as I want Chloe to know who Lucifer really is, I swear I had the goosebumps when he was talking to her on the phone. he wanted to spill the beans! But then Lucifer gets hit from behind and is driven to a whatever the fuck was that place, gets hit by who knows and his wings appear. mother of all cliffhangers. I need answers so desperately. Oh my God, when he comes back,every single time he takes his shirt of (not that it matters to me wink) his wings are gonna come off. How do you hide it? And who has the power to get his wings back? God, probably. Plus, that someone knocked him out when Chloe wasn't even there so it has to be God, right? Or Michael? Although I always thought Amenadiel was the version of Michael. Maybe he got his wings back because he was a good son and taking care of mom? Not entirely sure why he was just drying in the dessert, though. Lots of unanswered questions.
And that tear in reality looked exactly like the one we saw in Supernatural, just saying. Loved also the possibility of Mom ruling Hell, like wtf.
Even when Lucifer is covered in blister and beaten the hell up, those wings make him even sexier.
Now that I think of it, what if that scene was a flashback of when he first fell from Heaven? Although he landed on a beach and not the dessert.
I loved that Charlotte is still alive. I loved the actress, though I hated mom. But I loved her performance. Dan is a sweetheart and no one will convince me otherwise. And my poor Linda. Ufff, thank God she's ok. I couldn't handle her getting killed off. Maze is absolutely awesome and seeing Amenadiel happy makes me happy. So I guess both the wings and Amenadiel's powers coming back were a gift of God for doing the righteous thing.
[7.0/10] There’s a weird thing that’s happened with almost every season of the Marvel Netflix shows, where I end up liking and caring about the side characters way more than the hero (the exception being Jessica Jones, both for having a better hero and some weaker side characters). If you’d told me at the beginning of the series that here, a little ways past the halfway mark, I’d be most interested in the two generic children of privilege and their family issues, I would have laughed you out of the building.
But here we are. In one half of the episode, you have a trio of good guys flying to China to try to take out one of the most intriguing villains in this whole subuniverse, and I could hardly care less. And on the other, you have a pair of well-heeled American Psycho wannabes struggling with the legacy of their father and their name, and it’s the most engrossing thing the show has ever done. TV shows are funny sometimes.
Suffice it to say, the development of the Meachum kids is the best thing Iron Fist has to offer. The conflict between the two of them, where Ward wants to run away and is willing to take quite a haircut to do it (not literally of course), whereas Joy wants to fight so badly that she’ll turn the offer down for the both of them, prompts a very intriguing confrontation for the two of them.
The bit where they sit down on a park bench and let some truths spill out is one of the best scenes in the show thus far. For one thing, it adds more to the internal contradictions that we’ve seen in both characters for a while now. Despite the fact that Joy seems to be the more sensitive and empathetic Meachum sibling, she is willing to do things like have a P.I. (implied to be Jessica Jones) follow her fellow board members for blackmail purposes, that suggest she has a more ruthless side herself.
She confesses, however, that it comes from a place of admiring Ward, of wanting to be like him, with the dramatic irony that Ward doesn’t even want to be like him. The actor who plays Ward does some tremendous work in this episode. The sense that he’s being praised for enacting his father’s plans, that his sister admires him for living a life he wants to escape, for feeling a connection to his flesh and blood that he has to constantly lie to, creates a true sense of comprehensible turmoil for the character that the actor delivers nicely.
There’s little to no music in that scene, just two people spilling their guts, admitting their hurt, and being unwilling or unable to fix it. Ward tries though, and the fake out of him legitimately meaning to show her Harold’s apartment and then having the scene of the crime turn out to be too much for him was very well done. I’m not sure I ever expected Iron Fist to take a page out of The Shining’s playbook, but Ward seeing blood rush from the elevator’s various orifices was a nicely disturbing image and an effective way to dramatize his growing trauma at witnessing and eventually participating in death and dismemberment.
