Marvel Studios wraps up Phase 4 of their film and TV universe rollout with Black Panther : Wakanda Forever, highly anticipated film, since we learn who in turn wears the superhero costume, and therefore which actor has the heavy task of succeeding Chadwick Boseman, who died on August 28, 2020 from cancer he had fought in secret. Boseman’s absence — and the death of the first Black Panther brought to the big screen in 2018 — weighs in on Wakanda Forever from the first to the last scene, giving a seriousness, sometimes a heaviness, rarely seen in the productions of the American studio.
This film is both a tribute to Boseman as well as a 2.5 hour long mourning. The first scene shows us Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), younger sister of King T’Challa who has become Black Panther, in her laboratory, urgently seeking the recipe that would have allowed his brother to survive the disease, in vain. Before the opening credits roll, we are already witnessing T’Challa’s funeral in the streets of Birnin Zana, the Wakandan capital.
The disappearance of T’Challa plunges into uncertainty the African nation with the monopoly on the exploitation of vibranium, a metal stronger and lighter than steel which gives it a technological advantage envied by the powers of the world. While the Wakandans thought their resource was undetectable, we learn that a scientist has developed a technology to locate a hitherto unknown vein, somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic.
The American expedition aiming to exploit this new source of vibranium is then attacked by an unknown force; With Wakanda under suspicion, Queen Mother Ramonda (intense Angela Bassett) is summoned to a UN council, during which she will warn her counterparts of the danger that vibranium can pose in the wrong hands, while assuring them that her people is not involved in the underwater drilling assault.
The most urgent thing now is to question the scientist who developed this vibranium detector; Ramonda will entrust her daughter Shuri and the warrior Okoye (Danai Gurira) with this mission which will lead them to the campus of MIT, in Boston, to discover that it is in fact a precocious 19-year-old scientist named Riri Williams. (she will be in the most spectacular action scenes), which has an intelligence reminiscent of that of the late Tony Stark…
But early in the story, Ramonda and Shuri will receive a visit (unexpected, since Wakanda is supposed to be hidden from the world) from Namor, (amphibious) king of Talokan, a civilization built for centuries at the bottom of the sea — the illustration of this country is particularly successful, as director Ryan Coogler wisely chose to avoid the genre of sci-fi clichés favored by DC Entertainment/Warner in his description of Atlantis for Aquaman (2018).
It appears that the Talokans also mine vibranium. Considering Wakanda as an objective ally, Namor demands that the young scientist be eliminated to preserve the secret of the resource. The king even dreams of confronting the “terrestrial” powers to prevent any colonization of Talokan, which Ramonda cannot accept. A conflict looms between the two nations.
While the first Black Panther (also directed by Coogler) was set almost entirely in Wakanda, this second film spends more time outside the country’s mysterious borders — on the high seas, in the United States, even in Haiti, visited by certain characters. The absence of the magnetic actor that was Boseman will be felt at all levels, but will allow the female characters to take all the place, and those played by Letitia Wright and Danai Gurira to shine, the two actresses offering formidable performances. . It is nonetheless a film that is sometimes long, tearful, heavy and devoid of humor (the CIA agent character played by Martin Freeman, so important in the first film, has become incidental), full of despair, the resolution of the conflict at the heart of the story not occurring without unnecessary losses.