Marvel Battles Grief

When Black Panther came out in 2018, it became a cultural watershed moment. The character was introduced in Captain America: Civil War, with Chadwick Boseman as the noble African superhero, and the stand-alone picture was needed to fill in the Marvel Universe in preparation for the Infinity War/Endgame conclusion of Phase Three. No one was expecting much from the movie. Ryan Coogler had made the strong independent film Fruitvale Station, followed by the Rocky reboot Creed, with Michael B. Jordan starring in both films. While Jordan was recognized as one of the up-and-coming actors in Hollywood, his previous foray into the superhero genre was the universally reviled version of The Fantastic Four. Black actors would take all the main roles, with the exception of Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman reprising roles they’d already played in Marvel movies.

The movie became a phenomenon, grossing $700 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide, ranking behind only the first two Avengers movies at that time. Yet its influence went far beyond money, as for the first time a large portion of the population could look at the characters in a super-hero movie and see their own faces. It became an incredibly empowering moment. A sequel was obviously needed. Then tragedy struck with Boseman losing his battle against cancer. Coogler wisely decided to not to recast the character of T’Challa. Instead, just as the family of lovers of cinema had to deal with Boseman’s death, so too the characters in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever must face that loss.

The movie starts with T’Challa’s genius sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) desperately trying to artificially recreate the heart-shaped plant that gave T’Challa his superstrength to save her brother from an unspecified disease. (Killmonger had destroyed the plants in the first movie.) As she feverishly struggles, she hears her mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) telling her to come to her brother’s room. T’Challa is dead. At the funeral, the country mourns him, dressed in white, the color of mourning in many cultures around the world with its message of purity and rebirth.

T’Challa’s death also marks the end of Wakanda’s hopeful participation in the world. A team of mercenaries hired by another country try to take over a Wakandan scientific outpost to steal its vibranium. While they’re stopped by General Okoye (Danai Guria) and the Dora Milaje, Queen Ramonda denounces the incident to the United Nations and withdraws Wakanda from its role in the body.

Unknown to the Wakandans, an American expedition has been using a sensor they developed to search for another source of vibranium. The sensor led them to a deep portion of the ocean, but in short order the search machine is destroyed on the seabed, then the ship tending the sensor is overrun by people coming out of the ocean. The head of the CIA (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) thinks the Wakandans engineered the destruction of the ship.

Ramonda and Shuri go to the side of a river to burn T’Challa’s garments, which signifies the end of their period of mourning. However, they’re interrupted by a man walking out of the water. It is Namor (Tenoch Huerta), the King of the Talokan civilization, a people native to the Yucatan peninsula who’d entered the sea centuries earlier. Namor is a mutant, centuries old, who has the power to fly and can exist outside of the water for long periods, while most Talokanils need a breathing apparatus when they’re out of the water. They have developed a strong, secret culture because they have their own supply of vibranium that they don’t plan to share with the surface world. Namor reveals that the vibranium sensor was developed by Riri (Dominique Thorne), a Wakandan graduate student attending school in Boston, and Namor intends to eliminate her so the search machine can not be recreated. Everett Ross (Freeman) helps Shuri and Okoye locate Riri, while warning them that the Americans are also wanting Riri under their control. Shuri and Okoye head for Boston and manage to reach Riri just before the Americans. They manage to escape with Riri but are then ambushed by Namor and the Talokanils. Namor takes Riri, while Shuri volunteers to accompany them to learn about the Talokan culture. Ramonda removes Okoye from command of the Dora Milaje for her failure in Boston, then heads to Haiti to get help saving Shuri and Riri from Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), who’s been living there ever since the Snap in Avengers: Infinity War.

It is interesting that Wakanda Forever finally introduces Namor to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since he is actually one of the oldest of the Marvel super-heroes. He usually went by the moniker Sub-Mariner since his introduction in the 1930s. He has been both hero and villain because he adheres to his own moral code. In the comic books, he’s interacted with the whole pantheon of characters, including fighting along side Captain America during WWII.

Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole, who’d collaborated on the original Black Panther, have created a much more emotionally complex movie, with the focus on Shuri. The brilliant and bright teen from the first film, who served in many ways as delightful comedic relief, has gone through the lost five years of the Snap, and along with the grief of losing T’Challa, she also bears guilt that she was unable to save him. It’s not the only loss she suffers in the film, leading her to be corrupted by anger and revenge. The story is very much about whether Shuri’s soul can be saved, or if it will be consumed by grief. Wright rises to the challenge of carrying this movie.