Of course, what’s even more intriguing is that Ward, true to form, does not come clean to Joy about what’s bothering him, even a little, instead spurning her and projecting his frustrations onto her. His rejecting her earnest pleas for understanding and sibling friendship are sad in that they not only break down this relationship that seemed to be heading to a new place of trust, but speak to the way in which Ward is already too damages by what he’s been through and the father that raised him to make it out of this quagmire. It’s hard to make a character both tragic and kind of an asshole, but Iron Fist pulls it off.
And then there’s a much duller story being told with Danny, Colleen, and Claire on the other side of the world. It’s hard to put my finger on why this one was so much worse than the Meachums’ story, but if I had to drive at something in particular, it would be the fact that most of the episode borrows a page from The Walking Dead’s least enjoyable quality – a propensity to have tons of scenes where characters debate Important Things™ in really dumb and obvious ways, with the utmost seriousness.
We get it on the plane where Danny and Claire discuss liking people and choosing destiny and all the usual dross. We get it between Danny and Colleen where they talk about losing their parents. Hell, we even get it between Danny and drunken master guy with the whole “wearing your oath like a mask” exchange that lays it on thicker than chunky peanut butter out of the freezer.
That speaks to the other weakness of the Danny half of the episode – underwhelming fight stuff. Contrary to some other critics, I’ve found the fight choreography on this show generally serviceable, if at times somewhat generic. But the drunken master fight was pretty crappy, with no real sense of combat or flow despite the obvious gimmick. Drunken Master guy was annoying, which didn’t help, but the mix of styles didn’t really tell the story the episode was going far.
To the same end, Colleen’s sword fight was pretty interesting, but then just sort of fell apart. The initial back and forth had some nice shades of Kill Bill and the works it paid homage to, but eventually the demands of TV drama caught up to it.
The rest of the episode, with Danny losing control and confronting Gao and the gang getting into another uninspired scrap with her local goons just sort of petered out. Not to beat a dead horse, but much of that falls on Finn Jones, who has a tough time convincingly selling Danny’s frustrations and breaking point here (even if the way his pummeling the drunken master is shot and edited was pretty well done).
Maybe that’s the difference. Ward and Joy are not the best performed characters ever on television, but they have humanity to them as they struggle with something somewhat implausible but that has roots in real human emotions of inner conflict and family problems that the actors are able to convey. Danny has to do much more fantastical stuff, and the show tries to ground it in a human struggle, but Jones can’t keep up his end of the bargain. The upshot is that in a show with kung fu and ninjas and magic powers, the most interesting part is, oddly enough, the two rich kids dealing with getting kicked out of their father’s company.
[7.7/10] Given the dearth of LGBTQ characters in major mainstream works, I feel like there’s a tendency for fans to ship any two people of the same sex who shows the slightest bit of friendship or affection for one another. That makes me hesitant to suggest what I’m about to suggest for fear of falling into that trap, but here goes anyway -- Danny has better chemistry with Davos than he’s ever had with Colleen.
In fact, I think there’s a fair read of the final scene of this episode, where Davos sees Danny embracing Colleen in the rain like in so many romcoms, as Davos walking away upset that his crush is with someone else. But whether you consider it a bug or a feature (and I consider it the latter), what’s interesting is that the episode works equally well with and without that subtext.
If you choose to read it without that element, Davos still has one of the better motivated (and better-acted) presences in this show in just a couple of quick episodes. He is pulled in two directions, because he is clearly fiercely loyal to Danny (his “I won’t leave you” while Danny’s getting stitched up by Claire evidences that), but he’s also jealous and resentful of him. That makes his reactions to Danny and to the new life he’s scratched out for himself in New York layered in a way that really only Ward Meachum’s have been on the show so far.
