Given that Marvel films are predicated on their star power, Ryan Coogler had a tough proposition on his hands in forging onward with the Black Panther series. After Chadwick Boseman tragically lost his extremely private fight with cancer in 2020, Michael B. Jordan’s character, the other main focal point of the 2018-released first installment (and if we’re being truthful, its real source of charisma), was offed and Daniel Kaluuya had scheduling conflicts, Coogler was left with a void that he could have filled a number of different ways. If not wisecrack-slinging famous people, the other primary attraction of 21st-century superhero films is murky CGI imagery, so it brings me great relief to share that Coogler opted not to lean further in that direction, instead using this unique predicament to create a sequel that prizes the human element and also attempts to seriously contend with grief in the wake of sudden death.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever not only emphasizes human beings in its fantastical yarn of fish people and technological wizardry, it puts women at the forefront rather than recasting its titular hero as some other dude, drawing on the talents of the supporting cast that was present but somewhat kept in the background on the first outing. Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira and Angela Bassett all turn in excellent work in their recurring roles as veritable badasses, while series newcomers Dominique Thorne and Michaela Coel also deliver fine performances.
Wright’s Shuri is essentially the protagonist of this sequel, reckoning with her brother’s death—which the film attributes to a rare disease—alongside her mother, Ramonda (Bassett), with the two also overseeing their home nation’s status as a newly public world power. When the exclusivity of their stash of the ultra-valuable chemical Vibranium is called into question and its pursuit results in a number of American fatalities, Wakanda attracts scrutiny from several angles and Shuri, Ramonda and their top general, Okoye (Gurira) are forced to batten down the hatches and defend their turf.
The movie’s bookending depictions of its characters mourning the loss of T’Challa are particularly affecting. Coogler stages the funeral procession at the beginning of the film with eye-catching visuals but also a stylistic spareness — the sound design isn’t overpowering (as it can be in other places in the movie), just some haunted acoustic guitar picking as the Wakandans march through the streets and bury their deceased leader. Then, in a particularly deft and underplayed move, Coogler finally gives us the Marvel logo reveal about 10 minutes or so in, refracting images of Boseman’s beaming visage across it as only the howl of the wind trails across the soundtrack. And the ending of the film (no spoilers here) reminds us of the inherent power of weaving Boseman’s real-life passing into this story without feeling at all like Coogler is milking the incident or being exploitative.
Wakanda Forever doesn’t pose the conflicts that arise from its villain’s motivation to watch the world burn quite as provocatively as the original film did, with Killmonger’s challenge to isolationism. But one is still grateful for the sensitive, substantive framing here of undersea-dwelling Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) as an indigenous person pushing back against the colonial oppression that has continually violated his family lineage. Namor’s people, who have gills, blue skin and flourish underwater, may be too reminiscent of Avatar’s Na’vi both aesthetically and in their metaphorical function, but Coogler and his actors are still able to effectively convey this subplot.
Coogler’s vision of Wakanda this time around feels more fully fleshed-out, with the film often playing like the portrait of a community rather than an action movie. When it does break into combat scenes, it’s clear Coogler has upped his game a bit since the preceding entry, though these sequences still don’t match up to the brilliance and gripping dynamism with which he shot the magnificent fights in Creed. On an ideological level, the way the culminating battles here are resolved is refreshing and progressive compared to other films of this ilk; I’d be surprised if much of any of Coogler and Joe Robert Cole’s screenplay is adapted from actual comic books.
Black Panther, for all its stirring Afrofuturist concepts, never quite made its central metropolis come alive, but Wakanda Forever, through costuming and simply duration (it runs a whopping 161 minutes), wills its eponymous hub into tangibility. Perhaps this is also because the elements — water, fire, air — are given primacy in the latest film, grounding this mostly computer-generated space (its filming locations are, as is typical for Marvel, parking lots in and around Atlanta) in something more graspable. In fact, the tension between the real and the artificial, particularly as it relates to AI, is an animating force within the text of Wakanda Forever, with Ramonda predicting that automated technology and robots will be the downfall of the human race. Just be grateful that Coogler and company didn’t attempt to use that uncanny valley technology that Star Wars and other properties have employed to resurrect Boseman’s image. Instead, they made about as lovely a tribute to their lost star as they could while amplifying new voices along the way.
Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures
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