Made in the wake of tragedy, reverberates with the agony of loss, piercing the usually less consequential superhero realm. Like someone going through the stages of grief, Ryan Coogler鈥檚 movie is at turns mournful and rootless, full of rage and blessed with clarity. In the fantastical Marvel Cinematic Universe where mortality is almost always a plaything, wrestling with the genuine article, in , makes for an unusually uncertain, soul-searching kind of blockbuster-scale entertainment.
It鈥檚 a fine line, of course, between paying tribute and trading on it. I did cringe a little when the Marvel logo unspooled with images of Boseman within the letters: Eulogy as branding. That 鈥淏lack Panther,鈥� a cultural phenomenon and a box-office smash, would get a sequel, at all, was momentarily in doubt after Boseman鈥檚 unexpected death from colon cancer in 2020. Radically reworked by Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole, 鈥淲akanda Forever鈥� In its admirably muddled way, it succeeds in both.
Part of resided in its deft channeling of the real world into mythology. It fed centuries of colonialism and exploitation into a big-screen spectacle of identity and resistance. In an invented African nation, Coogler conjured both a fanciful could-have-been history and emotional right-now reality.
鈥淲akanda Forever,鈥� which opens in theaters Thursday, expands on that, weaving in a Latin American perspective with a similar degree of cultural specificity in the introduction of the Aztec-inspired antagonist Namor (Tenoch Huerta), king of the ancient underwater world of Talokan. At the same time, Boseman鈥檚 death is poignantly filtered into the story from the start, beginning with off-screen death throes.
鈥淭ime is running out,鈥� we hear whispered while the screen is still black. Shuri (Letitia Wright), T鈥機halla鈥檚 tech-wiz sister, is frantically trying to craft something in her AI lab to save her brother. But in a moment, their mother, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), informs her: 鈥淵our brother is with the ancestors.鈥� He鈥檚 laid to rest in a glorious, celebratory procession, carried through a multi-tiered channel of white-clad, singing-and-dancing Wakandans. It鈥檚 as stunning as anything Coogler has shot.
After this prologue, 鈥淲akanda Forever鈥� shifts to a year later. 鈥淏lack Panther鈥� took some of the spy-thriller shape of a Bond movie, and the sequel carries that on in a new geopolitical context. At the United Nations, the United States and France are pressuring for access to vibranium, the rare metal that Wakanda has built its empire on. Soon after, a U.S. military expedition discovers vibranium at the bottom of the ocean. But just as they鈥檙e celebrating, a mysterious tribe of blue underwater people, led by Namor, a pointy-eared monarch in green short-shorts with wings on his ankles, ruthlessly wipe out the entire expedition.
You can feel 鈥淲akanda Forever鈥� searching for a way forward in these early scenes. After such an anguished beginning, how much care can we summon for the whereabouts of magical ores? And more blue people? 鈥淎vatar,鈥� you might think, has already laid claim to them. What steadies the film is Bassett. Her awesome presence leads 鈥淲akanda Forever鈥� through grief with a staunch defense of Wakanda that rebalances the newly king-less kingdom. She carries on.
What follows is a globe-trotting plot that draws the film away from perhaps its greatest asset in Wakanda but uncovers new places of latent power among historically exploited people. Shuri and Okoye (Danai Gurira), the Dora Milaje general, travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to seek the student (Dominique Thorne) who created a vibranium detector. In the Washington D.C. area, Wakanda鈥檚 friendly CIA officer (Martin Freeman) experiences new scrutiny from his boss, played by an unannounced comic actress familiar to Beltway politics.
But, mostly, a series of exchanges draw Wakanda and Talokan closer. Are they friends and foes? They are, at least, a captivating tweak to the mythology of Atlantis. Talokan, dark and watery, is no Wakanda, though, and there鈥檚 less hint this time of a larger society. Still, Huerta brings a magnetism to Namor. In many ways, he鈥檚 a corollary to Michael B. Jordan鈥檚 Killmonger, a non-villain whose fury is in many ways justified. His anger appeals to the still-grieving Shuri who finds herself ready, after T鈥機halla鈥檚 death, to 鈥渂urn the world.鈥�
As in the first 鈥淏lack Panther,鈥� the question again hangs in the balance of whether, in a pain-ridden and prejudiced world, rage is the answer. This time, it applies to another powerful civilization, too. "Wakanda Forever,鈥� where the role of Black Panther is passed down, is in more ways than one about the transfer of power.
Wakanda and Talokan are brought together a little haphazardly in conflict, as Namor pressures the African nation to join his brewing surface war. 鈥淲akanda Forever鈥� proceeds as a murky, middle-act film that may ultimately serve as a bridge to future 鈥淏lack Panther鈥� chapters. But along the way, there are countless marvels that Coogler conjures with returning magic-workers like production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter. How the Talokan are flung into the air by whales. The fierce friendliness of Gurira鈥檚 performance. Lupita Nyong鈥檕 is unfortunately less central here, but every time her Nakia (who has been laying low in Haiti) is present, she graces the film.
鈥淲akanda Forever鈥� is overlong, a little unwieldy and somewhat mystifyingly steers toward a climax on a barge in the middle of the Atlantic. But Coogler's fluid command of mixing intimacy with spectacle remains gripping. He extends the rich detail and non-binary complexity that distinguished 鈥淏lack Panther鈥� in sometimes awkward but often thrilling ways. 鈥淲akanda Forever," grappling in the aftermath of loss, ultimately seeks something rare in the battle-ready superhero landscape: Peace.
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,鈥� a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for sequences of strong violence, action and some language. Running time: 161 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