Winston Duke returns as M’Baku, though he is no longer the outsider he was in the first film. One familiar face missing this time around is Daniel Kaluuya, who doesn’t return as the tribal leader (and Okoye’s husband) W’Kabi. It is understandable since his career has taken off with his Oscar-winning performance in Judas and the Black Messiah as well as Jordan Peele’s newest sci-fi horror flick, Nope. There is one completely unexpected cameo that fits in perfectly with the themes of Wakanda Forever.

The movie runs almost two and three-quarter hours, but it doesn’t drag. Do stay for the tag mid-way through the end credits. While many of the tags in other films and series of Phase Four have underwhelmed, this one is important to the full arc of Wakanda Forever.

Impossibly Good

The Mission: Impossible film franchise has been a rollercoaster, with as many downs as ups. Part of the reason was its constant switching of directors: Brian de Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams, Brad Bird, and Christopher McQuarrie have each sat in the director’s chair. The switching also applied to the screenplays, penned by a disparate group including David Koepp and Robert Towne, along with Abrams and McQuarrie doing double duty. With Mission: Impossible – Fallout, McQuarrie, who did the fifth movie Rogue Nation, repeats as both director and scribe. He improves on his previous work to give the series its best outing yet.

The plot is a sequel to Rogue Nation, so if you have a chance to watch or re-watch that film before seeing Fallout, it’s helpful. However, Fallout has enough new material that it’s enjoyable even without the primer. The movie opens with a dream sequence where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is marrying his lost love, Julia (Michelle Monaghan). But then the minister performing the ceremony is revealed as Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), the central bad guy of Rogue Nation. It is an unsettling and explosive beginning.

The remnant of Lane’s organization, the Syndicate, is seeking to secure three plutonium bomb cores. Hunt, along with his team of Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), tries to purchase them first, only to have the cores stolen. With a classic ruse, they manage to get a lead on the cores. Their boss, Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin), is about to send the team to Paris to follow that lead when the head of the CIA (Angela Bassett) stops them and insists Hunt take along her agent August Walker (Henry Cavill), who’s been hunting the Syndicate himself. In Paris, Hunt runs into another old friend – Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), the MI-6 agent who helped him capture Lane in Rogue Nation.

Rather than concentrate on the plot, simply let the double and triple crosses whisk you along like a leaf floating through rapids. Each entry in the series has had one jaw-dropping sequence, such as the train-helicopter chase through the Chunnel in the first film, or the scaling of the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol. With Fallout, there are multiple sequences that match that level of intensity. At the same time, McQuarrie leavens the story with a delightful amount of self-deprecating humor.

McQuarrie has effectively become Cruise’s go-to writer/director. They’ve worked together on six projects, the last three with McQuarrie directing as well as writing. (Along with the two Mission: Impossible films, McQuarrie wrote Valkyrie, Jack Reacher, and Edge of Tomorrow; on the down side, McQuarrie wrote and directed The Mummy.) As usual, Cruise did the majority of his own stunts, though one wonders how long the producers will allow the 56-year-old to indulge in that conceit. One relatively simple stunt in Fallout left Cruise with a broken foot that led to an eight-week production shutdown. In all, the film had over 6 months of shooting days, spread out across a full year, which is almost unheard of in the annals of film.

The addition of Cavill helps build the tension in the film. He’s the flint to Cruise’s steel, and sparks fly when they’re together on screen. Bassett is tough as nails in her role, and mesmerizing whenever she appears. With Black Panther, it’s been a very good year for the actress.

McQuarrie’s script manages to go to some dark places while still maintaining a breakneck pace, and the introspective aspects of how Hunt’s work has worn on his soul deepens the characterization. Overall, he’s blended the best elements of the previous five films while avoiding their weaknesses, thereby pulling off his own impossible mission.

A Role Model for Much of the World

After years of establishing a formula, the superhero genre is flexing its muscles. Arguably, The Dark Knight, with its plot twists and its twisted villains – especially Heath Ledger’s Joker – moved the genre to a higher level. For the Marvel Universe, Captain America: The Winter Soldier took a clear-cut hero and threw him into a world filled with shades of gray. Its sequel, Captain America: Civil War – the best Avengers movie so far – hit an even darker tone. On the other side of the scale, Thor: Raganok managed to find a completely fresh voice by looking at the genre with a decidedly cockeyed view. While the DC films following Nolan’s trilogy have been mostly pedestrian, last spring’s Wonder Woman was transcendent, and a healing tonic after the misogyny of both the genre and the previous year’s presidential campaign. Now, Marvel has rocked the genre again with Black Panther, fittingly released during Black History Month.

