Wakanda Forever mourns and moves forward, in spectacular fashion.
The big, ambitious, and at times unwieldy movie holds its shape with grief.
The Short Take:
Wakanda Forever is miraculous. It’s not perfect, but it is miraculous. The best farewell to an actor I’ve seen — pure grief transmuted into cinema. All the while, it introduces vibrant new characters and a new world. At times that may be too much, but the emotional core of the film is strong enough to hold it all together.
Image Credit: Slash Film
[The beginning of this review will be SPOILER-FREE in case you haven’t seen the film yet. I will later announce when I’m switching to spoiler mode for a deeper analysis.]
The Long Take:
Wakanda Forever is an emotionally draining, cathartic experience. I cried at least three times. And that’s because they got it right.
In its making, this film faced what seemed like an unsurmountable uphill battle. In 2018, Black Panther became a global phenomenon as the highest-grossing solo superhero film at the time. Even now, it is the sixth highest-grossing overall superhero film. It won three Academy Awards after seven nominations, including one for Best Picture. It immediately became — and still is — one of my favorite MCU films. I’ve never done a comprehensive ranking of all MCU films, but Black Panther would likely be in my top 3. Under normal circumstances, it would be a tough act to follow.
Then, two years later, on August 28, 2020, the star of Black Panther, Oscar-nominee Chadwick Boseman, lost his battle with colon cancer at the age of 43. Very few people, including the film’s director, Ryan Coogler, seemed to know about Boseman’s illness, making his tragic, premature death even more shocking. Coogler, his cast, and crew, now had to grieve the loss of their friend while also trying to figure out how to pivot the story they had only just begun to tell about T’Challa as Black Panther. How would they move forward? How could they?
Coogler, in an official podcast interview with acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates, says that his job as a director is to make sure everyone believes in what they’re doing during a film’s production. And to achieve that, the story has to feel true. For him, making a sequel to Black Panther that did not grieve for Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa didn’t feel right. Recasting him was out of the question; a new actor, no matter how good they were, would never be able to replace him. It would make the story hollow and phony. But, more importantly, the story had to allow everyone involved in the production to work out their own grief. This was 100% the right call. The emotional authenticity Coogler has refused to compromise allows this film to not only work as a sequel and as an MCU film, but to achieve storytelling greatness.
In dealing with Chadwick Boseman’s loss head on, the film never missteps. Plenty of productions have had to reckon with the unexpected death of an actor, and usually the creators either pretend nothing has happened with a recast, reconfigure the story slightly to acknowledge the death as an off-screen sidebar, or have tried to carry on with the story with either body doubles, CGI, or unused footage. The most recent film I can recall to do this was The Rise of Skywalker, which repurposed cut scenes that the late Carrie Fisher had already filmed for the previous Sequel Trilogy films. J.J. Abrams does have General Leia die in the film, but not before suturing together scenes that first and foremost served the film’s plot. While seeing the other characters react to Leia’s death was heartbreaking, it felt fairly incidental to the larger story. Coogler, on the other hand, makes Chadwick Boseman’s death the central storyline.
Image Credit: Entertainment Weekly
T’Challa, the Black Panther and King of Wakanda, dies of an unnamed illness at the start of the film. This gives the rest of the world the (false) impression that Wakanda is vulnerable without its protector, and desperate grabs for vibranium follow. Queen Ramonda (played by the elegantly fierce Angela Bassett) holds her country together while also trying to help her daughter, Princess Shuri (played by the witty and spirited Letitia Wright), confront her anger and grief. Meanwhile, an American expedition uses technology invented by MIT student, Riri Williams (known as Ironheart in the comics), to discover vibranium at the bottom of the ocean, incurring the wrath of another hidden, thriving nation, Talokan. Their charismatic, super-powered leader, Namor, gives Ramonda and Shuri an ultimatum that leaves them on the brink of war.
