I did not forget about my blog, I swear, I just took a week to focus on my writing! (I wrote 100k in two weeks, may I remind you all haha). Anyway, I went to the cinema for one of the first times since masks are no longer required in order to watch Wakanda Forever, so of course I had to write a review about it! SPOILER REVIEW: This review contains spoilers for Wakanda Forever (duh), Spider-Man: No Way Home, and minor spoilers for She-Hulk. Overall thoughts I would like to premise this by saying that my expectations were pretty high from the videos and reactions I have seen on social media. In relation to those expectations, I was let down. That is not to say that I don’t think it was a bad movie. Far from it. It was good. Just not great. Storywise I absolutely loved the time they gave to tackle grief and death, and I would have loved to just have the movie explore that even more and remain more lowkey with the plot. They didn’t have to go the usual Marvel route. They could have explored the character dynamics in the aftermath of Black Panther’s death. Instead, they went back to just... fighting. The emotional aspects of the movie were overwhelmed by the typical Marvel scenario of good versus bad guy, where at the end the main character makes the right decision and everything is fine and well at the end, even with great loss. For example, Ramonda’s death was extremely reminiscent of Aunt May’s death in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and it followed a similar formula. It would seem that Marvel writers are currently big fans of having younger characters grieve parental figures and basically lose their whole family. Fun film for the whole family, am I right? Truth be told, though, I actually prefer those darker aspects of the films to your usual action and fighting sequences. Sadly, Wakanda Forever had plenty of those. I supposed it’s just the tropes that come over and over again in Marvel films that are beginning to grind my gears. Again, that’s only a personal thing. If you’re going to see a Marvel film, and this type of formula is what you’re expecting to see, then it’s perfect. I personally enjoy it when films and series try to break the formula, which for example She-Hulk kind of did. I am not really a Marvel fan, so seeing a film that follows that Marvel story-telling action arc just doesn’t really cling to me. It’s all about expectations after all. Speaking of which, before seeing the movie, I saw tiktoks praising that one scene where Shuri discovers the underwater world. And I’m sorry, but I just found it underwhelming. See what I did there? A little play on words. Basically, the videos I saw made it seem like a life-changing scene. Everyone seemed to be in awe by the underwater world. I’m sorry, but it just didn’t do it for me. Maybe I have something against underwater worlds. I don't know. Avatar 1.5?Speaking of underwater worlds, I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t take the water people too seriously. The fact that the actors were just painted blue, and did not have differing biological aspects to overground humans only added to that lack of realism that made it difficult to take it all seriously. I know, I know, I have been told that there are many things in Marvel movies that shouldn't be taken seriously. By all means, I had a blast watching Thor: Love and Thunder. But Love and Thunder, while also being a drama, relied heavily on the fact that it was also a comedy. Meaning it was easier to just go along with stupid ideas that made little to no sense. But Wakanda Forever, while it did have some snappy dialogue (though I can only guess at that, I watched it dubbed in French, ew, I know), was anything but a comedy. I went in to take it seriously and I guess the character design choices made that a bit more difficult to do so. I don't even want to get started on the suit Shuri made, the one that looks like a mix between an alien and a fish. I will give props, however, to Shuri's black panther suit. That was immaculate. The acting, as usual, was amazing, and so were the characters. It was really cool to see their progression and follow Shuri's arc. But while I loved all the things they explored with Shuri’s character, to be really honest, I didn’t really understand why she even said, in the beginning, that she wanted to burn the world. It was difficult to grasp and understand her motivation for wanting to destroy the world. However, all in all, it was great to see most of the amazing characters from the first film again, especially Killmonger. His scene was awesome. I don't have any other words. Last but not least, I stand by the same comment I had about the first movie: they could have done away with Martin Freeman’s character. Especially in this film, he has never felt more useless. I'm sorry Martin but it's true. The story could have worked just as easily without that character. In regard to the 'villains' of the film, well... I can’t believe