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Created Feb 04, 2023 09:11AM PST • Edited Apr 06, 2023 06:07PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Wakanda Forever is maternal Marvel, and not just maternal but sisterly and resolutely female focused. Sisters doing it for themselves, IOW. The only men are supporting players, including the über villain, who’s not half bad but not man enough to give the movie balance. This is a serious flaw in a blockbuster, albeit Black Panther 2 recovers some at the end when we learn that the next Black Panther is male. Hallelujah!

   Soft Power Superpower rules.

   BP2 is classic Marvel: lots of movie with lots of backstory that all leads to several cataclysmic battles. Yet even there it is female focused, with frequent attempts to talk it out before going to war. Blah, blah, blah.

   Ultimately, Black Panther 2 can’t overcome the loss of Black Panther 1, the late, great Chadwick Boseman. His chill T’Challa was easy to admire and spend time with, plus was King. Now we wait for his true successor in Black Panther 3, whenever that heir to this diminished realm may hit the multiplexes.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   • Angela Bassett projects immense gravitas as the Sovereign Queen Mother of Wakanda who is grieving the death of her son T’Challa.
   • Letitia Wright can’t carry a movie, not a blockbuster. Little sister, fine, so long as big brother is in the house. Big Kahuna? I don’t think so.
   • Tenoch Huerta Mejía is a credible über villain, the most important role in an action movie.
   • Lupita Nyong’o jumped offscreen in Black Panther. She doesn’t in BP2.
   • Danai Gurira also jumped offscreen in the origin story and seems diminished in the sequel.
   • Winston Duke underwhelms again and is more than outmanned by all the women.
   • Florence Kasumba plays a lesbian, an aspect that is very important to a large swath of Disney employees, notwithstanding that it passes almost unnoticed in the movie.
   • Dominique Thorne terribly underwhelms as an MIT genius.
   • Martin Freeman reprises his role as a real man, not real as in macho, real as in no superpowers.
   • Julia Louis-Dreyfus is hissable as the director of the CIA, yet is much more unlikable than scary.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Good 3.0

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Barely OK 2.0

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    Wakanda Forever is completely chaste. No sexual energy, none, not hetero and surprisingly not sapphic.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Brutal 3.0

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.7

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Supernatural 4.0

24. Physical Supernatural 4.0