If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. And I just gave you the spoiler-free version of the plot, which means this isn’t even the half of what happens in the 2 hour 41-minute film. Wakanda Forever is big and ambitious. It tries to do a lot because it HAS to do a lot. It has to say goodbye to a star snuffed out too soon, and it has to follow the unprecedented success of its predecessor and maintain continuity with it. It also has to contribute to the ongoing storytelling of the MCU, introducing new characters who will become more prominent or important later on. It has to end Phase 4 with a bang. On top of all that, the film voluntarily introduces and adapts a whole new antagonist from the comics, Namor; this includes telling his origin story, and building out a whole new world and culture along with him. It also fast tracks the introduction of a brand new hero, Riri Williams, presumably to warm us up for her Disney+ series slated for late 2023.
Somehow, Wakanda Forever does all this cogently. Such a lengthy checklist, in any less capable hands than Coogler’s, would have buckled under the weight of its own expectations. But Coogler deftly weaves a grounded, emotional arc about a family dealing with loss into a geopolitical conflict that calls out a global history of colonialism and contemplates how to best protect not only precious resources but a people, a culture, and a way of life that you cherish. It tells this story with gorgeous visuals — some of the best the MCU has ever seen. The camerawork is epic yet intimate. We get so many shots of unnamed “average” people. Living and dying. Celebrating and mourning.
Image Credit: NYT
It is, however, a lot of movie. There are critics who did not appreciate this at all, and at best pay their respects to the Chadwick Boseman/T’Challa tributes before blasting the film for its bloat, its busy plot, or the reliance on high-tech suits to solve all of its problems in typical MCU fashion. I do not agree with these criticisms because I think the emotional nucleus of the film — which I’ll discuss more in the spoiler section — is strong enough, like Queen Ramonda, to hold it together and stand its ground. But there were moments when I questioned if a certain added character or storyline was too much, or if it was necessary. I wonder if this film, which was great, would have been transcendently flawless and groundbreaking were it more streamlined and focused, letting the emotional arc shine on its own as opposed to providing the glue for all the other narrative branches.
Before I switch over to the spoiler-y discussion in a moment, I will say that if you weren’t already planning to see this film, it is well worth your time if you were a fan of Black Panther. Returning to Wakanda, seeing the Dora Milaje fight with such precision and swagger, watching Shuri wield the power of science and technology, and the rich world building — so many of the aspects of the original film that made me fall in love with Wakanda and the Black Panther mythos are back in full force. I suspect many will also love the new mythology that accompanies Namor, or K’uk’ulkan, the Feather Serpent God. I was totally engrossed by Namor, Talokan, and its people. I have no idea which MCU phase it would fit into, but I would 100% go see a standalone film focusing on them.
Image Credit: Variety
The majority female cast carries this film, however. Angela Bassett as Ramonda, Letitia Wright as Shuri, Danai Gurira as Okoye, and Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia — they’re the ones who step up in the wake of Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa’s absence. Bassett has more than one Earth-shattering monologue; she’s got that perfect mix of toughness and vulnerability that made me want a whole other movie just about her. And Gurira deepens her character, giving us a lot more heart behind the stoic exterior (there’s plenty of that too, though, and it’s as hilarious as it was in the first film). All of their performances, even in scenes that only last a few minutes, shook me to my core. Through them, I too was able to process such a massive loss and move forward with the Black Panther story.
[SPOILER WARNING. If you have not seen the film yet, do not continue! I’d love to have you back for a more in-depth discussion after you’ve seen it.]
Image Credit: CBR
To continue with my earlier discussion about how the film handled Boseman’s’ death, I go to something Lord M’Baku, ruler of the Jabari tribe, says to Shuri: “Too many things have been taken away from you for you to be called a child.” As an aside, I am here for M’Baku all day every day. I thoroughly enjoyed actor Duke Winston in the original film, and I’m glad they decided to give him even more to do here. He has some of the funniest lines, but also steps in as a friend and advisor to Shuri because T’Challa had asked him to. His wise and supportive statement to Shuri stuck out to me as being about the film itself as well. It no longer had the luxury of being a normal comic book movie sequel. It had lost that innocence, that simplicity of existence when Chadwick Boseman died.
When such tragic, unusual circumstances dictate the narrative, however, storytelling choices may feel contrived. At no point did I feel that way here. For example, when Shuri takes her synthesized heart-shaped herb and goes to the ancestral plane, I immediately thought, oh, wait, how are they going to handle T’Challa being in the ancestral plane too? Are they just going to show Queen Ramonda? Will we get some kind of resurrection of Chadwick Boseman, like we did with Carrie Fisher?” Instead, I got a complete surprise — Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger.
