‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ helps us grieve together | review

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever follows the nation as it navigates grief, politics, and new enemies after the death of King T'Challa.

By the time the Marvel logo came up at the start of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, this time with a purple background rather than its usual trademark red, I was already on the verge of tears. There's a melancholy in those opening minutes that we haven't yet seen in a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. The real raw human emotion that has mostly gone untapped in the franchise hits you like a gut punch — and we all know why. While director-writer Ryan Coogler was still in the middle of writing the script, star Chadwick Boseman died from colon cancer. Something unknown to Coogler and producer Kevin Feige. There wasn't a world that they, or we, imagined without Boseman as T'Challa, the Black Panther and King of Wakanda. Now faced with his absence, they had to go back to the drawing board. What they came up with was exactly that: his absence.

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Instead of shying away from his death or recasting the character, Coogler unflinchingly faces grief and loss head-on dealing with each surviving character's struggles and how they deal with his absence. The details of T'Challa's death aren't specific. A mystery illness with no cure that quickly and quietly led to the King's demise despite his sister Shuri's (Letitia Wright) attempts to recreate the heart-shaped herb in a last-ditch effort to save him. It's her grieving process — and guilt — that propels us for the first half of the movie as we learn of the geopolitical implications of T'Challa's death including the rise of his mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) as the head of the nation. Seeing an opening, other nations are seeking to share in Wakanda's supply of vibranium going as far as raiding outposts with the substance. Queen Ramonda gives an impassioned speech in front of the United Nations — one of many stellar moments of Bassett's performance in typical Waiting to Exhale mic drop car-burning fashion — accusing them of taking advantage of their supposed weakness.

And she's right. Shortly after we see an American ship using a machine designed to find vibranium deposits encounter a potential supply at the ocean's floor. However, before they can even get so much as a glance at it, they are ambushed by a group of blue amphibious humanoids that easily dispatch with the crew before one cloaked in shadow (with wings on his feet) single handedly takes down a helicopter. We come to learn that this is Namor (newcomer Tenoch Huerta). Or as he says with perfect supervillain delivery: “my people call me K'uk'ulkan, the feathered serpent god. My enemies call me Namor.”

Like the first movie, Wakanda Forever moves rhythmically for the first half. Composer Ludwig Göransson — he won the Oscar for the first movie — expands the score's musical language to work with Coogler's melancholy tone and the political intigue of the plot. In some ways, the movie feels like a noir — albeit a brightly lit and action-oriented one. The mystery of Namor and his people, the Talokan, fuel much of the setup. Namor's introduction — easily breezing into the (nearly) impenetrable Wakanda for a conversation with Queen Ramonda and Princess Shuri — is a showcase for Huerta. He explains to them that Wakanda's cooperation with the outside world puts his own underwater kingdom at risk, so he tasks them with bringing the scientist responsible for creating the vibranium-detecting machine to him to kill.

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This sets off a series of moral, political, and personal dilemmas as Queen Ramonda looks to protect her nation and Princess Shuri discovers that there's more in common between her people and her supposed enemy. Throughout the movie, but especially in the first half, Coogler is in the pocket — completely in rhythm with the story he's telling. Nearly every single element that made the first movie the first (and still only) comic book movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars is even further elevated, especially the costumes by Ruth E. Carter and production design by Hannah Bechler. Coogler himself is more visually daring, presenting action setpieces and fights that feel dangerous.

However, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever begins to come apart when it has to consummate its very sensitive exploration of grief with the demands of a comic book movie. And often in the second half, those two elements are in direct opposition to each other. Coogler does his best to use Shuri's emotional journey to hold the two together, but in the end there are a few jumps the audience needs to make to believe in where the story ends up. The element that is successful at briging those two ideas together is Huerta's Namor.

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The backstory of the Tatoklan almost begs for its own movie and gives the themes of grief, loss, and trauma structure. Much of this is in thanks to Tenoch Huerta's revelatory performance. He is a goddamn star. His Namor constantly feels dangerous, even just with his words — especially important as comic book movies become increasingly predictable. However, he finds complexities in his motivations. Like any good villain he very nearly convinces you that he is right. In a way, he's not even a villain, but an anti-hero in his own story. 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is for better and worse emblematic of the fourth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Rather than returning to the same formula that made the franchise a success, Coogler pushes the narrative and artistic boundaries to create a flawed but ultimately satisfying chapter.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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