they actually decided to have blue underwater people in this film. Did they want to rub it in to James Cameron? How unlucky must the people behind Avatar 2 be to have moved up the release year after year after year, finally to actually have a release date set only a few weeks after a film with blue people in water?! What kind of luck is that? And how funny would it be if this film was better than Avatar 2? The irony... And (even more hilarious), what if the CGI is better than Avatar 2? Because the effects were, at last, budget worthy. After having sat through the horror that was the first Black Panther film’s CGI, it was well about time that we got to see Wakanda in all its glory with real high quality CGI. And I have absolutely nothing to say about it. It was great. There was not one crucial moment where I felt like, oof they used CGI there. I can only imagine that it must have been difficult to film all the underwater scenes and still make it look so good. Kudos to the effects teams. I'm glad we finally got a Black Panther film with good CGI. Of camera close-ups and fadesSimilar to the first film, the cinematography was amazing with some nice shots. There were really moments were I was like wow, that's such a satisfying composition. However, as somewhat of a video editor myself, some of the fades between shots were... questionable. That is to say, for some reason, they thought it would be a good idea to have fades between shots last awfully long. Which was not the best choice. For example, during a scene towards the start, after Namor makes the helicopter crash, we see his silhouette float in the darkness. Then the scene fades to an aerial shoot of hills of trees in the sunlight. The fade is so slow that initially I thought he was floating over the trees. Then I thought there was a problem with my eyes. Finally, it fully faded and I just realized that it was an excruciatingly long fade. As an editor, I feel like the goal, as an editor, when you have to cut one scene to the next, is to make shifts seem as smooth as possible, to make the audience not even consciously note 'okay, we’re changing scenes now, there was a cut'. But these fades just made me think so much of the editing aspect of it that it took me out of the movie. The big fight at the end was also… I don’t know. There were some epic moments in there, especially with the use of slow motion. However, I feel like they also suffered from the Hunger Games problem, in which, during a fight, the camera is shaking and we only get really big close-ups and can no longer tell what is happening and where. Action scenes are best understood when we are able to understand where everything is and when, and those close-ups made it impossible. That’s what I liked about the chase scene earlier in the film: we got a more oversight of the whole action sequence. Still, there were really good moments in the battle scene, especially when the Wakandans simultaneously jump over the side of the ship. That shot was just *chef's kiss*. The MusicRegarding the music, I have absolutely nothing to say. It was amazing. The songs as well as the original soundtrack, were amazing. The OST even, at times, gave me shivers. I think I even found the specific song that did it for me. The music with the scene that accompanied it was indescribable. Beautiful. The music was immersive, with such satisfying beats and melodies. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about it. TL;DRAll in all, I’d say I prefer the first film to this one storywise. While CGI was leagues better, and the characters and acting was top, the plot just wasn’t as impactful as in the first movie. final rating: 3.5/5
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Hello everyone, hope you are all having a great first week of November! For those of you doing NaNoWriMo, I hope that’s going well!
For my part, I have managed to shock even myself with how much I have been writing each day. Then again, I completely acknowledge the fact that since I am on a gap year, I have neither studies nor job taking time away: I can focus on writing all day long. And I do. Sadly. I have the privilege this year of being on a NaNo discord group and it has been a lot fun exchanging with other writers. The best thing about discord though, as a writer, I must say, is the sprinting bot, which I’ve talked about in the past. It has helped me reach even beyond my goals these last few days. That’s probably also my fault. See, I am so competitive that anytime I join a sprint I will go hardcore mode and write like there’s no tomorrow. I’ll reach 60 words per minute and even 70 words per minute. That’s over a word per second! Wow! As such, I’ve ended up writing 46,000 words in six days for multiple projects. Which is actually insane. I didn’t know I could write like 12,000 words in a day. I still can’t believe it, really. What’s next, writing a book in a day?
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