It’s not only the surprise of Killmonger’s cameo but the rationale for it that makes this a clever workaround rather than a contrived one. Building on the idea that each Black Panther entering the ancestral plane sees the ancestor they need to see rather than the one they want to see and then using Killmonger as a way to question Shuri’s motivations for going to war with Namor moves the story forward. Michael B. Jordan, unsurprisingly, crushes this scene and in just a few minutes reminds me of how complex and menacing Killmonger was in the first film. He asks Shuri, “Are you going to be noble like your brother or take care of business like me?” and tries to fuel her anger and sense of retribution. (A very Star Wars conversation, by the way. He might as well have said “let the hate flow through you.”) The hottest take I might have on this film is that it does not work — or at least Shuri’s taking on of the mantle of Black Panther does not work — without this one scene. It gives us access to Shruri’s psychological state in a way that nothing else could. What’s more, when she hides this experience from other characters in the film but we still know what’s going on in her head, we understand and become attached to her that much more. We see her struggle more clearly.
Image Credit: LA Times
In general, I was surprised with how much Shuri’s character arc made sense and held the movie together. This was just as much her Black Panther origin story as it was the story of Wakanda dealing with the loss of T’Challa. In the emotionally overwhelming ambush that is the opening scene of this film, we experience T’Challa’s death through Shuri’s eyes. Even though someone tells her that she should go be with her brother because he’s about to die, she’s still frantically trying to use her “gifts” as she says later, her scientific and technological genius, to save him. The focus of this scene is on the helplessness she feels and how this will put her off her game throughout the rest of the film. Even though the Tribal Council asks her to try to synthesize the heart-shaped herb that Killmonger burned to extinction, she avoids doing so until Namor murders her mother during the Talokan attack on Wakanda.
At that point, she goes into full Batman mode. The events of the film forge her in this sorrowful fire. When she is the only one left, or, as she says, she “just buried the only person left who truly knew” her, she has nothing left to lose. Only then does she level up by using the Talokan plant on Namor’s mother’s necklace to recreate the heart-shaped herb and become the next Black Panther. The ferocity with which she fights Namor in the final act of the film was thrilling to me. I especially enjoyed the actually panther claw scratch marks she kept leaving on Namor’s body. The scene in which she depowers him enough to make their fight fair was also very satisfying and I found myself rooting for her in that and many other moments. I’m going to be honest: I would have been cool with keeping Batman Vengeance Shuri for a while, perhaps even through a whole other film. Holding out before she realizes she’s being blinded by her vengeance would show just how powerful her grief is.
The arc we do get in the film, of course, echoes T’Challa’s. In Captain America: Civil War, vengeance for his father’s death drives him, but then, in the end, when faced with Baron Zemo, he says, “Vengeance has consumed you. It’s consuming them [Iron Man and Captain America]. I’m done letting it consume me.” This — I think deliberately — sounds a lot like what Shuri says to Namor: “Vengeance has consumed us. We cannot let it consume our people.” Again, that ancestral plane scene with Killmonger is the key to her arc because when she says this line about vengeance consuming them, she’s seeing flashbacks to her brother and Killmonger and deciding in that moment to be more like one than the other.
That said, Shuri’s character progression is still very much her own. Tied to all of this is her “scoffing at tradition” and trying to reconcile her own beliefs in science and empiricism with the traditions and beliefs in her people. She didn’t actually believe the ancestral plane was real; she tells her own mother that when she senses T’Challa in the breeze it’s just a “construction” of her own mind to bring her “comfort.” In wrestling with T’Challa’s death, she’s also wrestling with tradition and royal succession. She initially sees that as mutually exclusive with her life as a scientist, but, by the end of the film, learns to accept the coexistence of science and the supernatural while still staying true to her rebellious self when she doesn’t show up for the Black Panther initiation ceremony.
