The first “Black Panther” movie opened in February 2018. A lot has
changed since then, both in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe and in the one that
most of us nonsuperheroes are compelled to inhabit.
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The most tragic and consequential change was surely the death of Chadwick
Boseman in 2020, whose performance as King T’Challa had seemed to signal the
arrival of a franchise-defining new star. Even before that, the Marvel/Disney
corporate strategy was shifting into a post-“Avengers” phase, as the familiar
heroes were dispersed into a multiplatform multiverse of stories, sometimes
joined by alternative versions of themselves. And of course, here in the real
world …
Let us not even go there. The political situation in the fictional African
nation of Wakanda is complicated enough. In “
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,”
director Ryan Coogler feeds his own and the public’s grief into the story,
infusing the movie with somber notes of family loss and collective mourning.
There is also a sense of the disorder that follows in the wake of a
charismatic, unifying leader.
T’Challa’s mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), has assumed the throne,
at least for the moment. His younger sister, scientific prodigy Shuri (Letitia
Wright), scrambles to honor her brother’s memory and fill his shoes. The center
is holding, but the kingdom nonetheless seems vulnerable, as the outside world
conspires to gain access to Wakanda’s reserves of vibranium, a rare mineral with
daunting military and industrial uses. The benevolent global order that
T’Challa led his nation into has given way to one based on deceit, subversion
and exploitation.
Thanks to Ramonda’s regal diplomatic skills and the fighting prowess of
the Jabari, led by M’Baku (Winston Duke), and the Dora Milaje, led by the
mighty Okoye (Danai Gurira), Wakanda can hold its own against the US and
France. The real threat comes from under the sea, where the long-isolated
aquatic nation of Talokan controls the planet’s only other source of vibranium.
The king of Talokan, who goes by Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), is a demigod
with pointy ears and wings on his ankles. Comic-book fans will recognize him as
the Sub-Mariner, a complicated hero whose pedigree stretches all the way back
into late-1930s Marvel prehistory. For the purposes of “Wakanda Forever,” he is
a villain, albeit one with a legitimate grudge and a coherent political
argument.
His subjects are descendants of a Meso-American tribe who took to the
water to escape Spanish colonizers in the 16th century. His mistrust of “the
surface” is based on a history of enslavement, infection, and persecution, and
he proposes a mutually protective anti-imperialist alliance with Wakanda. This
sounds nice, except that the alternative Namor offers is war, and also the
murder of Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a precocious Massachusetts
Institute of Technology student who has invented a vibranium-detecting machine.
If this sounds like too much plot summary, that’s because “Wakanda
Forever,” like many Marvel movies, has too much plot. There are a lot of
characters to keep track of. Shuri has acquired a sidekick in the person of
Riri, while Okoye has one in Aneka (Michaela Coel). Wakanda-sympathizing CIA
man Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) is back and spends some time squabbling with
his boss (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who is also his ex-wife. Since this is, above
all, a special-effects-heavy action movie, there are fistfights, vehicle
chases, underwater and midair battles, high-tech suits, and seat-rattling
explosions.
A Marvel movie, for sure. But a pretty interesting one, partly because it
is also a Coogler film, with the director’s signature interplay of genre
touchstones, vivid emotions (emphasized by Ludwig Goransson’s occasionally tooth-rattling
score) and allegorical implications. Because the Avengers have, for the moment,
disassembled, it is no longer necessary to slot Wakanda and its heroes into a
larger cosmic ensemble, which gives the busy narrative a welcome degree of
focus and specificity. As in “Black Panther,” the questions of Wakandan
identity — who will lead it and what kind of a country will it be — are brought
into relief by an apparent bad guy with a good or at least plausible answer.
Namor has in common with T’Challa’s nemesis Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan)
— and also with Magneto from the X-Men films and Koba from the first chapters
of “Planet of the Apes” — a grievance-based radicalism that the movie struggles
to refute. Huerta’s performance is weighted more with sorrow than anger, and
his people, with their blue skins and gill-like masks, are beautiful and
mysterious. Talokan, a kind of Mayan Atlantis, adds a new aesthetic element to
the Marvel palette, extending the Afro-futurist visions of Hannah Beachler’s
production design and Ruth Carter’s costumes into something wondrously cosmic
and cosmopolitan.
In T’Challa’s absence,
Wakanda has become, at least for the moment, a
matriarchy, and “Wakanda Forever” displays a matter-of-fact superhero feminism
grounded in the personalities of the performers and their characters. Bassett,
Wright, Gurira, Thorne, and Coel — rejoined by Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, who
shows up a bit late in the action — form the kind of fractious, formidable
ensemble that should be a franchise in its own right. And quite possibly will
be. It’s called “Wakanda Forever,” and in the Marvel Universe that sounds less
like a slogan than a terms-of-service guarantee.
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