Based upon the Marvel Comics series created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Story by Ryan Coogler
Screenplay Written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole
Directed by Ryan Coogler
**** (four stars)
RATED PG 13
Bless you, Ryan Coogler. For your passion and determination, certainly. For the veritable ocean of love poured into this experience, unquestionably.
It truly feels like the impossible has been made possible as Writer/Director Ryan Coogler, the architect behind "Black Panther" (2018), the greatest film in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, in my opinion, has astonishingly crafted and delivered an even more soul stirring experience and while faced when conceivably insurmountable odds. The utter shock of the death of Chadwick Boseman. King T'Challa himself, after a private battle with colon cancer in August 2020, felt to derail any possibilities of a second chapter and if there were none to be made, then so be it. Yet, Coogler remained intrepid, regrouped, carried onward and ultimately created a work that felt to be birthed from the communion of his spirit and Boseman's, with whom he had developed a close friendship.
Ryan Coogler's "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," is the rare sequel, especially in our time of constant sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots and re-imaginings, that truly feels as if it was birthed through a purpose that exceeds itself far beyond anything solely commercial and cynical. In my original review of Coogler's "Black Panther," (housed in the February 2018 section of this blogsite) I remarked that the film felt to be the first Marvel film that was actually about something, ascending itself far above heroes and villains with subject matter pertaining towards, but not limited to, Black excellence. Black nationalism, and Afro-futurism as presented as a dream world of an uncolonized, technologically advanced African landscape and how that contrasts with the plight and displacement of colonized African-Americans.
With "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," Ryan Coogler has taken everything we loved about the original film and has extended and deepened his palate into something so specific to the Black experience plus experiences of the marginalized communities of color to the universal and primal emotions the human community experience when grieving and mourning. In essence, through immense tragedy, Ryan Coogler dug deeper than ever before and emerged with a testament of towering strength and emotion, propelling itself far from its MCU brethren and into an artistic statement, a kinetic, operatic, and shatteringly poetic installment that exists within its own triumphant lane.
I will keep plot details to a minimum so as to to produce spoilers. Our story of "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" begins with grave solemnity as we and the characters are greeted with the death of King T'Challa. As T'Challa family and friends plus all of Wakanda reels from tragedy and attempts to continue onwards in the face of personal and national grief, a new threat arises in the form of the ankle winged Sub-Mariner himself, King Namor (played by Tenoch Huerta Mejia), ruler of the underwater civilization of Talocan, housed directly beneath Wakanda.
Even moreso than its predecessor, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is majestic and mountainous, visually, artistically, sonically, philosophically, spiritually, and most importantly, humanely. While there are conceptual and story threads that link and further extend the MCU as a whole, Ryan Coogler, working so beautifully with his superlative cast and crew are firmly rooted within their collective communion of grief and tribute to Chadwick Boseman, that the film truly operates at a completely higher level. If the first film represented itself at a peak of quality, then this new film showcases Coogler's vision ascending to an even greater peak ensuring that "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" never exists as "just another Marvel movie" or "the next Marvel movie" but defiantly as a full, enriching, enveloping artistic statement upon its own considerable merits.
The presentation is astounding, and just as with the first film, Coogler's world building is so resplendent and complete that it would be impossible to digest every detail within one sitting. The fictional world of Wakanda has grown even more lush and labyrinthine, so effectively that the lines of fantasy and reality are considerably blurred further...or perhaps, my wishes for Wakanda to being a real place have grown stronger.
To that end, the film allows Coogler to envision and deliver a tremendous effort at world building, especially when adding in the underwater realm of Talocan. Just as Wakanda immerses itself in the colors, iconography, clothing, dialects and history to depict the uncolonized Africa, Coogler and his team perform the same feat when imagining Talocan, which is a hybrid mixture of Mesoamerican and Mayan cultures. Tremendous praise must be showered upon Costume Designer Ruth Carter plus Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw and good Lord, Composer Ludwig Goransson (might this be his finest score?) for truly showing the efforts of their talents and they extended of themselves to reach for greatness.
In addition to the building of two distinct worlds, Ryan Coogler has also grown much ore comfortable with the handling of visual effects and larger scaled and unquestionably more complicated action sequences and large scaled set pieces, conjuring one image after another that never exists as CGI bombast or bludgeoning incoherence. He has amassed a vision that exudes an operatic heft which always resonates powerfully and emotionally, while shaking the confines of the movie theater walls.
