Long Live the King

Marvel Studios don’t really make movies so much as installments. Each new entry to their ever expanding stable of (increasingly disconnected) films feels like little more than a stepping stone towards more. The next sequel. The next phase. The next saga. There’s never a minute to rest. And even when there is a rare moment of quiet, that beat becomes just another opportunity for an incoming quip or a chance to tease the space with allusions to some eggy comic book lore (never forget Thor in the sauna). What a breathe of fresh air then Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is actually a real movie unto itself; an individual story about legacy and loss, complicated by real life grief and the guilt of carrying on.

A nihilistic reading of the behind-the-scenes situation following the death of T’Challa actor Chadwick Boseman – the sequel film was already well into pre-production with countless legally-binding contracts in place – could reduce the eventual release of this ill-fated sequel to the unyielding demands of commerce. But Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is not that movie. There’s nothing cynical here. In fact, director Ryan Coogler employs his time and resources as an opportunity to pay top-to-bottom tribute to his collaborator and friend while digging further into the heavy themes of imperialism and exploitation of the first film. It’s an almost-incomprehensible balancing act – one that’s kind of astonishing to see Coogler pull it off with such finesse. And yet, here we are.

That’s not to say that everything works within Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – and I have a not-insignificant list of gripes – but Coogler’s film remains nonetheless one of the best movies to come from the MCU and easily the best of this largely-disjointed Phase 4. There’s a level of focus and specificity to be found in this property that just doesn’t exist in other Marvel superhero franchises – from the striking costumes, to the unforgettable score, to the ideas of morality that Coogler genuinely grapples with. The man can do what few others have ever managed to do within the strict Marvel confines: create depth.

What sets the Black Panther story apart is Coogler’s marriage of the high-fantasy of Marvel and comic book to the tragedies of the real world. With Wakanda Forever, one tragedy informs the soul of this story: Chadwick Boseman’s death. In the MCU Universe, T’Challa’s death reverberates equally. His legacy hangs heavy over his kingdom, his family, and the world at large. Coogler decides to mimic Boseman’s sudden, unexpected succumbing to an illness in a narrative choice that just feels right, for the story and from an optical standpoint. In the power vacuum of his passing, world powers smell weakness and squeeze Wakanda for their most powerful resource: Vibranium.

Down their ancestral protector, the most advanced country on the planet finds themselves with few allies. Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) resists pressure to acquiesce to the will of others while trying to comfort her daughter Shuri (Letitia Wright), who blames herself for the loss of T’Challa. Brilliant scientist though she is, she was unable to save her brother, the man who mattered most to her. When world powers discover that Vibranium exists outside Wakanda and can be mined in the depths of the ocean, a powerful mutant, Namor (Tenoch Huerta), emerges to protect his resources and people. Lording over the secreted underwater Mayan-civilization of Talokan, the ageless Namor is a living reminder of the long arm of imperialism and looks to Wakanda for support.

Talokan is a mirror image of Wakanda – a hidden society with untold power, that’s long kept out of global affairs, with a justifiable distrust of other world powers. In a flashback to 16th century Mexico, Namor sees his people enslaved by Spanish invaders. His rage is understandable because of its specificity. Again, Coogler is drawing from actual events. Real life horrors. Namor is justified in his deeply-held belief that if given the chance, world powers would strip Talokan and Wakanda down for their parts, just as Killmonger was justified in believing that a powerful Black nation should be responsible for helping suffering Black people worldwide. Huerta proves an interesting foil for most of the film and brings a different kind of Marvel baddie to life.

Perhaps the weakest element of Wakanda Forever is the introduction of Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), aka “Iron Heart”, a Chicago-based teenaged genius who’s scraped together a machine that can locate Vibranium. She’s also constructed her own Iron Man suit. There’s something that feels regressive and redundant here – recycling Tony Stark ultra-mega-genius traits and his super-suit abilities for the purposes of a new character just doesn’t have much impact, and Thorne fails to imbue Riri Williams with enough intrigue to invest in her. Regardless, you can anticipate her solo Disney+ run in late 2023.

So too does Wakanda Forever lose a little bit of its luster when it deems to slap other characters in super-suits and smash them together. Part of what makes this particular corner of the MCU feel so unique and special is that it doesn’t have to do the same algorithmic old dog and pony show. That it actually gets to wrestle with ideas about grief and the abuses of global actors. Perhaps it’s nit-picky to complain then that some of the blockbusting spectacle is nauseatingly comic-booky when there’s so much else that’s here so unequivocally, thematically rich.

CONCLUSION: Chadwick Boseman’s unexpected passing informs the heart and soul of ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’, a richly-textured, thematically-layered follow-up to one of Marvel’s biggest and best. The production elements shine and the writer-director Ryan Coogler finds a way to move the story forward while paying genuine tribute to his friend and collaborator. The best of Phase 4.