‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ Review: The King is Dead
Review
By YOSEF IBITAYO/Staff Writer
There’s a particular phrase that T’Challa, played by the late Chadwick Boseman, repeats on numerous occasions in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: “In my culture, death is not the end.”
It seems strange that “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is so shrouded by the real-life death of its former lead star over the past two years, both literally and figuratively.
The opening scene depicts T’Challa’s funeral after he dies from an unnamed illness. Letitia Wright’s Shuri and Angela Bassett’s Queen Ramonda, his sister and mother respectively, lead the procession of white-clothed mourners. They follow their king’s coffin, its sable covering embossed with the Black Panther’s mask and the Wakandan salute’s crossed arms.
The mood among the people is somber and solemn.
Unfortunately, the rest of “Wakanda Forever,” directed again by Ryan Coogler, does not evoke such feelings. It feels exploitative and overblown rather than decent and intimate. Only moments that reflect on the grief in Boseman’s passing feel right. Even those feel tainted by the script written by Coogler and Joe Robert Cole.
The film is lumbering and unwieldy from the first scene, bloated and bogged down by the MCU’s requirements for a franchise-connected narrative and poor characterization. Rather than using its 2:41 runtime effectively and efficiently, like 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” at 3:01, the story meanders and stutters, illogically disconnected from its predecessors and itself.
Wakanda has returned to its isolationist stance, leaving it vulnerable to infiltration and attack from the new, yet ancient threat of the Atlantisesque Talokan and its leader, Namor. Moments of genuine meditation on the grief and legacy that Boseman’s T’Challa left behind are few and far between, despite the film book-ending itself with such scenes.
These discordant plot threads reverberate negatively across the film, throwing characters into disarray.
Despite T’Challa’s past statement to the United Nations that “in times of crisis, the wise build bridges while the foolish build barriers,” Ramonda declares to that same organization that “further attempts on our resources will be considered an act of aggression and met with a much steeper response.” A squad of French covert operatives kneels before her.
Shuri spits the word “colonizer” with venom, despite her Anglicized behavior and helping of white folks in 2018’s “Black Panther.” Despite her position as royalty in an African nation, she disrespects her ancestors and brother multiple times. She decries the title and legacy of the Black Panther as “a thing of the past”.
Tenoch Huerta Mejía’s Namor, revered as the “feathered serpent god” K’uk’ulkan of Mayan mythology, says to Shuri, “My ancestors would often say only the most broken people can be great leaders.” In his near half-millennium of life, however, the Talokanil seem to have not made any motions to help the surface world.
Indeed, even Wakanda itself has only been helping the world around it in the past seven years, despite its fictional proximity to nations like Rwanda and Sudan.
The ironies of this illogicality seem to be lost on Coogler, who made his debut with the award-winning “Fruitvale Station” in 2013. Coogler, having built his name and reputation on stories involving inner-city African Americans, fails to pay proper respect to either the true nature of African culture or realities of modern Mayan descendants, as well as to the legacy of Boseman.
Somehow, he condenses the character arc of T’Challa in 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War” – an arc that spanned the whole of the film – into a one-act experience for Shuri to rush through in “Wakanda Forever.” He, whether on his own or directed by Marvel Studios, kills off T’Challa in a manner unbefitting the position or legacy of the character and the man behind him.
While “Fruitvale Station” may have been a short, quiet, and realistic depiction of the last day of Oscar Julius Grant III, “Wakanda Forever” does not live up to the legacy that burdens it.
In 2021’s “What If…?” Season One, in one of his last appearances as T’Challa, Boseman says, “In my culture, death is not the end. They are still with us, as long as we do not forget them.” It is sad that Coogler and Marvel Studios seem to have forgotten the meaning behind Boseman’s words, making what should have been a meditation and celebration on his most famous role just another theme park.
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