As a comic book fan since childhood, it is hard to express just how much I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although it is occasionally shaky the MCU has done what many of us thought impossible, take a comic book universe and bring it to live-action life.
It did this by respecting the artists and writers who built the thing and by building a fictional world that chooses to make its heroes and villains realistic, where possible, but is just as willing to throw out realism when necessary.
So what we get is a best-of-both-worlds situation where the characters look and act right, there are consequences to their actions and the amazing visuals that look stunning on a comic page are brought to life.
The MCU doesn’t blink at giving you a celestial, or Thanos, or Asgard. And after an early emphasis to explain away everything with science the MCU wisely pivoted to do, just what the comics do, and say that magic, gods, monsters, and a host of other things simply exist in the world and that no explanation is needed.
It’s also a place, for me at least, full of joy and hope. Maybe the last decade or so has been great for you. I certainly wish you blessings. But for me, these have been trying times. And I got through them with my faith, my family, and, honestly, a Marvel movie a couple of times each year.
These things are fun and I have fun every time I go to one.
And if you were to ask me, what am I most looking forward to about the MCU I would tell you that it is an organic and changing thing. Because these are real actors who age and at times decide to move on Kevin Feige and the Marvel team face choices every few years.
What it seems like they have chosen, and what makes it riveting, is that the heroes of this world, unlike the comics) will grow old and die and be replaced by new characters.
Marvel sets Thanos up in Avengers and then wisely didn’t pay it off until Infinity War and Endgame 7 years later. Compare that with the fact that Batman has faced off with the Joker and the Riddler twice since the 1990s and will likely battle him again before Matt Reeves is done with the caped crusader.
And unless the James Gunn administration changes things, Bruce Wayne will forever be about 30 and forever fighting the same three or four villains.
Meanwhile, unless the MCU really backtracks, Tony Stark is dead, Steve Rogers’s story is probably done and I fully expect Peter Parker to be replaced by Miles Morales before the 2020s end. Here’s hoping Sony understands why that’s a great thing and plays along.
And yet, the thing that makes me the most excited about the MCU, was what made Black Panther: Wakanda Forever a radically different experience than most Marvel movies. In the real world, the great Chadwick Boseman died from cancer. That left Ryan Coogler considering how to move a movie franchise forward without the title character. Coogler said he honestly considered not making a sequel and also leaving his career behind as well. Such was the pain he felt after losing his friend.
What he ultimately decided was that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would be made as a tribute to Boseman and that in the fictional world of the MCU Boseman’s character, T’Challa, will be dead as the movie opens.
What we have then, as a viewer, is a Marvel movie that is also a wake for a beloved actor and a way for Marvel to continue moving the fictional world of Wakanda forward in its own group of movies and television shows.
It’s heavy man. It’s a lot for any movie to carry much less a movie with superhero shenanigans that must be employed.
T’Challa’s kid sister Shuri, played with heart and humor by Letitia Wright, essentially goes through the five stages of grief on screen. The movie introduces both Ironheart, (Dominique Thorne) a new genius with a supersuit in the Iron Man mold, and Namor, who is played by Tenoch Huerta as something more than a supervillain.
This line, performed by the great Winston Duke as M’Baku, rang in my head all weekend: His people do not call him general or king. They call him K’uk’ulkan, the feather serpent god. Killing him will risk eternal war.
If you want to know what kind of comic book person I am, after I cried for a while at the first Wakanda Forever trailer I spotted that Namor has wings on his ankles, just as he does in the comics. And I was both excited and nervous. Because how can a comic book concept as weird as wings on ankles look good on screen?
If Sony or Fox had introduced Namor in the bad old days the very first thing to go would have been the ankle wings.
But the MCU embraces comics and finds a way, most of the time, to make these things fly.
The wings didn’t just work in Wakanda Forever they were both amazing and terrifying. They made him, in flight, seem like a rattlesnake ready to strike at any given moment. He was that serpent god.
Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda once again shows you who she is and how wonderful she can be in any role. Danai Gurira once again steals nearly every scene with just a look.
Anyway, this film hit its targets and managed to do much more than your average movie. There were several subplots that could have been avoided. I like seeing Martin Freeman in anything but his Everett Ross had nothing to do except set up future things.
Most of the time I leave a Marvel movie jazzed about what I’ve seen and excited about what is to come. This time, of course, was a much different experience.
I left the theater feeling at least some of the grief that Coogler, Wright, and Boseman’s friends and co-workers feel. This is what the filmmakers intended. It’s a stirring tribute to Boseman and it resonates with real emotion.
Those of us who grieve know that the pain endures.
But joy comes in the morning.
Dark Highways 