Black Panther returns to the cinema this Wednesday in a new film that pays tribute to its interpreter, Chadwick Boseman, who died two years ago from colon cancer. The sudden disappearance of him, at only 43 years old, had shocked the world in August 2020. The public is likely to be very excited once again to discover in theaters Wakanda Black Panther Foreverimagined by the Marvel studio as a mausoleum for a comedian considered one of the most brilliant actors of his generation.
His death did not compromise this second part, in which the actor’s memory is omnipresent, thanks to various flashbacks. The disastrous fate of T’challa/Black Panther is evoked from the opening seconds. Suffering from an incurable disease, he dies while his sister Shuri tries to use his advanced technology to save his life. Various scenes follow showing the character’s burial. Serious, solemn and moving scenes, rare in Marvel productions.
A fitting sendoff for one of the MCU’s most iconic characters. For the occasion, Marvel has changed its traditional red logo for a purple one. And he accompanied it with images of Chadwick Boseman. The musical theme, which always accompanies the logo, has also been removed, thus offering the public a minute of silence, before the story begins.
The film takes place a year after T’challa’s death and evokes the difficult mourning of his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), who became queen of Wakanda, and his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright). In the center of Wakanda Black Panther Foreverthe two women fight to take on the United States and France, willing to do anything to obtain Wakanda’s precious resource, vibranium.
Mother and daughter also face the appearance of the Talokan, an underwater people endowed with great military power and guided by a charismatic leader, Narmor (Huerta Mejía). In their fight, they are aided by warrior Okoye (Danai Gurira) and genius inventor Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who has built an Iron Man-style armor.
Script rewrite and tribute song
The unexpected death of Chadwick Boseman forced director Ryan Coogler to revise his script. In an interview with variety, confided that he had already planned, in his original script, to confront T’challa with pain. She disappeared for five years with half of humanity after Thanos snapped his finger at her (in Avengers: Infinity War), he would have faced the vertigo of those lost years.
“I should have been in mourning for lost time,” Ryan Coogler summed up in an interview with the Dexerto site. “Being a man with so many responsibilities and coming back after a five-year absence, that was the theme of the movie.”
This dimension is always present in the film, which develops throughout – between two scenes that announce spin-offs – the idea of Shuri’s impossible duel. “Shuri, every day of her life, she had her brother by her side. When she loses him (…), she loses a part of herself,” Ryan Coogler told a press conference. . “The worst nightmare you can have is losing the people you love. You feel disarmed, lost.”
The shooting took place in this atmosphere of contemplation. Before filming began, the crew visited Chadwick Boseman’s grave. “We were able to give him love, feel his spirit and pay tribute to him before filming something,” said the hollywood reporter Angela Bassett.
In the United States, the promotional campaign revolves entirely around the memory of Chadwick Boseman. Signed Rihanna, Lift me up, the soundtrack’s title song, which accompanies the end credits, is a tribute to the comedian. “I wanted to write a title that conveyed the emotion we feel when we think about the people we have lost,” he composer Tems said in a press release.
“I tried to imagine how I would feel if I could sing for them now and express how much I miss them.”
morbid look promotion
The Boseman family also participated in the promotion. In early November, Simone Ledward Boseman, the actor’s widow, conceded an exclusive interview with ABC (channel belonging to the Walt Disney company) to evoke the memory of the actor.
At the premiere, Ryan Coogler wore a pendant around his neck with a portrait of Chadwick Boseman. A jewel made especially for this occasion, so that the late actor is always close to him, trusted the set of Good morning america (another ABC flagship show).
Mourning is omnipresent in this promotional campaign, even in the selected extracts. One of the scenes broadcast on social networks thus shows a discussion on this subject between the warrior Okoye and Nakia, T’challa’s widow.
Inevitably, the promotion took on a morbid air. Especially when this summer Marvel posted on Chadwick Boseman’s Twitter account the first trailer for Wakanda Black Panther Forever. An instrumentalization that went down badly among fans (the second trailer was not released on its own), but that shows how Chadwick Boseman is now inseparable from the character in the collective imagination.
This short-career actor will also be remembered as Marvel’s black hero. A breakthrough coupled with a commercial success, the Black Panther of 2018 generating no less than $1.34 billion in revenue. To the point of inspiring competition in an American film industry that is stepping up its efforts to make more room for diversity.
Source: BFM TV
