Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a contrast-filled movie. It is essentially a narrative about mourning, including the many grieving processes, the love that results from loss, and the ensuing rage. It's a movie about the ups and downs of science and religion, the conflict between modernity and tradition, and the desperate hunt for solutions to unanswerable issues. In the end, it's a tale about how people can persevere in the face of overwhelming adversity and in memory of those who left us far too soon yet continue to live on in our hearts.
This review is free of spoilers. Spoiler alerts and more detailed analysis of the movie's plot aspects will follow.]
Plot of Black Panther: Wakanda forever
The plot of Ryan Coogler's sequel to Black Panther, which debuted in 2018, is so naturally derived from that movie that most of the production turmoil is hidden from view. The bioluminescent flower that gives Wakanda's guardian and hero, the Black Panther, extraordinary power and regenerating vigor, the heart-shaped herb, is destroyed by Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) in Black Panther. On the international stage, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) decides to demonstrate Wakanda's real might.
Both components are equally important to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever imagines Boseman's passing in 2020 as a loss so significant that moving forward without addressing it would be an unspeakable injustice, similar to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe recast Bruce Banner as Edward Norton or Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes as Terrence Howard. And not just to his memory, but also to the influence Boseman had on the creation of Black Panther's character and the audience that saw the movie.
T'Challa the King is no more. Nearly a year after his unexpected death, his friends and loved ones are still in mourning, hiding out in their different routines and responsibilities to protect themselves from the emotional toll of their loss. While everything is going on, the outside world tries to conquer Wakanda in order to take use of its priceless resources. The fabled underwater city of Talokan and its ruler, the wing-footed mutant Namor (Tenoch Huerta), who is revered by his people as a living god, provide an even bigger threat.
Namor has cause to suspect Earth will soon learn about Talokan's existence as a result of T'Challa's decision to tell the rest of the world the truth about Wakanda's technological advancements at the climax of Black Panther. He is motivated by that menace to emerge from the ocean's depths and initiate preemptive war on the surface world. As a result of his acts, Wakanda and its queen Queen Ramonda are rapidly turned against him (Angela Bassett). However, Namor is unaffected by this. In his opinion, they can also catch these hands if Wakanda refuses to support his battle.
Wakanda Forever, like Black Panther before it, debuts in American theaters at a pivotal juncture in both its fictional universe and our real-world society. The timing was so apt and poetic that it defied coincidence. The original film, which brought to life the dream of the African diaspora in the form of Wakanda, an African nation that was never conquered or robbed of its resources by Western powers, was released just a month after Donald Trump derided African nations, Haiti, and El Salvador as "shithole countries."
It is astonishing and appropriate that Wakanda Forever feels even more intricately intertwined into the fabric of its own time. Wakanda Forever, which centers on T'Challa's (and Boseman's) death, is a far darker and more complicated movie than its predecessor. The script by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole focuses on how sadness can turn into something terrible and ugly under pressure and if left unresolved for an extended period of time. Shuri and Namor act as foils in their individual sorrow, highlighting by way of illustration the damaging ways in which ignoring grief only helps to make tragedy last longer.
Despite being on different continents and across different seas, Wakanda and Talokan have a same sense of protective isolationism borne out of apprehension about the catastrophic excesses of colonialism. The emotional weight of their impending clash is increased by the fact that both nations worship their anointed leaders as gods, who may or may not get their powers from the same supernatural force.
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Though Coogler's follow-up is a more solemn affair than Black Panther from 2018, it does have its humorous moments, which may even shine more brightly because of the gloom. In the absence of T'Challa, Shuri finds companionship with the Dora Milaje honor guard general Okoye (Danai Gurira) and T'Challa's former girlfriend Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), a mother-figure who gives comfort and sympathy. One thing Shuri has never had before is a buddy who knows what it's like to be young, Black, and great in a world that casually resents individuals who are any of those things, let alone all three. Riri Williams is an MIT student and fellow child prodigy played by Dominique Thorne.
But maybe none of the romantic interactions in the movie are more important than the developing friendship between Shuri and M'Baku (Winston Duke). M'Baku cares about Shuri and now has tremendous regard for her, telling her at one point, "You have lost too much to still be considered a kid," when years before the chief of the Jabari Tribe challenged T'Challa in a battle for the throne and dismissed her as nothing more than a child mocking tradition.
Overall, the cast is outstanding. In his performance as Namor, Huerta exudes strength, charm, and arrogant self-assurance, flying across the sky with quickness and grace like Hermes from Greek mythology. The portrayal of Ramonda by Angela Bassett tugs at the heartstrings, conjuring the unmistakable grace and regality of a queen in sorrow, compelled to carry the agony of her loss as well as the destiny of a country. Aneka, a member of the Dora Milaje, is played by I May Destroy You star Michaela Coel, whose exosuit was influenced by Brian Stelfreeze's artwork on Ta-Nehisi Coates' run of Black Panther comics.
Finally, there is Letitia Wright, whose portrayal of Shuri serves as the emotional center of the whole movie. Wright paints a moving picture of a young lady who, after losing both her father and her brother in quick succession, is forced to reevaluate her whole worldview, including her identity as a scientist and a member of the Wakandan royal family.