To everyone, he was a king. To me, he was everything.
In the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s death, I don’t really think there was a right answer to the question of what the MCU should do with the character of Black Panther, just answers that were varying degrees of wrong. There are a lot of different ways to look at it and any way you go it’s a tightrope. You could have the character die in the movies, but it has to either be offscreen or you create a digital double. Neither one of those are dramatically satisfying and the second one is a downright atrocity that would have gotten the movie and everyone involved with it absolutely crucified. You could also recast and I’m sympathetic to the statements from Chadwick Boseman’s brother that Chadwick believed the character was so important that he wouldn’t want T’Challa to die just because he did. But I don’t know how anyone could think recasting would work either. The actor would be walking into about the worst situation in the world and, again, both the actor and the movie would have been absolutely slaughtered online. I mean, the MCU haters slaughter everything online, but recasting T’Challa right after Boseman’s death would have alienated even MCU fans. Or maybe you just have Black Panther off-screen, off on a mission or something, and that lets you kick the can of making a final decision on recasting down the road. But I think that just comes off as pretty cowardly and obvious and, once again, gets the movie blasted. So, not a lot of good options. So, I was going into the movie honestly most intrigued to see how they’d pull it off. And, somewhat surprisingly, even though I know Coogler’s an excellent writer and director, they did a qood job with it.
The movie chooses to face the fact that T’Challa is going to die off screen fully and make something out of it. The film opens with Shuri, desperately trying to find a cure for the disease her brother is dying of. She’s trying so desperately that she isn’t there when he dies; this immediately puts the audience right in her head space. She didn’t get to be there for T’Challa’s death; well, none of us did and her guilt over her dual failure (she’s failed to both save her brother and to be with him in his last moments) drives her anger even before she finds a reason to externalize her anger against an antagonist that deserves “revenge.” So, this movie really asks Letitia Wright to step up fully into this role and she absolutely slays it with an incredibly raw and emotional performance. It’s the truth of her performance that keeps the film grounded every time it gets more fantastical.
Overall the performances are a real strength of this film. Almost everyone here who is returning from the first Black Panther film is better here. The characters are more lived in and there’s more depth to them all. Angela Bassett in particular is a real force of nature after being given almost nothing to do in the first film; I was thrilled to see her performance get a lot of attention and awards because it’s a phenomenal turn, ferocious and intense. Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o both bring more depth to their characters as well. Gurira shows us a more vulnerable side of Okoye and it’s a thrill to see Nyong’o’s Nakia working as a War Dog, flexing her investigative muscles. I’d watch a whole movie about that, to be honest. Winston Duke is also quite good. He still has the swagger and humor that made M’Baku such a pleasure in the first film, but there’s something more thoughtful about him here and he has a really good scene alone with Shuri at one point where we see him struggling to connect with her in a way that will be helpful. I say “almost” everyone who’s back from the first movie is better because I didn’t really love the time spent with Everett Ross in this movie and I think Martin Freeman was better in the first movie, though perhaps it’s just that the character was more well-written. I did really love Tenoch Huerta’s performance as Namor; it’s not the Namor of the comics and the Namor of the comics is such a great character that it’s kind of a shame we won’t be getting him on screen, but I think Huerta manages to bring charisma and danger to the role while also engaging your sympathy as an audience member. He’s tragic, but dangerous; alluring, but scary. I hope we get the chance to see this character develop going forward. And, while we’re talking the cast, there was a really great, totally unexpected cameo late in the film that was such a cool surprise that I’m not even going to spoil it all these months later. And, um, no, I’m not talking about Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Is the film as a whole as strong as the first Black Panther? No, it isn’t, but it’s still very good. The film has some really knock out sequences. A scene of Namor’s people attacking an off-shore drilling platform is absolutely fantastic and, in a twist I wasn’t expecting, genuinely scary. The dissonant sound design in that scene and the simple visuals of something like a head slowly rising out of the water really created a great atmosphere. Also, great to see the always excellent Lake Bell in that sequence too. A later car-chase/fight scene on a bridge is intense and does a great job establishing Namor’s crew as genuine threats by having Okoye struggle to even hold her own against them.
At over two-and-a-half hours, this one could have been trimmed down somewhat. Personally, I could have done with a lot less Everett Ross, as I said above, but I think the film is also bogged down by the inclusion of Ironheart. Dominique Thorne is fine in the role and, I get it, cross-promotion is the name of the game, but we’ve all seen the MCU introduce a character that’s going to be getting their own starring role later in a supporting role and do it right. Take T’Challa himself, for instance, who fits into Civil War so gracefully; by contrast Ironheart feels shoe-horned in here and, if they had to do it, I wish they’d found a more artful way to do it.
Still, I was engaged and compelled the vast majority of the time and most of what was keeping me that way was the performances and the characters which is how it should be. The film delivers good character arcs and is emotionally compelling from that frenetic opening right through that fantastic in-credits scene (easily the most emotionally moving credits scene yet). A moment late in the film when Shuri pauses for a memory of T’Challa and, the sound mostly dropping out, we see quick flashes of Boseman from his previous appearances of the character is suitably tasteful and feels right. Wakanda Forever can’t quite pull off the feat of equalling the first film, but the fact that it succeeds at all, to say nothing of being as overall excellent as it is, is kind of astonishing. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – film deals with passing of Chadwick Boseman in a suitable & emotional way and the film as a whole is character-based & emotionally powerful; some minor flaws, but a worthy sequel. 3 ½ stars.