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Notes -
I want to talk about some of the failures of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
First, let me say that I thought they handled the death of their main actor about as respectfully and deftly as any blockbuster movie made by Disney could be expected to. The emotional through line of grief and dealing with the death of a loved one rang true, and I found myself tearing up a bit towards the end.
However, I feel like this movie is very messy and a lot of it comes from their unwillingness to be as daring politically or aesthetically as the original Black Panther.
My biggest complaints circle around Talokan and Namor.
Whatever else one might say about the concept of Wakanda, the idea of asking what Africa would look like without colonization, and the imagination behind its Afro-futurism is interesting and compelling. On top of that, the political questions at the core of the first movie, while not Citizen Cane, are fundamentally interesting: What responsibility do the powerful have to those weaker than them? Is a gradualist or revolutionary approach to change better? Isolation or conquest? Isolation or outreach?
It is also helped along by the fact that Killmonger managed to be a villain with a point - as a descendant of royalty and African slaves, a Wakandan who has seen the plight of African Americans and come away with a more revolutionary Black nationalist mindset as a result. He manages to be grounded up until the point they decide to make him just enough of an asshole to justify stopping him for trying to change things the wrong way.
But all of this falls apart with Namor. He is old enough to have personally been oppressed by Spanish colonists 400 years ago, and he even attacked a Spanish hacienda while burying his mother. He says he will "never forget what he saw." And yet... he just sort of let the rest of Spanish colonization and Mesoamerican history play or more or less the way it did in our world after that? He saw the rise and fall of Fascism and Communism in the 20th century, and he didn't lift a finger, but as soon as the surface world is on the brink of discovering Talokan, it suddenly becomes imperative to preemptively conquer the surface, since the system of White European dominance that American hegemony is the latest instance of would be all too happy to use neo-colonial policies against these two new superpowers.
However, the passage of 400 years really makes Namor feel way less justified in his crusade. Killmonger personally experienced life as a poor black kid in contemporary America, and learned the broader context of his suffering and the oppression of his people. Meanwhile, Talokan has been isolationist for the last 400 years and clearly hasn't bothered to stop oppression anywhere else. (He says his enemies call him "Namor", but who are his enemies? Aside from burning one Spanish plantation to the ground 400 years ago, what did he do for the Mayan people since then?) The passage of time has also made things more complicated. Namor would be most justified if his crusade was against the Spanish - but of course they haven't been a world power for a long time, so instead the movie uses America and, strangely, France as its two examples of White European colonizers in the modern world. (I suspect they wanted to do more with the Haiti-France connection in the original script, but it got cut for being too spicy.)
But in Namor's conversations with Shuri, he talks about how "you know how they treat people like us", and I have to ask whether the movie actually manages to say anything about race relations or the history of colonialism at all, rather than lazily referencing it. Like, sure small pox and Spanish conquista was horrible for many of the natives, and it sucks that Namor's tribe had to go through that, but none of that would really justify attacking the countries today, the people alive today. The time to act would have been 400 years ago, and it seems like the Talokanian people had the power and ability to fight back against the Spanish, and they did nothing really substantive to do so. They gave up after one plantation.
As an aside, I think it is simple realpolitik that America and every other halfway competent nation would be trying to get their hands on vibranium in the MCU. I don't actually think the hints of neocolonial critique really get off the ground here. MCU America doesn't want vibranium because Wakanda is a black nation, and wouldn't want it because Talokan is a Mayan nation. They want it because there are aliens and demons and gods in the MCU, and vibranium is one of the better tools for fighting back against them. As well as being responsible for miraculous advancements in medical and other technologies.