On the one hand, Davos admits that he feels a little usurped by Danny, that he believed becoming the iron fist was his birthright and the fact that the monks chose Danny instead of him still eats at him. And, to add insult to injury, Danny abandoned his post, and set his duties aside. Danny has the thing Davos wanted most in the world, a thing that was denied him, and seems to be walking away from it, shirking his responsibilities. It’s the sort of thing that would bother anyone, and Sacha Dhawan conveys the restrained frustrations of his character well.
But on the other hand, Davos feels betrayed at a more personal level. When he tells Claire that he treated Danny like a brother and that he nevertheless just left without saying a word, you can see it emanating from a more personal sort of hurt, the type that believed they had a friendship that could not be disregarded so easily. That friendship is given texture by all of Danny’s previous fond recollections of the hijinx the pair would go together, and that adds depth to the conflict between the two friends when Davos questions Danny leaving Kunlun and asks what appeal this world holds for him.
And yet, it can also be taken a step further, that Davos is not simply hurt as a friend and brother in arms, but as someone who has romantic feelings for Danny that may not have been reciprocated or ever even acknowledged. I’ll admit this may be a stretch on my part, and perhaps I’m taking the completely dead romance the show has tried to sell between Danny and Colleen, in this episode especially, seeing Finn Jones have a modicum of chemistry with someone on this otherwise anodyne show, and concluding that by comparison, his concordance with Davos must be love. But either way, there’s clear affection, whether filial or something more, between the two of them, that creates interesting and conflicting motivations for the pair.
I’m as shocked to say it as anyone, but this also gives a really interesting answer to the question of why Danny left Kunlun. For a while, the assumed answer was a pragmatic one -- to find out what happened to his parents, but we also get an emotional one here. Danny, understandably, felt “empty” after what happened to him and his parents, and he thought that becoming the iron fist, reaching the pinnacle of the cultural collective he was brought into, would fill that in his life.
Only he finds that when he achieves what he set out to do that it isn’t as fulfilling as he’d hoped. He sits around at the gates of Kunlun stacking rocks and seeming like his duty is a tedious and hollow one. Seeing the bird flying free as a sign is kind of cheesy, but it still speaks to a relatable notion of having done what you set out to do, and yet it not fixing the deeper-seeded problems within. It adds a human dimension to Danny’s struggle that’s been lost in the usual orphan backstory and generic kung fu material.
We also get more hints that the Monks of Kunlun are not exactly sterling examples. It’s appropriate that Danny is expected to go into a cave to face trials to reach the next level of his training, because there’s a real Jedi vibe to all of his. Danny and Davos have been trained to suppress their anger and other strong emotions – such sentiment is not appropriate for a weapon – and yet it’s still there, haunting Danny and blocking his chi.
There is a sense, brought forward in an occasionally dull but generally good conversation with Claire, that Danny never really processed what happened with him and his parents, and those difficult emotions are still affecting him, even if he doesn’t acknowledge it. There are connections he has to this world that he just can’t shake using his Kunlun discipline.
Unfortunately, one of those connections is Colleen. The whole tortured “how could you lie to me?” angst between them is pretty awful, especially because we know they’ll inevitably overcome it and team up to help one another. Without good performances or writing in the overwrought scenes between the two of them, it just feels like a perfunctory bit of squabbling without any emotional punch.
And to add insult to injury, we get more Bakuto here, who plays the angry cult leader with all the charisma of worn hockey puck. There’s a common theme to this episode, with both Danny and Colleen realizing that the organizations that trained them may be less than noble, but since we just got introduced to this sect of The Hand and Colleen’s connection to it, her half of the proceedings have no weight.
The only bit of real intrigue is that we learn Bakuto’s sect is doing the same blood draining stuff that The Hand was doing in Daredevil Season 2. Otherwise, it’s more nonsensical, shoehorned in antagonist stuff that detracts from the better-than-usual things “Lead” pulls off here (including giving Claire more to do and showing off her sarcastic edge).