Image Credit: We Got This Covered
Hopefully what I’ve just laid out shows that Shuri was actually the protagonist of Wakanda Forever all along; it was just harder to see that with so much else going on around her. She is, after all, the one who goes with Namor to Talokan to try to understand him and his people and try to broker peace between them. Similar to the ancestral plane scene, if she doesn’t see the beauty and majesty of the underwater nation — if she doesn’t see how similar it is in beauty and majesty to Wakanda — then her step back from the precipice of vengeance and subsequent offer for Namor to field doesn’t feel earned. Coogler did such an amazing job directing Letitia Wright and Tenoch Huerta because they actually have a lot of chemistry, and the almost romantic overtones of their conversations make an alliance between the two powerful nations seem natural. Until, of course, Namor refuses to let Riri go and reveals that he plans to wage war and wipe out the surface world to protect his own people. Then Shuri snaps out of it and realizes that she needs to get outta there. Shuri and Namor’s appealing rapport also makes peace between Wakanda and Talokan so palpable, and that makes the big battle later that much more tragic. To me, it seemed like Coogler wanted us to want Shrui and Namor to work it out. To see that the white colonizers in the film were pitting different peoples of color against each other even though they share the same plight and would be stronger together. If only Namor hadn’t had a murder all the air breathers policy…
All these Shuri seeds planted throughout the entire film made it so that I genuinely cheered when she put on the new Black Panther suit for the first time. It felt earned. It felt right. And I never thought that would have been possible, and not just because Chadwick Boseman defined the role. I’m going to confess that I had mixed feelings about Letitia Wright as an actress going into this film because of all the news surrounding her, ironically, anti-vax statements on social media. (She has since backed down and apologized, but still.) Her performance and how well she carries out Shuri’s arc, however, won me over in a way I was not expecting.
But, alas, I’ve put off my criticisms for too long. In the spoiler-free section, I mentioned that there were times that I wondered whether the film would have been even better with fewer characters and subplots. I kept thinking to myself: This is a lot of movie. Is it too much movie?
The most obvious example of the cup of Wakanda frothing over with too much of a good thing is a new Dora Milaje character named Aneka. She’s played by a highly acclaimed actress, Michaela Coel, who recently became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for writing for a limited series. It seems a waste to cast such talent as what is essentially a throwaway character. I felt like the movie expected me to care about her and while I was excited to see this actress in the film and the character she plays seems cool, I was confused as to why she was there. Her relationship with Ayo (who, you may recall, had a big part in the Disney+ series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) as well as the Midnight Angels suits didn’t get enough screen time to really matter. But perhaps they’ll get more time in the Disney+ series set in Wakanda that Ryan Coogler has agreed to make. (There hasn’t been a release date or any information about that other than the deal Coogler made with Disney.)
To a lesser degree, Riri Williams’ role in the film suffers from the same too little too quickly treatment. I thought she provided much-needed comic relief throughout the film, and I do think that maintaining some kind of connection to the “Lost Tribe” of African Americans in the U.S. to continue that theme from the previous film is powerful and important. She’s elegantly inserted in as a plot device, so I do think her existence in the film is totally justified from that viewpoint alone. I thought her initial introduction scene at MIT was very well done, very fun, and very quickly establishes how brilliant she is. But the time we spend with her does add to the pile-up, and we basically get an origin story type subplot with her only for that to be erased when Shuri breaks the news that she can’t take her Ironheart suit home with her. It all just feels a little squeezed in.
Meanwhile, Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus) had several delightful but, at least for this film, entirely unnecessary scenes. I enjoyed their banter quite a bit, and was happy to see them both (and learn they used to be married!), but if we need to sharpen the focus the film they’re the first to go. My suspicion is that their appearance signals some shift in the balance of power in the US Government in a way that will become significant later on. Maybe as soon as the Secret Invasion series this spring, or maybe as late as the Thunderbolts film slated for the summer of 2024. I’m now realizing that I’m mentioning Disney+ shows a lot here; if that’s the main reason the film is doing too much and drawing the ire of critics, then I think that’s a shame because a lot of this seeding and set up probably could have waited until after this film.
Even with these flaws, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is operating on another level than most of the other Phase 4 films. It had a much tougher assignment, and still managed to deliver a spectacular and meaningful story. Here’s hoping I can see it again soon.