BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER Review
“In some ways, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever works better overall than Black Panther”
The last time we left Wakanda’s King T’Challa aka the Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played him in a number of Marvel movies, had died. It’s admittedly a kind of a grim way to start this review, but it’s an important matter that permeates the sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but quite surprisingly, without dragging the mood or the overall storyline down.
In fact, T’Challa’s death happens off-screen just as the film begins, with very little explanation about what happened… and with none of his fellow Avengers invited to the ceremony. Although the movie then jumps forward a year, he hasn’t been forgotten by sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) or their mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), but there are more pressing matters. The world desperately wants to get Wakanda’s Vibranium, and various Western countries are doing whatever it takes to get it. After a firm warning from Ramonda, the Americans discover a cache of Vibranium in the ocean, unaware that it’s being protected by the underwater society of Talokan, led by the unforgiving King K’uk’ulkan aka Namor (Tenoch Huerta). Wakanda is blamed for Namor’s violent actions, which puts the two nations at odds that could very likely lead to war.
That’s really about as much of the plot you need to know (and probably the most I should share with you), although some may be happy to learn that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a far more insular film than we’ve been seeing from Marvel Studios in recent years. There are a few references to the first movie, and it doesn’t hurt to know some of the key players, but otherwise, it’s a pretty simple plot that plays upon the “Atlantis Attacks” and other stories from the comics that involved Wakanda warring with Atlantis (the name changed for the MCU to avoid confusion with the Aquaman movies.)
I have to be honest that I was pretty nervous with the little I knew about the changes to Namor, partially because I’ve only seen Huerta in one other movie (The Forever Purge), and I didn’t understand the need to make him Mexican. Fortunately, once you learn Namor’s origin and its connection to ancient Aztec civilizations, it makes far more sense than one might presume from the casting of Huerto, who actually is quite good at delivering a similar majestic presence as Boseman did in his MCU appearances.
The addition of Riri Williams, as played by Dominique Thorn, doesn’t seem to make nearly as much sense. She’s essentially a Tony Stark protegé/stand-in created by Brian Michael Bendis and nicknamed Ironheart. (That name isn’t used in the movie, but she already is getting her own Disney+ series with that title, so clearly, Marvel wants to set her up as a big player, maybe as part of the planned Armor Wars movie.) While it might take some time to understand Riri’s presence, she actually makes a perfect friend and foil to Shuri, and she plays a bigger part in the final act battle.
Although I focused specifically on Namor and Riri above, there’s no denying that Angela Bassett gives one of the strongest emotional performances, possibly in any MCU movie, followed closely by Wright, who I wasn’t that crazy about her Shuri from the first Black Panther. Shuri has been given a much stronger arc for the sequel that’s more than just showing up, beaming brightly, and making jokes. (In some ways, Thorn takes over that role, being slightly younger than Wright.) There’s also more room for Winston Duke, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurifa, and even Martin Freeman, to bring more with their characters when forces like Boseman and Michael B. Jordan are removed from the mix.
One of the things that greatly separates Wakanda Forever from other Marvel movies is that it has a much stronger script, and Coogler does a better job as a Marvel director since he knows how to tell a story, including important things like tone and pacing. While Black Panther may have been a proper warm-up for Coogler to get inured into the Marvel world, this movie makes it obvious that he has figured out the way to blend his knack for storytelling with the requirements of a big budget mainstream superhero movie. This also involves getting the best performances out of the entire cast, although the humor sometimes felt inappropriately shoe-horned into scenes where it doesn’t necessarily fit tonally.
Coogler’s below-the-line team is also top-notch, including the three crafts people who won Oscars for the first movie: Ludwig Göransson for his score, Ruth E. Carter for her costume design, and Hannah Beachler for her production design. These three alone do such great work to make Wakanda Forever really pop off the screen with Göransson doing even more to bring life both to the action and the more emotional scenes. The movie just looks great across the board, especially the underwater sequences that show off the work by cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw and the VFX team. The movie’s bigger set pieces are just as effective as those in Black Panther or some of the Avengers movies, where there’s so much great visual FX work that doesn’t completely kill all the important characterizations.
In some ways, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever works better overall than Black Panther, maybe because Coogler can really focus on the emotions felt by himself and the cast towards the death of Boseman, while also introducing what could be some major Marvel players, including an entire underwater nation that expands the MCU in quite a satisfactory way.
Rating: 8/10