Film review : Wakanda Forever (yes, spoilers)

I'm not a film critic at all. That's not going to stop me from reflecting on Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever (WF). And yes, I'm going to spoil the film, so if you intend to watch it, file this post away and come back another day.

Let me contextualise WF by talking about the first Black Panther (BP) movie. BP was a huge sensation for a number of reasons - (i) it was a great MCU film, (ii) it portrayed Wakanda, an African nation that had never suffered the boot or the collar of colonisation and slavery, (iii) it portrayed strong, confident Black masculinity, (iv) it had an amazing lead actor, (v) alongside numerous other strong actors, especially women. I really enjoyed BP, and my reading and listening to African-American writers and speakers this last year has helped me to appreciate it even more (please don't think that I think I have any expertise about this area, I just have an interest and a willingness to listen and learn).

In many ways Wakanda Forever is a film about grief. And that is the first thing that makes it so powerful and moving. The sudden and tragic death of Chadwick Boseman in 2020 from colon cancer (a condition diagnosed in 2016 and concealed even as he acted) was itself a loss. The film opens with this - T'Challa dying off screen, as his sister Shuri frantically attempts to create a cure, futile in the end; then the grief of the royal family, the funeral, and the Marvel credits play without any music, interspliced with scenes and footage of Boseman himself. This was a fitting way to honour his legacy, and intertwined the grief of real life people with those on-screen. I cried.

So, when I say that this is a film about grief, it's a film that from the outset is overshadowed by loss and this shadow is long. You feel it, because you know that Boseman was to return for a second BP film, they had written a complete script, and none of the writers, producers, or cast knew that he was sick. The whole franchise had to deal with his sudden death, even as the broader world of fans did, and it reflects something very real world too - the all too frequent death of young Black men. This makes it feel so raw, lives cut short so suddenly.

[It is sadly apt that today is Boseman’s birthday]

Also, I'm a lot more sensitive these days; I cry more easily, and I feel a lot of compassion and sympathetic grief at death, loss, and others' suffering. That's why I cried even before we got to the opening credits; thankfully I am not the only one. But after the credits we are in a whole new world, a world shaped by T'Challa's absence. That's the second thing that makes this a film about grief. His absence is a presence in the film. We are in a world of Black women left to pick up the pieces of life when young Black men die prematurely.

And these are strong women, let's be clear. Women, rightly, shine in this film. For example, we move quickly into seeing Queen Ramonda taking world leaders to task, as we're introduced the framing of the major plot - with T'Challa gone as Wakanda's protector, the nations of the world want vibranium for themselves, and for their military.

This is how we are drawn into the antagonist (or, really, anti-hero) of the film, Namor. If Wakanda is the most powerful nation on earth because of vibranium, we need a rival to match. Namor is a superhuman king who leads a race of people living underwater, who escaped the European colonisation of (now-)Mexico, via the transformation of a special herb, and they too are a powerful nation due to massive amounts of vibranium. They too crave protection from a hostile world, yet have the power to destroy it..

In introducing essentially a hidden powerful nation with native kind-of-Mayans, the MCU de-centers whiteness from this film's narrative. There are minimal interactions with white characters, who are used primarily as foils, and to tie the film into the broader MCU. But this is a film *about* Black and Brown people, as it should be. Though, I have heard and think there are some criticisms to be made about the way the film uses Mesoamericans as a culture - the indigenous inhabitants of Mexico, of the Yucatan in particular, did not simply get wiped out, they didn't disappear, they persisted and are with us to this day. There is a bit of erasure going on here. At the same time, its portrayal of this culture has been praised, and Tenoch Heurta (Namor's actor) has spoken proudly and positively of the representation here.

If my earlier spoiler alert wasn't enough, here's one more before I spoil major plot points. Namor, in his aggressive protectionism of his own people, attacks Wakanda directly and kills the Queen. Now we are left with Princess Shuri, consumed with grief and rage. Everyone in her family has died, and she has been powerless to prevent it , and powerless to fix it. Here the film takes us further into the depths of grief, and the way it can wreak havoc on us. Shuri, mirroring Namor, is more than willing to burn the world in her grief.

Then we get a typical "low point of the film, get it together montage" involving developing technology, devising a plan, and Shuri finally synthesising the heart-shaped herb, the key to the Black Panther's power. Shuri takes the concoction, and despite her disbelief in the ancestor realm, ends up there, not faced with the welcome and assurance of her family, but instead Killmonger.

Killmonger is the perfect choice here. In the first film he presents a real alternative - how could Wakanda have kept silent and watched the enslaving and exploitation of African and Black lives throughout history, and done nothing? Killmonger's assumption of the throne is legitimate, and his plan to answer violence with violence is entirely understandable and sympathetic. While wrong, his critical stance is warranted. And so when he turns up and confronts Shuri, we see exactly how Shuri's grief is creating a vengeful weapon with no limits.

The film moves on inexorably to its climactic show-down, which is tempered by the fact that Namor's position is both incredibly understandable and sympathetic too, *and* it's a kind of mirror to Shuri and Wakanda. The inevitable plot pivot comes in that the only way that Shuri, as the new Black Panther, can save her people is by choosing mercy over wrath. Grief transformed in mercy, not anger, is the path to peace.

Now, if I've spoiled the film for you, I'm now going to spoil the post-credits bonus scene. So just be warned already. Earlier in the film we meet Nakia, T'Challa's unresolved love interest. She wasn't at the funeral which itself speaks to the depths and power of grief. She's been in Haiti, running a school or orphanage or something. She does play a role earlier in the film; I can't help but think that the choice of Haiti is layered in meaning, as the only country in the Americas founded by a successful slave revolt, and this is reinforced by the post-credits scene, where we see Shuri finally able to mourn T'Challa, and we are introduced to Nakia's and T'Challa's son, also named T’Challa and Toussaint. This final scene is meant to give us some closure, closure as Shuri finally mourns, closure as we understand Nakia better, and the sense of hope, in T'Challa's son and a new generation.

Is this a good film? Yes. Is it a great film? yes... but not entirely. I think we need to be willing to have a multifaceted evaluation of films in order to answer this. WF is the best MCU film of this phase, the best since Endgame. It is a well-made film, with strong performances, a strong script, and it is a heavy hitter. But all of the MCU films suffer from the fact that it is a mega-franchise and there is an inevitable sameness, and formulaic approach, that drives them. I think WF does manage to rise above this a little, for a few reasons. Firstly, one of the great faults of the comic world is the impermanence of death. The way that the Blip was reversed in Endgame and basically 'no real consequences for failure or death' played out, was mitigated by the loss of some major figures, but WF takes this to a new level. T'Challa dies from a disease, off-screen, with no heroism. Secondly, representation in film, and Hollywood, does matter. So both BP and WF had significant weight to bear as films featuring, led by, and holding up Black people, as well as people of colour. WF continues BPs legacy in this regard, and does it admirably. Thirdly, I think this is, for an MCU film, a good one! And its handling of grief is really profound. Now, is this art cinema? Is this high-culture film? No, of course not. But not all films have to be. And that's okay, not every cultural artefact we consume has to be the most rarefied art form.

PS. After I wrote this, one of my favourite podcasts to which I still listen did a Wakanda Forever episode. The podcast is Truth’s Table, with their bonus episode on Wakanda Forever, which is a great extended analysis and picks up a lot of points I don’t.

PPS. I’ve heard some reasonable critique of the choice to include a secret child between T’Challa and Nakia, which I’m inclined to take on board. It doesn’t at all fit their characters, and the idea of raising T’Challa junior outside Wakanda doesn’t fit at all, it’s exactly the kind of problem that created Killmonger.

PPPS. I wrote most of this post a couple of weeks ago, and I still choke up when I hear others talking about the Boseman funeral-sequence. I confess, I never really understood before how people could get upset at the death of celebrities, people they never met nor had a real connection to. But, now I think I do.