The long-awaited sequel to the Marvel film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was released on November 11th. After the late, Chadwick Boseman passed away on August 28th, 2020, the movie was pushed back and postponed as production was planned to begin right before his death. 

The production wasn’t started again until May of the next year. They announced that the movie would in fact be a tribute to Chadwick and his legacy. 

When the news was released, almost everyone was thinking the same things: Who was going to play Black Panther in the movie? How were they going to show his passing, if they even were? In a very bittersweet way, this created hype around the movie as people speculated that Shuri, T’challa’s sister, or Nakia, his partner was going to take the role of Black Panther. 

I saw the movie in mid-November at Ronnie’s, and it was great!  (Word of warning:  there are minor spoilers ahead.) 

The opening of the movie was quite sad. It opened to a scene where there was no music, no background noise, just the scene. Which was explaining how Chadwick’s character, T’challa, died in the film. I was expecting to cry but not so soon. In my mind, I was preparing myself to cry for the rest of the movie as I wasn’t even five seconds in and I already was crying rivers.

The whole movie from that point was an emotional roller coaster. Every corner you could see and hear little details that were from Chadwick. Seeing and feeling so many of these emotions made me cry a lot, like four times a lot.

Though the movie was emotional, it wasn’t all sad. It had some comedic relief through the characters of M’baku and Riri Williams. They were the comedic highlights of the movie for sure and this movie was actually Riri branching into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). 

Shuri, T’challa’s sister, still had some relief to her. As many remember, she was the comedic relief in Black Panther and many of the Avengers movies. In this movie, she had to take on so much in so little time and I’m glad they didn’t take all her ‘life’ away.

Her character throughout the movie showed lots of grief and how someone might deal with the feelings of losing a brother, a role model, etc. Seeing how her character developed and they portrayed her, I feel that her character ark was the best I’ve seen from the MCU. 

Now to the antagonist of the movie.  Namor the Submariner was great to see! He was awesome and the representation of the Talokans, his nation, was beautiful and quite literally a cinematic masterpiece. He was brutal in the best and worst ways. I would love to see a solo film of his character as the movie, I feel, just wasn’t long enough. The movie did dive into his character and his roots, but there is so much more I know that could be told about his character and nation alone. 

It was simply a really great movie. The only complaint that I would have is that I feel they jumped between moments too fast. For example, if there was a valuable moment on the screen, there wasn’t enough time before the next clip was rolling. Other than that, the movie was great and I would recommend that you go and see the film on the big screen. 

Seeing as I’ve done these reviews before, you know I love my socks! As such, I’m giving this movie an overall, 6/5 socks. Now, quoting Mr. Murphy here, “you can give it 6/5 socks, it’s basic math.” I’m not going to listen to his advice and rate it a 6/5 anyway though. I’m rating this film this way because it was a phenomenal movie in my opinion. It was scale-breaking.