Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

There’s a line from the original Black Panther film that seems to hang over its sequel, Wakanda Forever: King T’Challa sees his late father on the ancestral plane and admits tearfully, “I am not ready to be without you.” No one reprises the line in Wakanda Forever, though someone might as well have; the subtext of every scene (and, in many places, the literal text) is that no one is quite sure how to proceed in the absence of the late Chadwick Boseman, or even whether anyone should. In the course of processing the loss of his friend, director Ryan Coogler turns in an almost poetic elegy that manages nonetheless to close out Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with dynamite action and somber grace.

A year after the passing of King T’Challa, his mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) has been protecting the throne in his absence while her daughter Shuri (Letitia Wright) grieves in her laboratory. The world thinks Wakanda is weak, and several attempts to steal vibranium bring the underwater king Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) into conflict with the surface world. While Namor hopes for an allegiance with Wakanda, the African nation is not so sure that there can be peace.

 

It might have been easier to recast the role of T’Challa, carry on as though Wakanda hadn’t lost its king – and one has to imagine there was a corporate suit or two pushing for exactly that. But Coogler and crew have chosen the more difficult path, to make a film that confronts Boseman’s passing head on and to make the film into a kind of celebration of life. Each character feels T’Challa’s absence acutely, reacting multifariously to a world without him. In this way, the film reminds of the more tender scenes in The Rise of Skywalker, in which both audience and performers grappled with the loss of Carrie Fisher and the mournful directionlessness of grief. There’s a metafictional bent to sequences where you’re not sure whether the film is commenting on T’Challa, Boseman, or both, but it’s highly effective all around.

 

Wakanda Forever is emotionally weighty, but it’s also narratively dense, teeing up at least two Disney+ series as well as wherever Namor, sometimes-foe to the Fantastic Four, might turn up next. At two hours and forty-one minutes, there’s probably a joke to be made about Wakanda “Forever,” though I think the film might just as easily have been called “World of Wakanda” – in the sense of both the various factions within Wakanda and the reaction of the geopolitical world to the loss of T’Challa. If there’s anything to be cut, it’s the ties to the other projects: Martin Freeman reprises as Everett Ross, ahead of his turn on Secret Invasion; meanwhile, Dominique Thorne debuts as Riri “Ironheart” Williams, a spunky and precocious inventor who drives but never quite fits into the plot at large. Both are charming and affable presences, but they do more world-building than “World” building.

 

All of the performances in the film are exceptionally strong, almost certainly because of the powerfully true aspects of the story. Wright and Bassett are stellar as the royal family of Wakanda, but it’s a blessing to see Danai Gurira take center stage. Gurira had quietly stolen the show in the first Black Panther as General Okoye, a spirited and deadly warrior, and seeing her as arguably a co-lead is a terrific development. Huerta Mejía, however, is the latest Marvel “find” as Namor; he captures perfectly the character’s unique blend of romantic charm and arrogant swagger. What’s more, the film’s update on Namor, from Atlantean royalty to Mayan ex-pat, is roundly successful, especially in a dazzling sequence when Coogler takes the time to introduce us to his underwater kingdom, Talokan. (One wonders, though, what James Cameron makes of Wakanda Forever featuring blue-skinned ocean dwellers a full month before Avatar: The Way of Water.)

 

Wakanda Forever doesn’t appear that it’ll have the same seismic cultural impact as its predecessor, but then how could it? And isn’t that exactly the point? The film refers several times to a Wakandan mourning ritual, suggesting that the film itself is an extended period of grieving. Its solo mid-credits sequence isn’t a prologue to a new story, but it is the epilogue to this one, a hopeful moment that reminds us, as the Wakandans would say, “Death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping-off point.” And rather than being the end, Wakanda Forever is itself a kind of “stepping-off point” for its characters and for the World of Wakanda, an elegiac coda to what came before – but no less emotionally potent, particularly when the immortal salute “Wakanda forever!” is uttered at a climactic moment. It’s hard not to feel a thrill of excitement after going through the grieving process with this cast. Long live the king.

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is rated PG-13 for “sequences of strong violence, action and some language.” Directed by Ryan Coogler. Written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Martin Freeman, and Angela Bassett. 

Black Panther (2018)

At this point – a week after its release and eighteen films deep into the reliable Marvel Cinematic Universe – you probably don’t need me to tell you that Black Panther is great. I can’t say it’s the best superhero film ever, and indeed it’s hard to say if it’s the best film of Phase Three, which includes first-rate features like Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming. But I will go out on a limb and say that it’s the best first entry in a Marvel sub-franchise since Iron Man, doing the work of building out the larger franchise’s world, distinguishing itself as a story in its own right, and managing to entertain the dickens out of a diverse audience who are helping it to shatter records.

