Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

On February 17 of 2018, the day after Black Panther was released, I went to see it in theaters with my family. At first, I was interested in seeing this movie because I admittedly enjoy Marvel movies with their beautiful graphics, intense fighting scenes, and witty humor meddled into it. Walking out of the theater after watching Black Panther, I realized there was much more significance than I had realized to the movie and its legacy rather than what everyone initially expects from your usual Marvel movie. It was the first ever majority black casting to a Marvel movie I had never seen before, and was the first big-budget superhero movie( its budget reaching 200 million USD) with a black director and a black hero intertwined. Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever both effectively break the stereotype and misconception that black-driven movies cannot make so much money. The cultural volume both movies add creates the representation that most U.S movies used to lack, and nowadays representation is progressing slowly, but surely. 

Four years later after entering the same theater I had seen Black Panther in, I was not expecting any less from Ryan Coogler, the 36 year old director for both movies. In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, in the wake of King T’Challa’s death, Shuri (Letitia Wright) - the epitome of a scientific wizard, struggles to fill in her deceased brother T’Challa’s (Chadwick Boseman) shoes. She is given this incredibly strenuous role after her mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) passes away. Shuri is forced to face an entire nation called Talokan (Mesoamerican and Mayan representative) after they request for an American scientist Riri (Dominique Thorne) to be brought to them after it is found she designed a vibranium-detecting machine.

  I see Black Panther: Wakanda forever as an emotional homage. Shuri is constantly battling with her place in Wakanda and her brother’s passing, while trying her hardest to maintain a grieving nation without their recently deceased ruler. The movie effectively brings the audience through a well-driven plot, mourning a vital character and influential actor Chadwhick Boseman who passed on August 28, 2020. Black Panther:Wakanda Forever perfectly balances important plot points, numerous amounts of representation; managing to grieve a person who was the leading role in a movie that broke stereotypes and expectations. The cinematography, cultural clothing and vast languages spoken gave me a feeling I do not remember feeling while watching other movies at all. It was all different and made me truly feel and realize there is so much more taken into consideration with representing other cultures that I do not usually get to see in movies. All peoples are sacred and deserve to be celebrated.

While I generally enjoyed the movie and could not keep my eyes off the screen, some points of the movie felt too busy - especially the plot. There were a lot of characters performing different tasks, and the switch between the characters felt too random at times. Understandably, Coogler tries to pay tribute to Boseman while simultaneously trying to establish essential events to progress the story. There were a lot of elements to bring into the film, so no wonder why it created this effect.

Though the plot feels busy and sometimes at odds with the movie, the message is sent. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever gives the ideas and lessons that everyone deals with grief differently, and how a nation can move forward in time of hardship.