Much of that comes down to Danny and Davos, and whether you’d like to think of them as symbolizing an unrealized crush or simply brothers in arms, their connection has a force that’s been missing on the Danny side of this show (the Meachum side continues apace with some good if brief and kind of creepy, Joy-Harold material), and instantly adds a new dimension to Danny’s return to New York City.
[4.8/10] I could live a long and happy life without ever having to hear another superhero agonize over whether it’s okay to kill the obviously evil, dangerous bad guy who is confronting them. There is an inherent tension between the hero of the story taking this rigidly moral stance with the fact that if they’re out there punching and kicking and blasting their way through goons, they’re invariable causing untold human suffering regardless of whether they actually extinguish a life or not. Can it be done well? Yes, but it’s been done to death, even among the Marvel Netflix shows, and Iron Fist is absolutely not equipped to find new wrinkles in that venerable theme.
That means that when “Dragon Plays with Fire” chooses to center the show’s entire finale, and by extension, the crux of the series, on the question of whether Danny should or should not kill Harold Meachum, it drags most of the proceedings, and by extension much an underwhelming show, into the muck with it.
And, as always, a big part of the problem stems from the fact that Finn Jones is a pretty lousy conduit through which to explore Danny’s dilemma here. The whole premise of the finale is that Danny is initially reserved enough, but upon learning that it was Harold who killed his parents, he flies into a rage and determines to kill Harold not out of a sense of righteousness but out of a sense of unholy vengeance. The big knock against that tack is that Jones is pretty awful at playing enraged.
In some ways, Jones’s boyishness has played to his advantage on the show. While I’ve still found Danny insufferable through much of Iron Fist, if there’s one way that Jones has succeeded in his portrayal, it’s that Danny does seem like someone who still has a childlike view of the modern world. But the downside to that is that his “raging anger” at Harold after learning the truth about his parents comes off more like a toddler’s temper tantrum than the emotional results of stomach-wrenching vendetta. Much of “Dragon” calls on Jones to play a man who’s dealing with the fire within, but when that fire comes off as more of a sparkler causing mild irritation, the whole episode suffers.
(As an aside, Gao was one of the few highlights in this episode and Iron Fist as a whole. Her calm and honest but manipulative bent made more out of her scenes than the sum of their parts.)
It also doesn’t help that the whole todo culminates in a series of fight sequences out of a third-rate 90s action movie. The episode dutifully moves all its players into place -- Joy learning the truth about her father, Ward helping his new allies take him down, Colleen cautious but ready for battle, and Claire as the doubting thomas -- to lead into an inevitable, underwhelming showdown between Danny and Harold.
While certain aspects of this confrontation are silly, but fall well enough into the category of pulpy fun to tolerate -- like Danny swinging through the glass of Harold’s office or using his iron fist to punch an incapacitating shock wave across the room -- many of them just come off as stupid. Why, for the love of god, did we need a scene of Danny and Harold playing American Gladiators with a very fake-looking pair of steel beams?
The whole roof sequence is a gigantic helping of stupidity and cheese. Harold taunting Danny about how long he’s wanted to kill Wendell Rand, or doing the usual scenery-chewing villain monologuing, was entirely unnecessary and belied the attempts at serious and profundity the episode made. At the same time, Danny was just an idiot. Even if he didn’t want to kill Harold which, given what we know about him, makes little sense, why didn’t he do more to, as Bakuto (god help me) said, at least subdue Harold? The hits he takes and submissive response to Harold’s attacks were imbecilic.
Nevermind the bevy of conveniences and contrivances that follow. The whole imagery of Harold as the dragon with the two construction lights behind Danny was weird and cornball. Danny turning his back on an impaled Harold was dumb to begin with, but then having zero awareness to get rid of Harold’s gun, which inevitably Harold tries to use, was one of those “we need something plot-convenient to happen here, so the characters have to be blind fools” moments. By the same token, Ward stepping in to shoot his father was the worst sort of cop outs to these “Can I take a life?” stories, where the hero gets to preserve their moral purity, but the bad guy gets disposed of anyway.
