OnScreen Review: "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
I still remember the shock and sadness I felt hearing the news that Chadwick Boseman passed away. I remember seeing him at an awards ceremony a few months before he died and being alarmed at how thin he looked. Not only was it a huge loss for Hollywood and movie fans, his death left a massive void for the MCU after the incredible success and popularity of the role he embodied, King T’Challa, the Black Panther. Ryan Coogler’s 2018 Black Panther was a juggernaut, and Boseman’s likeability and performance was a big part of that. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is an emotional attempt to say goodbye to a beloved figure and find a path forward for the franchise.
The film opens the only way it really can, with the offscreen death of T’Challa, as his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), is trying to recreate the heart-shaped flower synthetically in the hopes that it will save him, but she is too late. Her mother, Queen Mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) comes in to break the news to her. The country of Wakanda mourns and buries its King. I’m not going to lie, the opening of this film did get me choked up; in a touching tribute, the opening Marvel Studios intro, rather than featuring various Marvel superheroes, only featured Boseman’s Black Panther. There is no mistaking the feeling of loss that everyone feels for Boseman/T’Challa.
From there, the rest of the film is basically an attempt to fill the void, to find a new hero to stand in the gap. The film skips ahead a year, with the Queen assuming control of Wakanda after the loss of her son. Now that the secret is out on Wakanda’s advanced technology and resources due to their possession of a wealth of vibranium, several other foreign countries are eager to get their hands on the vibranium, even going so far as to attack Wakandan research stations in the hopes of stealing some stealthily, to no success.
However, deep ocean mining uncovers previously hidden reserves of vibranium on the ocean floor, but attempts to retrieve it result in the crews being wiped out by mysterious forces. Initially suspected to be Wakandans, it turns out that the attack in the ocean is by Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), ruler of the underwater civilization of Talokan. Namor confronts Shuri and Queen Ramonda, demanding they hand over an American scientist that discovered the underwater vibranium or face the wrath of Namor and his people. That scientist turns out to be a brilliant teenage student, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who has also built her own version of an Iron Man suit. Unwilling to hand over a teen to be killed, Shuri and her mother try to find a path forward for Wakanda, stuck between Namor’s threats and the threats of nearly every other nation on dry land.
It appears early on that the film is going to be Shuri’s story. As a scientist, and in her mourning, she rejects the spiritual and mystical nature of the heart-shaped herb, the Ancestral Plane, and what the Black Panther stands for. In one scene with her mother, she dismisses her mother’s story of feeling the presence of T’Challa, saying it was nothing more than her mind needing to believe in something that wasn’t there. Her struggle to move past the loss of her brother and to potentially pick up the mantle in his place, is something she struggles with throughout the film; whether she will choose diplomacy like her brother or “take care of business.”
But while it starts out seeming that Wakanda Forever will mainly belong to Shiri, most of the middle of the film is actually Namor’s story. Overall, Namor comes across as a pretty compelling antagonist and adversary to Wakanda. His backstory is complex (he also calls himself a mutant, which only further opens the door for the eventual incorporation of the X-Men into the MCU). He is a leader with a good purpose in that he wants to protect his people because he has seen what the surface world will do to get their hands on vibranium, but he is more ruthless in the lengths he will go to protect them. He and Shuri attempt to find common ground and find a peaceful solution to their standoff, but circumstances beyond their control force things to come to a head. While Namor is a worthy adversary, it does feel like the film loses a bit of momentum by becoming so Namor-centric in the middle before finding better footing by returning the focus to Shuri.
I continue to be a fan of the world-building that director Ryan Coogler and his crew have done with Wakanda and how it fuses African culture with advanced technology and a vibrant city. They expand this by showing a similarly prosperous underwater city in the glimpses we are given into Talokan. And he does a good job of balancing the superhero spectacle and action with the personal and intimate stories of the main characters and making their stories matter. Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and M’Baku (Winston Duke) have strong supporting roles. Dominique Thorne’s Riri seems like she will be a good addition to the MCU as Ironheart, though her storyline here feels tacked on and the weakest part of the film, mainly because it comes across as much about service to the planned Ironheart Disney+ series instead of a natural storyline development.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a bit more of a mixed bag than the original Black Panther, but it is still more emotionally resonant that your average MCU film and honors Chadwick Boseman. They made a conscious decision to not recast the character, and one wonders what might have been if they chose a different path there, or what could have been if Boseman had not passed away. But they chose their path and did not think twice about it. The end result is yeoman’s work from Coogler and company to provide a lament for both Boseman and the character of T’Challa, to pick up the broken pieces, and find a path forward. And they mostly succeed.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars