This film carried an immense weight on its shoulders from the day it was announced. A sequel to Black Panther—the flick in which a Black superhero ruled the screens on a mega scale for the first time. The first film went beyond the superhero genre to throw open burning questions about race, representation, colonisation, the prison-industrial complex in the United States and repatriation.
With Wakanda Forever, director Ryan Coogler was under the pressure of living-up to the overwhelming success of the first movie. And then tragedy struck. Chadwick Boseman, who played King T’challa of the fictional African nation Wakanda and wore the mantle of the Panther, passed away in 2020 after battling cancer. For more than two years his fans mourned the loss of an incredibly gifted actor and hero who symbolised Black pride. His loss echoes through the sequel. With extensive re-writes to the script, Wakanda Forever opens to the country grieving the death of their leader and protector after he dies from an undisclosed illness.
Wakanda is grappling with a sudden power vacuum at a time they are the most vulnerable. At the end of Black Panther, the most technologically advanced country in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) came out of their centuries long isolation to reveal who they really were to the world. And now the world, particularly the Western world, all want a piece of vibranium, a fictional metal that places Wakanda light-years ahead of every other nation—even the United States of America.
The women leaders of Wakanda deal with the fallout. It is a testament to Coogler’s politics that even while making a comic-book inspired movie, which is predominantly a genre featuring male heroes, his sequel is carried by the women of Wakanda. How incredible it is to watch a multi-billion dollar film led by Black women. The director explores grief through Shuri (Letitia Wright), T’challa’s prodigious younger sister and head of Wakandan Design, Queen Mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), the erstwhile king’s ex-lover and Wakandan spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and General Okoye (Danai Gurira).There is space for them to break, to figure out how to heal, to be celebrated in a time when dark-skinned women continue to be relegated to the sidelines on screen. The fate of Wakanda rests in their choices and how they decide to fight for their sovereignty.
Political commentary is not new to Coogler. This is his third movie as writer and director. He also produced Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) that told the story of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton’s assassination by the FBI. His debut film was Fruitvale Station (2013). Made in twenty days, starring Michael B Jordan, it described the last twenty hours of Oscar Grant's life until the moment he was shot and murdered by Oakland police in 2009. The director also made eviscerating statements on imperialism in the first Panther movie and he does it again in Wakanda Forever. He introduces on to the big screen one of the oldest comic book heroes in existence: Namor. In the comics, Namor is the leader of the underwater kingdom Atlantis. Since the MCU’s rival DC Extended Universe (DCEU) recently made a movie on Aquaman, who comes from their version of Atlantis, Coogler retconned the name to Talokan. There is a scene when Namor (an impeccable Tenoch Huerta) tells Shuri about the origins of his civilisation that has existed for centuries deep within the Atlantic Ocean.
It began with colonisation of Mayan lands by the Spanish. The colonisers plundered them, they brought the smallpox, unknown to that part of the world until then, killing countless and enslaving even more. A handful survived, saved by a magical herb that grew from vibranium-rich rock, enabling them to hide away from their oppressors in the depths of the ocean. Hide away and thrive, just as Wakanda did while the rest of Africa was robbed, parcelled into pieces and enslaved by Europeans.
Magical herbs and metals that can stop army tanks may sound like the stuff of children’s stories, but in Coogler’s hands they become the material to build a wistful world. A world where some indigenous communities not only survived Western imperialism, but thrived solely through isolationism. Yet, while painting a glorious picture of Afro-futurism in Black Panther in 2018, Coogler introduced an antagonist who questioned that very isolationism.
The praise for Michael B Jordan’s portrayal of Erik Killmonger in the first film was so universal it almost upstaged T’Challa himself. The complexity of his character captivated millions. But Killmonger, born in Oakland, the birthplace of the Black Panther Party and where Coogler himself is from, wasn’t just about a complex character. Killmonger and T’Challa were also about conflicting ideologies.
The flaw Coogler gave to Killmonger, as writer Adam Serwer pointed out at the time, was about his use of imperialist methods specifically, not his choice of armed resistance. The film stood by the furious questions Killmonger asked, though. Why would a technologically advanced nation choose to ignore the oppression of people of African-descent all over the world? Why would it kill and abandon its own people rather than allow any threat to its isolation? Killmonger’s father was a Wakandan prince, N’Jobu (Sterling K Brown) murdered by T’challa’s predecessor, for trying to use vibranium to help Black Americans. Killmonger, eight years old at the time, is abandoned in a small Oakland flat. His rage and ideas about liberation grew from the interlocking violence of his childhood and white power in America.
In Wakanda Forever, Coogler examines the nature of conflict itself. What happens when imperialism continues to threaten the sovereignty of indigenous people? How would colonisers of the past, who plundered resources, drove entire communities to extinction and robbed their lands centuries ago, react today if some of those people survived the onslaught and found a way to protect themselves, Coogler asks. The answer is this film. Wakanda, in the wake of Killmonger’s actions, has exposed itself to the world, and the western world does as it always has, seeking to grab the resources of others for its own enrichment. Just as Killmonger was hardly a villain, Tenoch Huerta’s Namor is simply someone trying to right historical wrongs.
In one scene, the director of the CIA, played with bone-chilling precision by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is asked “What would we do, if the US was the only nation on earth to have vibranium?” Her response, “Oh, I dream of that,” delivered with the actor savouring each word, is Coogler’s indictment of white America. Imperialism, he points out, never went away. It lives in the many arms of the state from its intelligence networks to its military exceptionalism to its blithe entitlement to another country’s resources.
What guts you about Wakanda Forever is that neither Talokan nor Wakanda are in the wrong here. Yet, they’re forced to go to war with each other, due to the machinations of the US. The question really is, then: who is the villain in this movie? In the comics both fictional countries have come to blows several times. Coogler leans into these stories. For example, comic book fans watching Wakanda Forever will recall moments from the 2012 book Avenger Vs X-Men in several key scenes. It’s Coogler’s ability to draw from these for his visualisations and yet present a story so reflective of our times, that gives you the answer to what the director sees as genuine villainy: imperialism.
For a film about the character of Black Panther, it takes its time to arrive at the cat-costumed hero and to who will wear the mantle after T’Challa’s death. Letitia Wright’s Shuri, who has the majority of the screen time, takes your breath away as she finds herself pulled in different directions by her grief, her work and the sudden threat of invasion. Angela Bassett, Danai Guerira and Lupita Nyong’o, reprise their roles so masterfully it is impossible not to be affected by each emotion that tears at them. Wakanda Forever also introduces another Black comic book character, long overdue, Riri Williams, who goes by the moniker Iron Heart. If Dominique Thorne charmed you in her portrayal of the highly intelligent young hero, Marvel Studios recently announced an upcoming series on her.
For those of us still mourning Chadwick Boseman’s passing, Rihanna’s hauntingly beautiful ‘Lift Me Up’ gives us a chance to say our goodbyes as the credits roll.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever released in theatres across the world on November 11