What follows are scores of teases and hints and ending character beats, most of which are just as underwhelming or rushed. While Ward, who has been the secret MVP of this show, still getting emotional over his father’s death and renewing his friendship with Danny (while Hogarth amusingly takes the stuffing out of them), was a nice moment, the rest of it was Iron Fist’s usual on-the-nose philosophizing and loud character work. Claire telling Danny and Colleen they were messed up was an especially odd little moment that seemed to be aiming for profundity and coming up with clichés. And the late tease with Joy, Davos, and Gao had super rushed developments for nearly all the characters.
“Dragon” continues a long string of less-than-satisfying finishes to these Marvel Netflix shows, where even the better ones have trouble sticking the landing. While the show at least had the good sense to center its finale on the show’s central characters rather than fixating more on Bakuto or larger concerns from The Hand, the macguffinism, the generic action movie bad guy confrontation on the roof, and the stupidity of the way the show addressed its characters’ actions and the moral code of its themes leave this finale as a weak ending to a weak series.
When I heard that Scott Buck, the showrunner who ran Dexter into the ground was doing a Netflix series, one with complicated racial politics at play no less, I was hoping that it might at least be the entertaining type of bad. Instead, Iron Fist was just competent to be passable, but just dull and mishandled enough to be thoroughly meh throughout. There are certainly bright spots -- the Meachum family drama turned out to be unexpectedly compelling, and Colleen shined before she got sucked into Danny’s romantic orbit -- but on the whole, Buck and company couldn’t figure out how to tell an interesting story about its main character, couldn’t find a way to make the show fun even if it couldn’t be capital-G Great, and couldn’t find a lead to breathe life into the show’s weaker moments and scenes and thereby elevate the series as a whole.
In the final tally, Iron Fist feels like an inferior rehash of themes and archetypes that many other superhero stories, including those featuring Danny Rand’s soon-to-be Defenders teammates, have already dramatized in a much more interesting, entertaining fashion. Next time, stay in K’un-Lun, Danny.
You better believe that I spent the last 15 minutes of this episode screaming internally. You know that meme with a cartoon dog sitting inside a burning room, saying "This is fine"? That's me right now.
I'm just... speechless. I don't know how to process everything that's happened. I can't even name all the emotions that I'm experiencing at the moment. A part of me wants to cry, another wants to laugh, but not in a good way - more in the awkward, panicked way, like when something bad happens and you react in the most inappropriate manner imaginable.
Let's start with the most obvious thing, the one that I've talked about quite a few times in the past: Iain de Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge's acting. Those two are like goddamn magical unicorns blessed with so much talent. Separately, they're utterly magnificent and deserve all the awards (which they'll never get because there is no justice in this world). But when you put them together, it's honestly one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. It's a nuclear reaction, a supernova, galaxies crashing together. It takes my breath away. Remember when FitzSimmons were supposed to be the comic relief in season 1? That definitely didn't go according to plan. Those two are the beating heart and the soul of this show. I'm not exaggerating when I say that one of the main reasons why I want Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to go on forever is because I can't get enough of the magic that Elizabeth and Iain create whenever they're on screen together. When I watch them, I understand what it means that something is greater than the sum of its parts. The showrunners truly hit the jackpot of the millenium with those two. They elevate the quality of the show with their brilliance. In their hands, even the weakest of scenes and the corniest of dialogues turn into something special, and great moments become mindblowingly epic.
Fitz and The Doctor's interactions left me with my jaw on the floor. Especially that tiny moment when The Doctor mocked Fitz's stuttering (by the way, that's some excellent continuity right there, Fitz's aphasia coming back and getting worse when he's very stressed or upset). It made the big reveal all the more shocking and heartbreaking for me. I didn't see that coming at all, and I swear my soul left my body for a second when I realized what was going on. I'm almost in physical pain just thinking about it. I have no idea how Fitz is going to come back from this. I have no idea how he can ever patch things up with Daisy. I can't believe the writers did this to me. Can I sue them for causing me emotional distress?
