BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (BLACK PANTHER 2). Ryan Coogler, director, story; screenplay with Joe Robert Cole. Hannah Beachler, production design; Ruth E. Carter, costume design. USA: Marvel Studios / Walt Disney Pictures, 2022.[1] 161 minutes. For details of production and distribution companies, subscribers to IMDb-Pro should see the IMDb-Pro listing, as of November 2022 available on line here.[2]

IMDb-Pro "MOVIEmeter" for 14 November 2022 lists WAKANDA FOREVER at #1, with impressive box office and decent ratings by "civilian" reviewers (our term); Metacritic score as of 14Nov22 at 67/100 for "Generally favorable reviews based on 61 Critic Reviews" — i.e., professional critics.[3] So this is an important movie and good art, if arguably suffering a bit from three of the five "O"'s of blockbuster films: over-financed, overproduced, and overlong (it is not particularly overly loud or overblown).

See for many instances of people inside high tech devices ranging in size from individual diving suits and fighting suits[4] to substantial vehicles in water and air (for people tracking the traditional ancient elements in the West: there are also impressive shots of earth and fire). The encompassing of people in high-tech suits is contrasted — including in-frame — with opponents with only the lightest garments, usually swimming in water. There is also the voice of a well-behaved Wakandan AI (gendered male) and interesting Wakandan variations on the theme of hexagons.[5]

Wakanda has been the Earth's sole vibranium power — vibranium as a mineral allowing a technology of almost magical powers; but in PANTHER 2 we learn of the Mayan/Aztec (Atlantis)-descended undersea kingdom of Talokán, which has its own vibranium.[6] The emphases of the film are elsewhere — politics, family, historical atrocities — but the ubiquity of high-technology is important, given with the notable super-technoligies their African and Mesoamerican origins and provenance.

RDE, finishing, 14Nov22