I wasn’t that familiar with the background of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, so when I set aside some time this weekend to watch the Blu-Ray, I didn’t realize I was committing 2 hours and 40 minutes of my life to a story that would have made a nice two-hour movie.
Letitia Wright’s Shuri character was the most compelling of the supporting cast in the first Black Panther film, so it was nice to see she was chosen to carry the sequel after the death of Chadwick Boseman, and in the new film she does another fine job.
The reinvention of Namor the Sub-Mariner for the Marvel Cinematic Universe was jarring to this old comics fan, but I’ve never been particularly enamored of that character anyway (see what I did there?) so my lack of interest may have had more to do with why that major plot point fell flat for me.
It was especially jarring to see the supposedly noble ruler of an undersea kingdom gut-punching a 5-foot-5, 110-pound woman, no matter how superpowered she had become.
Just as with the three-hour snooze fest that was The Batman, I found myself hitting the 2x speed button to get through the interminable slugfest in the final act of Wakanda Forever. Maybe I’m just getting tired of comic book movies, or maybe the arc that ended with Avengers: Engame was a pinnacle they may not be able to re-create. Or perhaps 160 minutes is too long for the average superhero epic and Marvel needs to hire more brutal editors.
Then we found ourselves drawn into watching four episodes of Prime Video’s Daisy Jones & The Six musical series. It was an interesting contrast to see how 160 minutes of Wakanda took forever but 200 minutes of Daisy left us wanting more.