“In my culture, death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping-off point. You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into a green veld where you can run forever.”
Marvel's Phase 4 kicked off with the Disney+ show, Wanda Vision, whose theme was grief. Wanda loses Vision at the hands of Thanos and the grief of that loss tears her apart. We learn later that she is the Scarlet Witch, a being of unlimited power. Wanda uses that power to trap a town full of people in a bubble (well, a hex). She works through her grief by turning the town into a sitcom and controlling the citizens throughout various decades, depicting the family life she wished she could have had with Vision and their (imaginary?) children. The big problem with that show was that Wanda's grief was larger than life for a character we hadn't had a chance to connect with on such a deep emotional level and with whom she had a largely off-screen romance.
Phase 4 takes place in a post-Thanos world and many of the shows and films that make up this phase are hit-or-miss affairs because the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become too large and unruly. It's become a cinematic multiverse. Marvel's winning formula of telling interconnected stories has trapped them into filling their properties with references to other films and shows, cameos from other MCU characters and planting Easter Eggs. That makes it hard to tell a focused story. I digress, though. What I wanted to point out about Phase 4 is that its overarching theme has been loss and grief. Our heroes defeated Thanos but lost friends, family and lovers doing it.
Wakanda Forever presents us with the biggest loss in the MCU. We lost the Black Panther in real life. We lost the great Chadwick Boseman to colon cancer in 2020. He played the graceful King T'Challa knowing that he was dying and sharing that knowledge and suffering only with his close family. Director Ryan Coogler takes the real grief that the cast and fans feel at the loss of Boseman and weaves it into this film's story. The screenplay for Wakanda Forever had to be rewritten after Boseman's death and Coogler wrote the grief of his passing into it. The film feels a little messy as a result, as messy as grief is.
Chadwick Boseman's spirit lives in this story. Wakanda may not be real and the Black Panther may be a fictional character but this story does what great stories do and lets us feel the real grief of losing someone who made a positive impact on our lives. Is this a perfect film? No. As I said, it's messy and you can tell that the script was rewritten and it’s bloated with the Marvel baggage all the MCU films have to carry. What it is, though, is a film with a lot of heart and genuine emotion. Boseman's death feels as unexpected in Wakanda as it was for most people in real life and everything is set off balance as a result.
The film kicks off with T'Challa dying from an unknown illness and his sister Shuri racing against the clock to find a way to save him. She fails and instead of being at his side in his last moments, she was in her lab. This film largely focuses on Shuri's grief, hurt and anger. She is young, impulsive and fiercely intelligent. Her grief is a reckless fire that burns down everyone in its path. Friend and foe alike. Letitia Wright plays Shuri's struggling character with heartfelt sincerity. It's no spoiler that Shuri takes up the mantle of Black Panther and does it in a way that shows she's been thrown into a role that's too big for her and that she's struggling to fill big shoes. Wright's performance captures that insecurity because the actress is thrust into the main role in this film because of Chadwick Boseman's passing.
Angela Bassett's performance as Queen Ramonda, on the other hand, is a masterclass in acting. Wow! Just wow! She commands the screen in every scene she's in as the Queen who's lost everything and has to show the world that Wakanda isn't on its knees after the loss of its leader, her son. Her speech asking whether she hasn't given everything for Wakanda sent shivers down my spine. Her Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture is more than deserved. Most of our favourite characters are back for the second outing, along with new faces. The gorgeous Lupita Nyong’o is back as Nakia, the Wakandan spy. Danai Gurira’s Okoye and Wakanda’s greatest warrior has become an MCU staple. She and her Dora Milaje warriors are as no-nonsense as ever. Winston Duke is back as wiser and more grounded M'Baku and Martin Freeman reprises his role as CIA agent Everett Ross.
South African actress, Connie Chiume reprises her role as Zawavari, previously the Mining Tribe Elder, but now the Elder Statesman. Trevor Noah also reprises his role as Shuri's AI assistant, Griot. While on the topic of South Africa, Xhosa is the official language of Wakanda but the American and British cast seemed to have gotten worse at the pronunciation of the Xhosa words than in the first film. Maybe they didn't have a speech coach this time, I don't know.
In his first MCU appearance in Captain America: Civil War, T'Challa says to Natasha Romanoff, “In my culture, death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping-off point. You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into a green veld where you can run forever.” This film asks all of us to take these words to heart and to make the best of our lives right here and now because our loved ones are not truly gone. Wakanda may be grieving but the wolves are at the door looking to get their hands on their precious resource, vibranium.
The search for vibranium is what brings the world in contact with the villain (or is it anti-villain?) of the piece, Namor and his people. In the comic books, he is the king of Atlantis and known as Namor the Sub-Mariner. Ryan Coogler and his team changed his comic book origins to fit in better with the world as it is set up in the MCU. The wonderful Mexican actor, Tenoch Huerta Mejía (you might know him from Narcos: Mexico) portrays Namor as the king of Talokan, an ancient civilization of underwater-dwelling people, who refer to him as the feathered serpent god K'uk'ulkan. The introduction of Talokan is where Wakanda Forever shines. We've seen the wonder that is Wakanda and now we're being taken to a breathtaking kingdom under the ocean dripping with Mayan symbolism. Wakandans avoided colonisation by hiding their country and Namor's people escaped the enslaving of the Mayan civilisation by the Spanish when their god led them into the ocean, where they built their vibranium-rich kingdom. Namor will do everything in his power to keep the surface dwellers from discovering Talokan and its vibranium. Given the colonial history, do you blame him? Representation matters and Wakanda Forever does a great job of shining the spotlight on underrepresented people in Hollywood.
The introduction of Riri Williams to set her up for her Ironheart Disney+ series is where the film gets bloated and is bogged down by MCU baggage. The character is an MIT student and genius inventor whose presence feels shoehorned in so that by the time we see her in her show, we can all be, yeah, I know her! Actress, Dominique Thorne does the best she can with what she is being given and you can’t expect more.
Music was an important feature of Black Panther and is equally important in Wakanda Forever. Ludwig Göransson returns as the composer and his scoring captures the grief of the film perfectly. The lead single, "Lift Me Up" by Rihanna was written by Tems, Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna and Ryan Coogler, as a tribute to Boseman. Tems' cover of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry", which was used in the film's teaser trailer, was the song that got me in the feels.
Wakanda Forever is a wonderful sequel to the global phenomenon that was Black Panther and a beautiful tribute to Chadwick Boseman.
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