Overall, this just seems like another instance of Marvel not doing a great job with Hispanic countries and cultures, even as I tend to be fairly impressed with how they handle the African American experience. For a good example of the former, look at the Eternals. What exactly makes Druig stop his mind control scheme to bring peace between the Indians and the Spanish at a single city? Why didn't he do that to all the Spanish? For an example of the latter, see The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
I found it pretty hard to suspend my disbelief for the movie, which made it feel really empty to me. Particularly disbelievable:
Like you said, a 400-year-old man who, as far as we know, has been very passive and lived under-the-radar suddenly decides that he needs to preemptively conquer the world even though there doesn't seem to be a tangible threat to him or his people. I usually expect centuries-old elders in fantasy fiction to have a more cool and level-headed approach to these sorts of things, considering they have so much experience and have seen empires come and go etc.
Given the many similarities between Wakanda and Talokan it also seemed like there was significant opportunity for diplomatic cooperation between the two of them, why dive into negotiations with a heavy-handed threat of war?
Namor seemed to want to both have Talokan remain a hidden isolated nation and initiate global war for conquest and/or deterrence; these goals seem at odds with each other and made it hard to understand his motives.
The power balancing seemed off in the movie. Wakanda has always been known as a highly advanced global superpower with defence systems and technology sufficient to take on Thanos' armies. Why is it that the Talokans seemed capable of just swimming right into their capital city and waterbombing the hell out of it, even prior to Namor joining in? The projectiles they were firing at Namor didn't even seem to have any homing capabilities considering he wasn't particularly fast at dodging.
The University girl wannabe iron man. Made a vibranium detector, something that literally every global superpower is trying to do, just for fun as a school project because her professor said she couldn't, in a car workshop, with (presumably) no vibranium in her possession to test and build it on, and probably little known research on the topic available for reference? Bullshit. Huge Mary Sue vibes. Built an iron man suit arguably better than the Mark I yet apparently is busy with schoolwork and needs to rush off to her Differential Equations class? Also bullshit; I could maybe believe she's some sort of prodigy but why would she bother wasting her time with trivial math classes in university then? Her just walking into the Wakandan workshop and making something comparable to iron man Mark III in the span of seemingly days is also ridiculous.
Whatever happened to the Talokans being seemingly immortal? On the bridge Shuri's bodyguard stabs several of them in the chest and they fall over dead, then they get up and walk it off. Later on a Talokan dies after a single gunshot.
Namor specifically said that he hadn't been passive, he had been preparing his people for war for centuries. The Vibranium detector - or, more specifically, T'Challa's decision to reveal it - revealed to Namor that their isolation was ending so it was now time to strike.
Also: Namor is supposed to be an asshole. He's been seen as a living god by his people for centuries and his formative experiences with humans were highly negative. He has less incentive to change than most "elders".
That's cause M'Baku was right: if you pay the danegeld you don't get rid of the Dane. Namor was never going to leave after getting what he wanted, he would just demand more. He explicitly tells Shuri that he knows killing the scientist won't permanently solve his problem.
Namor was testing the waters: if he can convince Wakanda to help him kill the scientist (essentially making them complicit in his act of war), he knows he can then pressure them for more long-range stuff. And, of course, if they get caught they're already at war with the US. Which is what happened.
As for why his opinion seemed to change: the obvious answer is that he had Shuri in his custody which a) gave him more leverage and b) a chance to convince her directly.
Which they lost. When they absolutely shouldn't have. Putting aside the outside-context tech Thanos brought (the massive drills), I honestly think the US Army would have done a better job because they have things like...artillery and rapid fire weapons. But the Wakandans were overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
If anything "Wakanda is technologically strong but has a very outdated military doctrine and very small numbers of people" is the best rationalization of the disconnect between what we're told and what they see.
Which would tie in nicely with this film...If they actually gave the Talokans the numbers Namor bragged about. I know they couldn't be there for the final battle but maybe an establishing shot would have helped here.
Ah, I must have missed that. Maybe it just didn't really materialize in my head because they didn't really show it; like you said, we only hear Namor brag about his numbers, there's never more than maybe 50 Talokans on screen at any given point in time except in Taloka itself, but that seemed like a peaceful and pleasant city so didn't really strike me as "preparing for centuries for war".
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