It is that specific quality that allows "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" to transcend the MCU and its own genre for it is an experience bathed in mourning and tribute to the character of T'Challa and his real world conduit, Chadwick Bosemean. It is evident that Ryan Coogler, his cast and crew KNEW that if they were to proceed with a new installment, it would have to be an experience worthy of the one who is no longer present in the flesh. It could not be an experience that was simply OK or a placeholder for the next Marvel movie. It HAD to be of value and of worth to the man, again as a character and as a human being in reality, fur the film is about his presence in its absence. How his life and the threads he weaved through the connections he made in life, affect everyone and everything now that he is gone.
Throughout Wakanda and its inhabitants, from the characters of Wakandian Queen and T'halla's Mother, Ramonda (the ever regal Angela Bassett), T'Challa's sister and scientific genius Shuri (Letitia Wright), his lover and Wakandian spy Nakia (Lupito Nyong'o), Dora Milaje General and trusted ally Okoye (Danai Gurira) and leader of the Jabari mountain tribe, M'Baku (Winston Duke), "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is a film, about grief and the grieving process. All of the characters are given space to explore how they process and attempt to reconfigure their place in the world without T'Challa and it is uncanny with how there is an intimacy along with sequences and monologues that touch upon the Shakespearean.
The moments when the film grows quiet, where it feels like we are gaining insight into the actor's otherwise private feelings regarding Chadwick Boseman's passing, we in the audience are also allow to process our own feelings whether regarding what Boseman meant to us or even our mourning for those we have lost in or real lives. It is a daring balancing act that Ryan Coogler honors beautifully and never allows the super heroics and pyrotechnics to overshadow, especially within its opening and closing scenes that so elegant in their poetic humanity.
Further still, and through means of the very representation which always matters (especially in our current era of extremely loud and open racism and social/political violence against communities of color), his sense of metaphor and allegory remains strongly intact and again gives the film a greater purpose than just being about heroes and villains.
Just as with the first film, we explore the relationship between the culture uncolonized Africans and colonized African-Americans who have been disconnected from our own sense of culture, history and legacy. Through Namor and his kingdom, Coogler explores a community of color that has been fully displaced and then forced to reinvent elsewhere, in this case, underneath Wakanda, this creating the metaphorical hierarchy, which itself created the conflict between the two nations and even further, extends from the consequences of T'Challa's nobility by ceasing Wakanda's existence as an isolationist society and an active part of the global community overall.
Coogler then further explores that very Dr. Martin Luther King Jr./Malcom X dichotomy while acknowledging that both men and the philosophies they lived by were exceedingly more complex and nuanced than ever given credit for. Now that T'Challa is gone, how should Wakanda proceed as a nation? What is Black nationalism and therefore, Black militarism? Should two marginalized communities merge and formulate an alliance, in what purpose should such an alliance exist? In one of collaboration and solidarity, aiding in each other's self preservation and ascension? Or in contention and vengeance, always at the ready for revenge filled retribution towards each other (knowing such a conflict only benefits the dominant society) as well as against the dominant society?
Even further still, so richly, and without calling obvious attention to itself, Ryan Cogler's "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is a celebration and tribute to Black women, the pillars of our communities and even society itself as Black women have been pivotal to the preservation of our American democracy time and time and time again. Coogler gives us a tapestry of Black women in royalty, Black Women of Science, Black women as warriors, Black woman as teachers, and all of them function as Black women as LEADERS who are the collective heart and soul of Wakanda (and the film itself) for it does not exist without any of them.
It feels fitting that in a film that stars Wakanda, a mythical world once isolated from the rest of the world, plus the even more mythical landscape of Talocan hidden underneath, Ryan Coogler's "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" should stand above and apart from its Marvel companions. Coogler has gifted us with a film that stands by itself so proudly and in such tremendous reverence to Chadwick Boseman and as it should. It would have been so easy to recast the role and be done with it, and hw mercenary an act that would have been. Thankfully, Coogler, his cast and crew dug as deeply as and properly, especially in a film that surrounds itself with concepts of family, legacy, traditions, and how we honor all those who came before. These artists stood upon the shoulders of the memory of and love for Boseman to give of themselves to make a film that stands in tribute to what he meant to them as well as to us. We grieve alongside our cast and their characters, and in doing so, our tears are shared as we are also thrust into a story that resonates with representation, revolution and spiritual resolution.
There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are good to great Marvel movies and there are...um...not so good Marvel movies. Ryan Coogler's "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a GREAT MOVIE, a towering achievement and one of 2022's very best films.
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