Movie #2 of 2023:
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Perhaps inevitably, this sequel is not as strong as its rather extraordinary 2018 predecessor. But it nears that level of quality at times, and might well be the best possible follow-up given the awful loss of original star Chadwick Boseman to colon cancer in the intervening years. The studio made the surprising but appreciated call to kill off his title role rather than recast it, and this movie plays out in part as a memorial to them both. Indeed, it’s hard to shake the feeling in one early funeral scene that everyone involved is mourning their real-life friend as much as his on-screen alias.
I like too that because of the events of the first film, there is no immediate heir apparent to T’Challa’s position as Wakandan protector / superhero. While someone does eventually don that mantle, the bulk of the story is focused on a disparate group of individuals taking time to grieve and sort out their feelings, rather than rushing into the next Black Panther’s era. That, and defending the nation from a new power that’s risen up from the ocean depths in challenge, which seems likely to have been the only element retained from the earliest drafts of this script.
Namor and his people are serviceable antagonists at worst, and sometimes offer striking messages on indigenous sovereignty. They’re a great fit for this series and narrative foil for Wakanda overall, and the movie does a good job of showing how the two communities could be natural allies against the colonialist regimes of the world, yet still different enough to reasonably end up at each other’s throats instead. In that light, I think updating Atlantis in the comics to the Mayan-descended Talokan is a particularly smart adaptation choice, even though the exact plot logistics and motivations behind their actions don’t always track for me.
In the end, we circle back around to grief and a verdict on its appropriate responses, which is not unexpected by the standards of the Marvel franchise. (A lot of dialogue is devoted to the question of whether a certain character will intentionally kill the villain, despite the fact that that’s obviously not how Disney’s going to let this morality tale conclude.) And while the 161-minute runtime is simultaneously over-long and overstuffed, featuring too many hard-to-see underwater combat shots and giving short shrift to elements like American college whiz Riri Williams, it hits enough of the right notes enough of the time. There’s no one here with the easy charisma of Boseman, and the project decidedly suffers for it. But director Ryan Coogler’s vision of Black excellence and a bastion where it thrives still lives on, and that’s as fitting a tribute as one could imagine.
[Content warning for gun violence, slavery, and gore.]
★★★★☆
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