Jemma finding out that Deke is her and Fitz's grandson was so lovely and touching. I always cry when Elizabeth cries, so naturally, I turned into a sobbing mess. And of course she threw up at the end there, and we know that in TV world women only ever puke for one of two reasons:
They've had too much too drink (alternatively, they took drugs - I'm looking at you, Jessica Jones).
They're pregnant.
Since Jemma wasn't knocking back shots or snorting cocaine in this episode, I think it's safe to say that there's a lil' British science bun in the oven. Normally, I'd be fucking ecstatic about this, but I think this episode has killed my ability to feel happiness, at least for the time being.
I guess some other stuff happened in the episode, the Russian dude from last season is back, Hale is working with the Kree or something, Hydra's back (could we perhaps stop beating that dead horse already?), but to be honest, I currently don't have the emotional capacity to give a fuck about any of it. I need to lie down on the floor, curl up into a ball and stay there for a while.
See y'all next week for more suffering!
And the title of most improved since season 1 goes to...
This season was an actual improvement in my opinion. As someone who has had no previous experience with The Witcher, meaning I never read the books nor played the video games, Season 1 was kind of a confusing introduction.
Thankfully, Season 2 was a step up for me. They dropped the non-linear storytelling (not that I don't like it when it's done, I just don't think Season 1 did it very well), Geralt gets a personality upgrade (thanks to Henry Cavill insisting) and the story feels more coherent.
Season 2 also allows for some great character interactions, special shout-outs to my new favorite Dad and Daughter duo Geralt and Ciri, as well as to best frenemies Yennefer and Jaskier.
New characters are introduced and some of season 1's are better developed (like Triss and Cahir) and there is some real payoff to what it set up throughout the season.
I still have problems keeping up with all the characters and their names though. The show still has a feeling of "too much is going on" but at least coherence is given this time.
It was an overall really good season, I enjoyed it way more than it's predecessor.
This is an honest, spoiler-free review coming from your average fan (not a critic):
I just saw this new marvel film, and I have to say... it's no where near as bad as the critics make it out to be.
Yes there is a lot of dialogue. But it gives the characters a chance to shine and for scenes to breathe.
People call this film dense. I would disagree. Yes there is a fair bit of plot and history told, however I would say that other mcu films have simply much simpler plotlines most of the time.
There are moments when things are just about to become exciting, and then it is interrupted with more dialogue which instantly kills the suspension.
There are a number of plot twists in this film, and some unexpected things happen that I wouldn't have seen coming.
This film has a slow burn, but sometimes that's a good thing. Would I have liked more action? Yes. Was I unhappy with the action we do get? No.
I will admit, going into this film I was expecting a masterpiece, and while I wouldn't quite call it that, its definitely a well-made film, marvel or not.
Oh. And expect to have to do some reading at the very beginning. Kinda reminds me of a classic Star Wars opening crawl.
[8.2/10] The death of Chadwick Boseman looms large over Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The film, and director Ryan Coogler, treat the loss with the gravity it deserves. The drumbeat of the need for ever-more franchise fare marches on unabated. Much of the time, though, you will find yourself forgetting that you are watching another crown jewel in the infinity gauntlet of Marvel megaproducer Kevin Feige, and feel like you’re watching a sober reflection on loss and the irregular patterns of grief and mourning.
There is great artistry in the way Coogler and company choose to use silence to give the death of King T’Challa, and by extension the man who plays him, the emotional space it needs. Creating that absence of sound at the bookends of the film make the moments when his family mourns him feel sacred, unsparing, and real when there’s none of the usual distractions to take your focus away from the sad sentiments of these moments. Wakanda Forever features a beautiful funerary tribute, rich with the sort of culture and detail that elevated the first Black Panther movie. But it’s these more stark moments, where simplicity, performance, and reflection take over that have the most impact.
