Directed by Ryan Coogler
Written by Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole
Starring Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Winston Duke, Lupita N’yongo
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 41 minutes
In theaters November 11

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

“Wakanda will no longer watch from the shadows. We cannot. We must not.” Such was the promise of King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) at the end of 2018’s Black Panther. An offer to share Wakandan vibranium-powered technology with the world was T’Challa’s reaction to the challenge Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) posed to the Wakandan status quo. Along with encouragement from his ex, Nakia (Lupita N’yongo), T’Challa aims for a path to liberation from the established world order via peaceful influence, rather than maintain their tradition of secrecy. Derailed by Thanos (Josh Brolin), “The Blip,” and the sudden death of T’Challa, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a grief-forged geopolitical thriller that centers its characters’ emotional states.

Wakanda Forever opens in medias res as Shuri (Letitia Wright) is frantically working on artificially recreating the heart-shaped herb that gives the Black Panther their powers. T’Challa is dying, and since Killmonger burned the existing plants in the first movie, it no longer exists naturally. Of course, this is the way Ryan Coogler is handling the real-life passing of Chadwick Boseman, and the funeral sequence immediately following the frantic opening is beautiful and moving. Boseman’s death from colon cancer was going to loom over this film regardless. By making grief the central motif of the story, it not only pays homage to Boseman’s memory, but doesn’t shortchange the emotional connection between actor and audience. While there are some who dismiss the importance of casting in these intellectual property exercises, that isn’t true, especially for audiences who don’t feel the need to be Marvel completists. Black Panther was a phenomenon not because of its place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), but because its story and cast resonate so deeply around the world. In his too-short time as a leading man, Boseman left an indelible mark not only on the MCU, but on movies as a whole. 

This focus on grief makes Wakanda Forever one of the most emotionally raw blockbusters ever. Everything in the film springs from trying to overcome loss, both directly in the text and in the subtext. The main focus of this is Shuri. Losing her brother to an illness she couldn’t cure weighs on her. She has a genius level-intellect, a singular command of Wakandan technology and science, and yet she was unable to save him. It makes her angry, unable to move beyond missing him. “I want the world to burn,” she says to Ramonda (Angela Bassett). All of the characters are carrying pain from the loss of T’Challa, but Letitia Wright embodies the raw core of these emotions. The competing forces of sadness and anger swirl inside her,  but Wright doesn’t show those feelings on the surface in every scene. Suri still laughs and smiles, but those all float atop her churning insides, and Wright conveys them perfectly in each moment.

Force of nature Angela Bassett also brings her full power to bear. Ramonda has taken on the role of ruling monarch of Wakanda, losing her husband (as seen in Captain America: Civil War) and her son have made her channel her energies into her role as queen. She is the one appearing at the United Nations to represent Wakanda. She firmly stands her ground on the world stage, balancing her late husband’s desire to keep Wakanda safe from other world powers and her son’s call for their nation to help the world. As a leader she is both shrewd and perceptive, though her losses have forged her resolve to be even harder than before. Coogler allows Bassett to have both big scenes where she is soaking up all of the attention (good and bad) in the room, and smaller scenes. In public, her hair is hidden away under beautiful fashion statements, but in private we see her stunning white curls unfurl and her exhaustion comes to the surface as well. Bassett captures this dichotomy in her performance. Ramonda is tired of her grief, of making herself strong when she doesn’t feel it. When she is alone, or just with her daughter, there is an authentic vulnerability on display that is so rare in these gigantic movies. Having them here provides an even more powerful contrast to the bombast in other scenes and underscores the emotional depth Coogler is trying to achieve. 

With Wakanda, and its massive vibranium lode revealed to the world, the world is on the hunt for more, an old school dig-it-out-of-the-ground arms race. The United States efforts take them to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where the mission is attacked by mysterious people. The CIA blames Wakanda. But Namor (Tenoch Huerta) reveals himself to Ramonda and Shuri as behind the attack. He is the king of an underwater civilization based in a city called Talokan, descendants of pre-Columbian Mesoamericans that have been hidden in the ocean for hundreds of years. This is a change from Namor’s Atlantis-based comics origin (perhaps to distance this from Aquaman) but adds to the anticolonial themes running throughout Ryan Coogler’s MCU work. The people of Talokan moved underwater in direct response to Spanish conquistadors, and remain unconquered and hidden, very similar to Wakanda. 

If Shuri wants to burn the world, Namor wants to drown it. We get a glimpse of this with Talokan’s water-based vibranium weapons. In the movie’s most thrilling sequence, an incursion by Namor and his guard into Wakanda shows the power of water. Metaphorically, water can often represent cleansing, or birth/renewal. Coogler shows that with a flashback to Namor’s birth, but the power of water as a destructive force powerfully evokes the images of Hurricane Katrina as Wakanda scrambles to withstand an artificial flood that its people never expected. Wakanda serves as a counternarrative to the history of Black people around the world, a literalized, shining “city on a hill” as an inversion of white American political rhetoric. And seeing it attacked by a mirror image of itself, driven to that point as a reaction to global colonial forces is a bold reminder that even these fantasies can’t exist without the influence of the outside world. 

Caught in the middle of this conflict is not only the balance of power in the world, but also Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne). An MIT student who has inadvertently helped the CIA with her research, she is as much of a prodigy as Shuri, and allows Coogler to bring the American Black experience into the story as foil for the Wakandan princess. Wakanda Forever is about Shuri trying to find her place in the world as well as process her loss. Riri’s pure love of technology and excitement represent the path that Shuri was on when she wasn’t on the path to become queen. Namor, on the other hand, offers a glimpse of the power behind a throne and the ability to reshape the world through force. The temptation he represents is palpable. Tenoch Huerta captures the coldness of the aquatic anti-hero. Like Killmonger, his emotions make him worthy of sympathy, but do his ends justify his means? Namor is a man hardened by centuries of observing humans, seeing them choosing to exploit each other over and over. He simply wants to level the playing field. 

Wakanda Forever feels bold in the way that emotionality is centered in every storyline and character arc (of which there are many), given a movie of this scale. The tone of righteous anger as well as grief is a rare mode for a blockbuster, and adds to the intensity throughout. For all of its world-ending threats, the MCU rarely feels this epic in scope.  Everything here hinges on individual character choices, making the conflicts within relatable and immediate. Also helping deliver on the film’s intensity are both the shot compositions and design work, which stand above almost all of the other entries in this sprawling franchise. Combined with a captivating and multi-faceted score, Ryan Coogler has created another movie that is as engrossing as much as it is a statement of worldview.