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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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I actually have a Grand Unifying Theory of Modern Mary Sues, which comes down to two principles: 1) audiences don't want to be taken on the exact same journey twice, and 2) modern film executives are more likely to make a new entry with a female protagonist.
It is absolutely true that if you compare, say, the time it takes for Rey in Star Wars to reach certain milestones, she does better than either Luke or Anakin with far less training. However, I also think it is true that if the sequel trilogies had instead been a brand new franchise, the fast speed at which Rey learned force techniques wouldn't actually be much of an issue. So her first confirmation of the Jedi being real and not just stories happened today, and she mastered the Jedi Mind Trick in like an afternoon while chained up? That's not much of an issue if the sequels are all that exists. Maybe being a space wizard is really easy or something? And she beats Kylo Ren in a lightsaber fight with essentially no training? Well, he wanted to capture her not kill her, and he was heavily injured, yadda yadda.
I think Ironheart in this movie, as well as characters like Rey in Star Wars or Korra and Avatar, often have the real world background that audiences have already seen how high power scaling can go in the universe, and are eager to get back up there again. It happens with male protagonists as well. I believe Boruto has advanced faster in some regards than his dad Naruto, and Gohan reaches Super Saiyan as a child while his dad had to train his whole life to do it. It just happens in long-running franchises. Audiences don't want to wait 200 episodes for Boruto to naturally reach the same point as his dad.
Well he trained intensively with his dad, one of the few Super Saiyans in the universe, in the hyperbolic time chamber for the sole purpose of also reaching Super Saiyan status. He had also been alluded to have immense power deep inside when he was a child before his dad even went Super Saiyan. Goku on the other hand only really did goofy "training" with Master Roshi and Kami/Mister Popo, and only really made significant progress after training with King Kai and in the gravity chamber, which seemingly didn't take place over that much time, maybe a year, after which he transformed into a Super Saiyan with no guidance available. So I think Goku and Gohan, while they had slightly different arcs, are comparable and Gohan's transformation doesn't invalidate Goku's.
Goten and kid Trunks however are ridiculous with how quickly and effortlessly they managed it, but I think everyone agrees on that.
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This is a strange argument. You have taken the primary argument of Mary sue detractors (jamming an all powerful audience stand in into an established and popular franchise ruins both the popularity and the establishment of the franchise) and you are presenting it like a refutation.
Yeah there wouldn't be as much bitching if the ST was stand alone, but it's not stand alone! If it was just a random movie about space wizards no one would give a shit how the magic worked, but in star wars it works a particular way, specifically the star wars way, which established a requirement for training, which makes Rey's lack of training annoying jarring.
My idea isn't exactly a refutation of the concept of a Mary Sue - more like an explanation of why I think it happens. I think it also comes with the insight that this isn't a problem unique to female characters in established franchises. (I'm not convinced simple power creep is enough to explain Boruto and Gohan.)
I also think there might be some connection to the "5 minute courtship" problem some people see with old Disney movies. Virtually none of the old princess movies actually end with the couple getting married after short courtship periods - usually, there's a scene where the prince saves the princess, followed immediately by a scene where the couple gets married, but some unspecified amount of time probably passed between the two events. That's just not how audiences remember it, because we don't get to see a montage of all the time that passed.
I think the original Star Wars trilogy is affected by the same "offscreen action" effect. We don't see all of the time Luke spends training on screen (though we do see some of it), and by the third movie he's a fully fledged Jedi. Modern filmmakers trying to mirror his story arc, might be using the "onscreen" training time as their frame of reference instead of thinking about the story from an in-universe perspective. Doesn't mean they're not guilty of bad writing - I think it is just one of the many issues that can happen when fans get old enough to work on the franchises they love.
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In a brand new franchise, Rey would have the same problems, except she couldn't fly the Millennium Falcon because there would be no famous Millennium Falcon to impress the audience with piloting. The speed of on-screen learning isn't the same as the speed of in-character learning and it wouldn't be hard to have a couple of months of training in a new franchise.
Gohan has to do quite a bit of training, even on-screen training, before he becomes competent. Super-Saiyan comes earlier in the process, but that's power creep, which is a different sort of thing than what people are complaining about for Rey.
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