Review: 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' lets the audience and the characters grieve for Chadwick Boseman, and deal with the aftermath of loss.
The latest movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, director Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” must, by circumstance, try to answer a question not posed before in the franchise: Can the MCU overcome death itself?
Not just the arbitrary killing off of a movie character, because the MCU’s phase 4 has been loaded with that. So far — spoiler alert! — phase 4 has seen the cinematic deaths of Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” and Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster in “Thor: Love and Thunder.”
No, here it’s the real thing, because of the untimely death of the actor who portrayed Black Panther/King T’Challa — Chadwick Boseman, gone at age 43 from cancer. How are at the folks at Marvel going to handle that?
The answer is: With a substantial amount of grace and sensitivity. T’Challa is not in the room when we experience his death at the movie’s outset. Instead, we’re nearby, in the lab of T’Challa’s sister, Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), who’s frantically trying to find a cure for the unnamed disease that’s killing her brother. It’s not enough, and soon Shuri’s mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) comes in with the news, “Your brother is with the ancestors.”
Most of what follows is concerned with the void left by T’Challa’s death — and, in some ways, by Boseman’s. (Even the Marvel Studios logo is turned into an homage to the actor and character, with every snippet showing Black Panther in action.) An early funeral scene isn’t just for the characters onscreen to mourn T’Challa, it’s the audience’s chance to say their goodbyes to the actor who played him.
In story terms, T’Challa’s absence leaves a void other countries aim to fill. Early on, Queen Ramonda attends a UN meeting where she confronts other ambassadors (Richard Schiff represents the United States) about efforts to take Wakanda’s rare and powerful natural resource, vibranium, by force.
The Americans also detect another source of vibranium, deep in the Atlantic Ocean. But, they find too late, it has protectors: An army of undersea soldiers, led by a powerful warrior who can breathe on land or in water — and, we learn shortly, goes by the name Namor. (He’s played by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta Mejía, who gets an “introducing” credit on his name, even though he has film credits going back 16 years, including a leading role in last year’s “The Forever Purge.”)
Namor approaches Ramonda and Shuri, suggesting an alliance between the two peoples who own stockpiles of vibranium, against the “surface people” who would seek to take them. Namor also wants Wakanda’s help in capturing and killing the scientist who created the vibranium detector — who, it turns out, is a precocious 19-year-old MIT student named Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne). If you read Marvel comic books, you already know who Riri is, to which I say: Good for you, and keep it to yourself.
Somehow, the CIA gets wind of this, which is how Maj. Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) — whom Shuri calls “my favorite colonizer” — enters the picture, along with the CIA director, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). The CIA doesn’t know about Namor’s undersea people, so they think the attack on the vibranium detector was done by the Wakandans.
Meanwhile, there’s a power vacuum back in Wakanda, with Ramonda reclaiming the throne, though the massive warrior M’Baku (Winston Duke) still lurks on the edges. And there’s the question of whether the Black Panther mantle will be passed down to someone after T’Challa — which will be difficult, since the heart-shaped herb that bestow the Black Panther’s powers was destroyed by the nasty Killmonger.
Director Ryan Coogler and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole return for a second round with the Black Panther characters, and they remind us how alive and self-contained the world of Wakanda is. Introducing a new world, the one ruled by Namor, isn’t as exciting as the first time (how could it be?) — but the imagery, evoking Mexican culture of centuries ago, is beautifully rendered by production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter (both of whom won Oscars for their work in the same jobs on “Black Panther”).
Some things don’t flow as smoothly, like some of the scattershot fight scenes, or the awkward way T’Challa’s former lover, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) returns to the picture.
Overall, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” doesn’t try to make us forget the noble T’Challa and his portrayer, Chadwick Boseman. But, by the end, you’re at least assured that his legacy is secure.
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‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’
★★★
Opens Friday, November 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, action and some language. Running time: 161 minutes.