T’Challa, the king of Wakanda and protector of his people in his guise as Black Panther, was the first Black superhero, appearing with The Fantastic Four in 1966. Two years later he had his own comic book series. From the outset the character was different from others in the Marvel Universe. Rather than accidentally gaining his powers (from gamma radiation or a radio-active spider bite, for example), his power was inherited along with his kingship. Where most superheroes are lone wolfs, Black Panther is firmly planted in a community. His first appearance on screen, in Civil War, was captivating. Where most superheroes blaze hot, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther was a cool blue flame. He spoke softly, but when action was required he sprang into action like, well, like a black panther. But he was, essentially, on his own, except when aligned with Iron Man and others. Now with the stand-alone Black Panther, we see him in his element. The screenplay by director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed) and Jon Robert Cole focuses not just on the hero but on the community that surrounds him, and empowers him.

The movie opens with the story of Wakanda and the Black Panther, related by a father to his son. Five tribes battled over land where a meteorite had deposited vibranium. A warrior ingested a heart-shaped plant that had mutated by exposure to the vibranium. He gained great power, but rather than wiping out the other tribes, he used his strength to unite four of them. One tribe went their own way, but they were allowed to exist peacefully in the land. Powered by the vibranium, the Wakandans developed marvelous technology far beyond the rest of the world. But they hid their advancement from outsiders as European colonizers fought wars against the natives while slavery tore apart the fabric of Africa. Wakanda was an island in a troubled sea. The country became a paradise, guarded from outsiders by an elaborate ruse as well as a far flung network of spies embedded in nations around the world.

Following the death of his father in Civil War, T’Challa is to be formally installed as king, but first he undertakes a mission with Okoye (Danai Gurira), the head of the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s his all-female imperial guard. They retrieve one of Wakanda’s spies, Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), from her mission against modern-day slavers. They return to Wakanda where T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and his sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), wait for them. Shuri is like James Bond’s Q played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After the installation – and an unexpected challenge by the leader of the separatist tribe, M’Baku (Winston Duke) – T’Challa learns that a longtime enemy of Wakanda has surfaced. Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) had stolen a supply of vibranium from Wakanda years earlier and killed several Wakandas while making his escape. Now he’s surfaced after stealing an antiquity that was made from the metal, and is about to sell it in South Korea. T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia head there to capture Klaue and recover the vibranium, but they’re unaware Klaue is working with an American mercenary. Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) is a former US Special Forces warrior, but he also has a special connection both to Wakanda and to T’Challa.

You don’t usually get a superhero story that’s about responsibility, both personal and socially, but that’s what Black Panther revolves around. It also posits what might have happened if Africa had been spared the twin scourges of colonialism and the slave trade. Since Wakanda avoided both, the narrative of slavery or prejudice and injustice that underlies so much of the presentation of blacks on screen, is not the central focus. Think of the recent black stories in the cinema: 12 Years A Slave, The Help, Hidden Figures, Selma, or Chadwick Boseman’s first star turn as Jackie Robinson in 42. Instead of dwelling there, Black Panther asks what is require from the Wakandans who have been so favored. Is it enough to maintain their hidden world, or have they a responsibility to act to help those who’ve been oppressed?

An outstanding aspect of Black Panther is the number of strong female characters in the mix. Gurira is a bad ass of the first order, matched by the dozen warriors she leads. Nyong’o is James Bond cool while Wright is a delight, a wisecracking genius who can hold her own in a battle. Bassett is regal in her role, but you also see the steel spine within her.

The men fare just as well, with Boseman building on his embodiment of the character from Civil War. As with the 007 movies, the quality of the villain often controls the quality of the film, and Jordan’s Killmonger is one of the best ever. His backstory and performance moves Black Panther close to a Shakespearean level; think Henry V on the outside, Richard III inside. A delightful surprise is Duke, a six-foot-six mountain of a man who plays a much more grounded and multi-dimensional character than usually portrayed in the comics. In addition, you have Forest Whittaker, Sterling K. Brown, Martin Freeman, and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), each in important roles. The movie is overflowing with talent, and it uses that talent effectively.

Black Panther has already broken box office records for February and had the fifth biggest opening weekend in movie history. The wonderful aspect of this, though, is the success is more than deserved. The movie not only tells a great story – it gives a large swath of the world a role model for whom to root.