Despite being the thirtieth film in the increasingly dense and repetitive Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the much-anticipated sequel to the landmark 2018 feature, does not begin like traditional superhero fare. A distraught Shuri (portrayed with searing pathos by Letitia Wright), sister to King T’Challa (the late, great and dearly missed Chadwick Boseman), the titular Black Panther and leader of advanced African kingdom Wakanda, implores the ancestors to save her aggressively ailing brother as her scientific ploys prove ineffective.
The guttingly frantic camera tracks her as she hastens in her laboratory to recreate a mythical herb to rid T’Challa of his fatal disease, only for him to succumb to it offscreen. A funeral and procession ensue shortly after, narratively for T’Challa but also for Boseman himself, with the solemn Shuri and Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) clad in white garments as they march through the mournful streets of their illustrious nation to his final resting place; they fix their eyes forward as ritual dancers jubilantly celebrate their fallen king, but their devastation as they look back at this tragic loss is nothing but palpable. Cut to the opening Marvel logo, the traditional bombast of its anthem now replaced with a deafening silence.
This wrenching prologue, albeit it was clearly from a reshuffling of the sequel’s original script after Boseman’s untimely death in 2020, echoes what made the original film so vital. Director Ryan Coogler’s culturally rich, textural and operatic outing over four years ago was a revolutionary exercise in Afrofuturism as it depicted an almost utopian kingdom reckoning with thorny world history to ensure a more fruitful future for its people and those it is intrinsically connected to. Boseman was essential in these ethos, inextricable from a singularly graceful film that artfully elevated superhero cinema, and Coogler’s epic- if occasionally overstuffed- sequel burrows into the granules of that challenging reflection of the past and imperative forging of the future as grief looms large over the film.
“They have lost their protector,” a ferociously sorrowful Ramonda (reinforced throughout with Bassett’s towering gravitas) retorts to the members of the United Nations as they try to coax the rare and valuable metal vibranium from the grieving kingdom; an electrifying battle sequence with the Dora Milaje, led by the fierce yet compassionate Okoye (an incandescent Danai Gurira), defending a repository intercuts this scene to convey those who try to take it by force.
How can a nation on the forefront of innovation and prosperity continue without its leader, a man who represented its monumental virtues to spiritual proportions but also passed from an earthbound illness? Wakanda was always supposed to have its Black Panther, just like we were Boseman. Shuri grapples with this seismic and arbitrary shift in her and her people’s perceived narrative, the act of constructed legend being compromised by mortality itself, keenly evocative of how personal loss transforms one’s perspective. For all the sprawling theatrics, Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole always underpin it with a stirring sense of humanity, retaining the emotional grandeur of their predecessor even when the plotting becomes scattershot. The scope has been ratcheted up with even more rip-roaring, if not entirely memorable, action sequences, but the fervent artistic voice remains thrillingly intact.
Both films compellingly assimilate intimate stories into broader and similarly nuanced observations into geo-politics, and the grief thread is astutely woven into a larger narrative tapestry with the rise of a new world power that threatens Wakanda. Congruent with Killmonger, the formidable submariner Namor (a commanding Tenoch Huerta), ostracized to the sea by oppressive colonizers centuries ago, is the movie’s primary antagonist with biting real-world motivations, and he takes radical measures to protect the status of his once-dormant kingdom Talokan, an underwater civilization of indigenous central Americans also abundant in vibranium, after he blames Wakanda for a global power struggle for the metal and implicating his nation.
A riveting juxtaposition comes into fruition as the film challenges the nature of self-prescribed mythos and how they inherently inhibit evolution and enable conflict. A suffocating world hierarchy fueled by colonialism and imperialism dictates that countries uphold their dominance or face marginalization, to exert their will and perspectives over others: Wakanda is wary of this (that’s what makes them so noble), and the bruising irony of them being pitted against Talokan is notwithstanding. Both nations have guiding and valid principles born out of their circumstances, yet only one can prevail in a fraught landscape.
Grief has a similar cancerous effect, though internalized by individual: In adversity, we cling so deeply to our fractured narratives that it often results in self-destruction and stasis. This ultimately is a movie about people left without their core meaning- their main character in T’Challa- struggling to move forward, and as the film’s new lead, Shuri has a gripping arc that captures inertia, rage and acceptance so sensitively. It is crucial to find the beauty that exists in pain, scintillating hope in bouts of utter darkness, and despite the routine grandness of the traditional third-act climatic battle, it all culminates in an aching act of fundamental humanity between two people, discovering dignifying and unifying poetic details that transcend the turmoil of the world.
For a series whose key event was a big galactic purple man snapping half the universe’s life out of existence, the Black Panther corner continues to bear more grounded and sophisticated storytelling in the MCU, despite straining under some of the franchise’s more uninspired elements this go around. It’s hard to say it meanders since all Coogler is capable of doing is making movies that pulse with meaning and purpose, but the structure here is more cluttered and less cohesive than that of its airtight predecessor. Though the character and Dominique Thorne’s performance are dazzling, the introduction of Riri Williams (a genius MIT student poised to be Iron Man’s successor who also serves as a plot device in the movie) skews as more contrived, studio-mandated seed planting, with her Disney+ show Ironheart set to debut in 2023. The return of CIA agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) fares far worse, his presence and interactions with (yet another) worldbuilding-driven character registering as blatantly bloated.
These extraneous elements are particularly apparent when Coogler opts for a more pensive pace than the propulsive 2018 film, but when Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is allowed to be lush and lyrical without those restraints, it truly is transcendent. Striking and melancholic images- the camera circling around Shuri and Ramonda as they tenderly embrace against the backdrop of the majestic Wakandan sun, Nakia (a poignant Lupita Nyong’o) wistfully gazing toward an ocean-bound horizon from a beach, an infant Namor being caressed by his mother underwater, the brutal blows from Talokanian assailants reverberating off a lonesome Okoye’s spear- soothe the movie into a rhapsodic emotional rhythm as the characters must tread onward toward healing instead of tethering themselves to tragedy that has already occurred. It’s exhilarating to have a Marvel movie look and resonate like, you know, an actual movie and not an empty product off a conveyor belt, and the tactile costumes, production design and cinematography greatly amplify this, even with an occasional overreliance on inconsistent visual effects.
Despite being undermined by the franchise’s most superficial tendencies, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is clearly a labor of love that runs bone-deep, a gushingly tender and introspective tale of the past’s anguish and the future’s possibilities that urgently converge in the present. Growth is the only evidence of life, and that bittersweet immediacy pulsates throughout, not only through the thoughtful craft but also as these people cathartically learn to navigate an unforeseen hurdle in their thriving path. No one said it would be easy, but it’s their resilience in the face of difficult truths that always prevails, binding their people toward prosperity through both triumph and hardship. Wakanda Forever, indeed.
Grade: B+
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now available in theaters.
Photo Credit / Marvel Studios