The hardest task before Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was to say goodbye to its title character and star in a way that was appropriate to the real world and to the fictional one he once inhabited. Coogler and company not only thread that needle, they turn it into something moving, and organic to the story of the film.
The story does not try to simply replace Boseman or T’Challa. One of the sharpest choices Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole make is to turn Wakanda Forever into more of an ensemble piece. T’Challa’s sister Shuri eventually claims the mantle, and she is the film’s main character. But rather than anchoring the film on her as Black Panther did T’Challa, there’s a greater balance and willingness to explore the impact of these events on those left in their wake.
Angela Bassett, who was underutilized in the prior film, is volcanic as Queen Ramonda in this one. The film takes the time to explore her status as a grieving mother called to lead her people, desperate to protect the remaining children in her care, and she repays the focus with a performance that is Shakespearean in its gravity, emotion, and intensity. Okoye, the head of the Dora Milaje elite protectors, is once again the film’s secret weapon, a vessel to explore the marks of duty and personal connection amid seismic change and shared loss. Nakia, T’Challa’s paramour, is the prodigal daughter of Wakanda, separating herself from her homeland and the finality of its loss, while getting involved in the issue du jour and protecting a hidden legacy. Each of these women command the film at various intervals, reflecting the death in the family in different ways, and channeling the story through different experiences.
The non-Wakandan additions to the proceedings fit a similar mold. The exception is Everett Ross, whose business with ex-wife Val and the dealings of the U.S. government play like narrative set dressing and setup for later films than anything essential to this one. Riri Williams, a.k.a Ironheart, feels a little shoehorned into the film at times too, but she, by contrast fits the thematic aims of Wakanda Forever.
She too is mourning a loss, her stepfather; she quickly becomes another child for Ramonda to defend, and as a tech-minded young woman, she has a natural accord with Shuri. The film finds a way to make her plot-relevant -- as the creator of a vibranium-detection machine that threatens to put the powerful substance into hands the Wakandans and their undersea counterparts don’t trust -- but she largely succeeds as another figure coping with the death of a loved one and the intersection of different worlds with different expectations and demands.
None fits that bill more so than Namor, the king of an undersea civilization called Talokan. Wakanda Forever smartly makes Talokan and its inhabitants a funhouse mirror counterpart to Wakanda. Both are rich, capable communities that hide away their talents and resources from the rest of the world. Both benefited from a localized cache of vibranium, whose properties in the soul created plants that allow the citizens to do amazing things and pose a threat, if they choose to, to anyone who would oppose them. But the undersea setting of Talokan, their animosity rather than reclusiveness toward the surface world, and the distinct cultural heritage makes them different.
Coogler and company do the same stellar job for Talokan that they did for T’Challa’s homeland. One of the joys of the original Black Panther film was simply seeing Wakanda itself, looking at the beautifully-realized world with distinctive cultural touches mixed with futuristic flair that cultivated a real sense of place. The same is true for Talokan, only the production and design teams imbue it with a Mesoamerican flair, imagining the culture that might have thrived, with a supernatural twist, in the absence of colonial oppression. The attention to detail helps the audience appreciate both communities, alike in dignity, recognizing their equal stature and prowess, while they’re dancing on the edge of being allies or enemies.
Such is the provenance of Namor, himself a mirror image of Shuri. He, like all the major figures, lost someone close to him -- his mother. He too is royalty in a unique and closed-off kingdom, suddenly finding itself having to confront incursions and demands from the outside world. His pointy ears and winged feet from the comics scan as a little silly in the more grounded tone of the MCU, but reimagination of indigenous dress allows him the benefits of so much of the great costuming in the film -- helping to make the character more memorable and give them an added presence through aesthetics alone.
Namor represents the dark path that Shuri might walk down. The question at the heart of Wakanda Forever is “How do you respond when someone you love is lost forever?” Having lived for centuries, Namor has watched so many he considers family die, and it has hardened him. It makes him want vengeance, bloodshed, a pound of flesh to fill the hole in his heart where his mother once rested. He wants to wreak havoc upon those who inherited the largesse of the people who colonized and oppressed his ancestors, to strike at them before they impinge on his people’s peace and tranquility.
Shuri has the same anger, the same desire to make someone pay for having lost her brother, for taking away the tools that might have allowed him to save her. She is tempted to go to war against the rest of the world hand-in-hand, especially when Namor shows her around Talokan and explains his people’s achievements and their forebears’ suffering in terms that resonate. But she ultimately refuses, valuing the life of Riri as an innocent bystander, a refusal that results in an attack from the sea god himself and the death of her mother. In one heartbreaking death and act of selflessness from Ramonda, Shuri is in charge, and has an enemy who has taken someone important from her with a plan to exact revenge upon those who’ve done him wrong.
In that, Shuri has her own Killmonger, which makes it a deft choice to return him as the vision Shuri sees after imbibing the artificial heart-shaped herb. She is tempted to let the anger in her heart bear out after so many painful parting of souls. Like almost everyone in Wakanda Forever she is still smarting from all that has been taken from her in so short a time. And as she stands over her foe in single combat, having assumed the storied mantle of the Black Panther to protect her people, the images of those thefts, those hearts ripped away from hers, she seeks to avenge those lost and quiet the tempest with metal and blood.
And yet, at the moment of truth, she sees the concordance shared by her people and his, the way their civilizations are built with the same richness, the same blessings, the same joys. She chooses to honor the legacy of her mother and brother, whose nobility spurred them to protect those who need it and show mercy in lieu of vengeance. She spurs Namor to yield, vows to defend him and his people, and finds peace and shared community in lieu of conflict and opposition between the two peoples.
With that, she heals. She allows herself to confront those losses as something to be felt, not a thing that can be solved or fixed. She joins in the shared strength of her brothers and sisters, the support of her community. She lets go of hate and begins working toward the type of future they would want to see, one founded on mutual trust and connection, knowing that their legacy will live on, even if they do not.
It takes a lot of movie to reach that landing spot. There’s a ton going on here. With an extended runtime, Coogler does not waste it on the inessential (give or take the “Director Fontaine wants to strike” material). While Shuri’s arc takes center stage, she, Ramonda, Okoye, Nakia, Riri, and even tertiary characters like M’Baku and Ross carry the weight of T’Challa’s death and what it means for Wakanda. He extends these lived-in corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, unveiling another civilization as powerful and fully-realized as the stealthy African nation. The latticework of the film’s plot and world-building and themes is intricate, heavy, and not always clear. But it’s all worthwhile, building to a greater whole even in the parts that seem a touch overloaded.
I liked the original Black Panther film. Boseman’s performance anchored the film’s central dilemma and humanized the role. The layer of detail to the Afrofuturistic world dreamed up and exacting but communal themes resonated. But it still fit into the superhero movie formula, with appropriate twists and touches to make it Coogler’s own, but hitting the expected sorts of beats the traditional versions of these films must.
Wakanda Forever is different, and if I may be so bold, better. Yes, the final reel includes a grand, climactic buffet of CGI spectacle and fisticuffs, and this is still centered on the ascendance of a new superhero. But in its aims and its counts, it deviates from those formulas.
The story is more diffuse, more personal, more individual. Its ensemble focus is unique. Its reflections on the common fears but stronger common ground between oppressed peoples is novel and piercing. While not as tight as its predecessor, what the film lacks in precession, it makes up for in the sheer volume of heartfelt, mournful, genuine material it includes in a tale built on notions of processing loss. To see a movie under this banner given the freedom to craft a unique work of mourning and catharsis, syncopated in its rhythms and raw in its emotions, is a genuine marvel.