After the death of his father, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) assumes the mantle of King of Wakanda, a secretive nation in Africa guarding technological advances and a massive cache of vibranium, a rare indestructible metal. T’Challa also takes on the identity of his nation’s defender, the Black Panther, who is called to action when Erik Stevens – the Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) – and arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, upping the mania from Age of Ultron) steal a vibranium artifact from a London museum. All the while, T’Challa wrestles with his father’s legacy, wondering whether Wakanda should remain hidden from the world.

Marvel has not really made a bad movie since the inception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008. Your mileage may vary, as in the case of The Incredible Hulk and Thor: The Dark World (which I liked but have never felt compelled to rewatch), but by and large the MCU has been a case study in crowdpleasing. When introducing new characters to the universe, though, Marvel has struggled to break out of the mold set by Iron Man. With its scientific macguffin, Ant-Man is largely (no pun intended) “Tiny Iron Man”; when Doctor Strange has to set his ego aside to embrace a higher calling, it’s difficult not to see him as “Magic Iron Man.”

Black Panther is not, however, the story of a Tony Stark type who takes the throne and learns humility; it’s about a prince coming into his own, grappling with the weight of history and some very compelling arguments from his enemies. It might be Marvel’s most philosophical movie, and it’s certainly the most political (such is bound to happen when your protagonist is a king), but moreover it’s one of the more unique, giving audiences something we’ve truly never seen before in a superhero movie – a fully-realized alternate world which is entirely plausible and rousingly engaging. Wakanda is unlike anything in recent memory (though parts do feel as though it’s a pilot launch for a new Disney theme park, which I’d happily attend), and director Ryan Coogler is wise to give us Wakanda such as it is without the crutch of a point-of-view character; we’re dropped into the world, which displays a consistent internal logic without being overly explained. Even the film’s introductory history lesson, though expositional, gives weight to the film as we begin to wonder to whom the story was being told.

After seeing the film twice, I was glad to see that Black Panther really holds up, and that two different audiences had a consistent baseline of reactions to the film’s twists, punchlines, and triumphs. Black Panther contains a number of surprising reveals, each well-executed without the need for an explanatory pause. Perhaps the greatest surprise, though, is that the film’s ostensible villain, Killmonger, actually makes a lot of sense (surprising, I know, for a man whose name might as well be Murderman). “Where were you?” he asks of the isolationist Wakanda after recounting a litany of history’s horrors. Killmonger is a welcome relief from the generic world-conquerors Marvel has been known to give us, distinctive and fantastically performed by Jordan (proving that Marvel continues to be the rehabilitation clinic for former Human Torches). That he poses both a physical and philosophical challenge to T’Challa is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

Really, though, Black Panther is so full of good performances that it’s tough to single one out. Jordan has rightly gotten his fair share of critical accolades, and we knew from Civil War that Boseman had the kingly presence required for the Black Panther. As T’Challa’s sister Shuri, Letitia Wright steals her every scene; whether it’s playing Q to T’Challa’s 007 or testing out her sonic wrist cannons, with her infectious charm and rebellious streak, Wright is the next face to watch in the Marvel movies because she ought to be in every one of them going forward. (Can you imagine her bonding with Rocket Raccoon or Peter Parker?) I would say she steals nearly every scene because Winston Duke, as rival tribe leader M’Baku the Man-Ape, is an unexpected hoot, with an intimidating presence and a gregarious sense of humor to match. Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira are just two of the many badass women in T’Challa’s life and by his side, and it’s remarkably refreshing to see a film so full of women who are always working together, never devalued by the male protagonist or by each other. (And yes, the film passes the Bechdel test.)

Look, I could go on and on, running down the cast list and finding something to praise. There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, and there’s not a single sequence that wastes time in the film’s 130+-minute runtime. I had worried that Black Panther might feel like a holding pattern before May’s Infinity War (to which, we’re told, this whole universe has been building), but instead it feels heroically fresh, such that I’m almost more excited to hear about Black Panther II. It’s equally gratifying that, as Marvel approaches their ostensible endgame, they’re loosening the reins on their house style and letting some fresh voices like Taika Waititi, James Gunn, and Ryan Coogler do their thing in the Marvel sandbox. It gives one the idea that Infinity War might not be an ending but rather a beginning, a prismatic expansion point from which the Marvel Cinematic Universe can spread out, diversify, and challenge our ideas of what a superhero movie can be. Wakanda forever, indeed.

Black Panther is rated PG-13 for “prolonged sequences of action violence, and a brief rude gesture.” Directed by Ryan Coogler. Written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis.