Review of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever:

What a wasted opportunity! The first fifteen minutes are great - views of the prosperous and beautiful fictional African country, a great anti-colonial scene in the UN, and it seems that this is going to be the Afrocentric, Afrofuturist film that I've been waiting for. And then just superhero trash...two and a half hours of things crashing into each other and people hitting each other, mostly to no purpose.

Which is a shame, because somewhere in there might be a good film struggling to get out. No, not really, just a good art director looking for a good film to work on. 

It's made worse by the fact that the two different groups of non-white anti-colonial people in the film, the Wakandans and the crypto-Mayan water people, are locked in an unnecessary war over...well, I'm not really sure. They ought to be fighting the extractive imperialists, and they both know this, but something about honour...so not only are the mass battle scenes tedious, but the viewer doesn't even want one side or the other to win. In that sense it's worse than Star Wars, where at least the baddies are clearly defined.

I realise how much superhero stuff is about the use of physical force and weaponry, sometimes high-tech weaponry, to overcome over-confident enemies. Perhaps this speaks to the fears and fantasies of ground-down teenage boys, or the inner teenage boy of so many grown-up men. I find this depressing to watch and rather sad.

Watched in two tranches, because it was too much to sit through. Ruth gave up at the half way mark and I watched some more, and then finished it a few days later. On the big screen at Springhill, following informal distribution.