Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

In the wake of King T’Challa’s death, his mother, the Queen Ramonda, and his genius inventor sister, Shuri, along with M'Baku, Okoye and the Dora Milaje, as well as the young genius inventor from America, Riri Williams, must fight to protect Wakanda from greedy world powers who believe the African nation to now be vulnerable. As the Wakandans struggle to find their footing in this sudden new world, a new threat announces itself, one long hidden beneath the world’s oceans, a place with more in common with Wakanda than not, but ruled by a leader who might be even more powerful than the Black Panther…

Right off the bat, I’ll just admit that I’m totally in the bag for this film. I’m a long time comic nerd, with most of that time being a Marvelhead, and the character of the Black Panther was a very, very early favorite of mine, dating all the way back to Contest of Champions #3, vol. 1, originally published in May of 1982…

So, if you’re not a big nerd like me, or if you’re just generally butthurt about Marvel movies for whatever tedious reason you’ve adopted as your new personality… Feel free to fuck off now.

Because me? I loved it. It was a blast.

Obviously, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was saddled with a heavy burden before the film even started… the death of the incredibly talented and charismatic Chadwick Boseman. Not only was his untimely passing a tragedy for his family and friends, but it also meant a Page One rewrite for the movie.

BUT…

Comics in general have a long-standing tradition of passing the mantle of the hero from one person to the next, and the Black Panther specifically has a precedent for this in the comics, so…

But whether or not a mechanism to facilitate this exists, it’s still a tall order. Chadwick left some really big shoes to fill after Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame, and especially the first Black Panther film, and I’m still not sure if Letitia Wright has the same kind of charisma, or the same level of talent that Chadwick Boseman did, but all things considered, the film handles the transfer well.

In fact, it’s basically the film’s plot.

That, and the global ramifications of a small African country possessed of world-changing technology, suddenly finding itself without its protector, and beset on all sides by the hungry knives of greedy colonial powers (America), only to find itself in direct conflict with another country feeling a similar threat from those same colonial knives, the underwater kingdom of Talokan (Atlantis, in the comics), which is ruled by their own powerful protector, Namor.

In the film, Namor is also known as Ku’kul’kan “The Feathered Serpent” due to the Atlanteans’ MesoAmerican roots in the MCU, but those few small adaptation changes aside, he is still definitely Namor, the Submariner, the powerful, the stubborn, and the arrogant “Imperius Rex” of Atlantis, not to mention Marvel Comics’ first character, who made his official debut in 1939, in Marvel Comics #1, back when Marvel Comics was known as Timely Comics.

Yes, the original Human Torch also debuted in that issue, As did Ka-Zar and the Angel, but Namor appeared months earlier in a small print comic called Motion Picture Funnies Weekly… so, he was still first.

Anyway, this is a Marvel movie.

It’s one of the better Marvel movies, but not one of the best. Yes, it’s a Marvel Movie with a cast almost entirely made up of women and People of Color, which is cool, but it’s still a Marvel Movie. It’s been 15 years. There’s 30 plus films now, and a half dozen or so TV shows, so you should know what that means, and whether or not you like it.

It’s also fair to say that this film isn’t perfect.

The introduction of Riri is cool. She’s an awesome character. Ironheart is a terrible name, but that’s okay, sometimes the whole superhero nom de plume is an evolving process. You could make the argument that technically, while she is the catalyst for the film’s whole conflict, it’s the kind of catalyst that could have been anything really. It’s also fair to point out that Riri was obviously included more to expand the MCU, then it was because her introduction is actually important to this particular story. But… in a movie about continuing legacy, and the responsibility that comes with the passing of the hero’s mantle, there is maybe no other character where this theme is relevant, especially in the world of the MCU.

Also, while the big end fight between Shuri and Namor was great, and thematically important, the rest of the battle just felt like a hedge-podge of nonsense in a setting that made even less sense, all of which generally seemed to lack context and stakes. I think it was a distraction thing, if I remember right, but… whatever… it’s four-color fisticuffs, whatta ya’ gonna do? I will say that finding out the apparent correct way to pronounce Haiti in a superhero film felt like a microcosm of what it’s like to live in this world with an American education: “Huh, I guess I was always taught the wrong way… again… what a surprise.”

Anyway, in the end, if you like these kinds of films, you should love this one. It was great fun, it looked awesome, and it had a lot of cool shit in it.

Get ‘em, King.