There’s a scene in Black Panther where Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), after appearing to kill the title character, slowly approaches the throne of Wakanda to claim the kingdom that he believes is rightfully his. The shot begins upside down, slowly turning rightside up as Kilmonger approaches the throne, as tribal vocals slowly give way to a hip-hop beat. It’s a memorable scene partly because it’s effective – the status quo in Wakanda has been turned upside down, and a foreigner has penetrated this secretive, tradition-bound culture. It’s also memorable because it’s unlike any scene in a MCU film before or after it. Other Marvel films have memorable visuals, sure, but few feature this kind of formal experimentation, opting instead to play it straight for fear of turning off or confusing its massive audience.

This is what makes Black Panther, still the only MCU entry to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, not only memorable, but beloved as well. Even though Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa was already introduced in Captain America: Civil War, the world of Black Panther feels original and self-contained, and its climactic battle scene – essentially a civil war between Wakandans who stayed loyal to T’Challa and those who feel obliged to defend Killmonger – eschewed the giant portal and busted up city tropes from the previous MCU films. If there’s something plastic and uncanny about most MCU films (and I say this as a fan), there was something lively and organic about Black Panther that allowed it to not only stand on its own, but thrive as a cultural phenomenon separate from the other films under the Marvel umbrella. 

It’s with these high expectations that audiences enter Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the long awaited sequel to the original film and Marvel’s big Christmas movie season centerpiece. What makes the film even more intriguing is also what makes it a bit melancholy. Boseman passed away in August 2020 after a long but private bout with colon cancer, leaving Wakanda Forever without its star. How will this seemingly invincible movie-making juggernaut deal with its first real actor related hiccup? And who will become the next Black Panther? At the risk of sounding callous, the prospect of watching Coogler, who’s emerged as one of the most interesting blockbuster filmmakers in recent years, grapple with this uncertainty added a sense of mystique to an MCU for what felt like the first time in years.

Unfortunately, in Wakanda Forever, we don’t really get to see Coogler deal with these storytelling challenges. Instead, we get to see Marvel deal with them, and the product is a muddled tug-of-war between Coogler’s vision and the company’s corporate obligations. What this film should be – a tribute to Boseman, a story of civilizations clashing, a rumination on loss and revenge – is constantly derailed by what Marvel wants it to be – namely, another advertisement for its ever expanding catalog of films and TV shows. It’s not a bad film but it is clunky and bloated and, worst of all, gives us a few glimpses of its squandered potential. 

Wakanda Forever opens with Shuri (Letitia Wright), T’Challa’s sister, scrambling to find a cure for an unidentified illness that threatens T’Challa’s life, trying to recreate the healing properties of the heart-shaped herbs that were destroyed by Killmonger in the previous film. As you can probably guess, T’Challa dies, and he and Shuri’s mother Ramonda takes the throne during a tumultuous time for Wakanda. It turns out that the United States and France are pretty upset that the secluded African nation isn’t willing to sell the vibranium – the rare, seemingly indestructible metal that Wakandans use to build tools and power their high tech society — found beneath it. As a workaround, the CIA commandeers a vibranium tracking machine created by MIT student Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) and finds a vein in the ocean floor. This awakens the underwater civilization of Talokan, who kill everyone involved with the CIA operation. Their leader, Tenoch Huerta, approaches Ramonda and Shuri and demands that they help Talokan find Williams (so that they can kill her) and also offers to forge an alliance between the two hermit kingdoms with the intent of destroying the “surface world,” ensuring that both Wakanda and Talokan remain undisturbed from foreign interlopers. Also, the Secretary of State (Richard Schiff) suggests invading Wakanda due to the outcome of the CIA op, and there’s a massive tease that there’s some kind of secret T’Challa was hiding from everyone. 

Right off the bat, it’s clear that Coogler is most interested in exploring Ramonda and Shuri’s (and later Nakia’s, T’Challa’s lover/girlfriend/wife played by Lupita Nyong’o) grief. Ramonda executes her queenly duties solemnly, but it’s clear she doesn’t have her son’s tolerance for foreign interference or intracourt bickering. Shuri, meanwhile, is consumed by an irrational, youthful rage – she doesn’t want to heal, she just wants to “burn the world,” as she tells her mother. Namor and the CIA may have nothing to do with T’Challa’s passing, but the mere fact that Ramonda and Shuri have to deal with these two obstacles just compounds their pain. This should be his burden to carry, but now it’s been thrust upon them, and at a particularly inconvenient time. The question of not only how one moves on from tragedy, but how one deals with other, unrelated situations while there’s still a massive hole in your heart, is perhaps the most relatable a Marvel film has ever been theme wise. We’ve all dealt with hardship, and then we’ve all had to put on a brave face and get back to school/work/whatever. Now just imagine what it’d be like if a ripped merman was trying to kill you, too.

This isn’t the first time Coogler has snuck big ideas like this into a tentpole film. Creed, his mainstream breakout, explored what it meant to live up to a legacy and forge your own identity, while the first Black Panther pondered colonialism and isolationism. In each of these films, Coogler was able to lead the big ideas and the big action set pieces breathe – there was never a feeling that he was sacrificing one for the other, or that the smart stuff was out of place next to the spectacle. There was a cause and effect – the personal and ideological conflict led to the physical conflict. 

Unfortunately, Wakanda Forever sacrifices storytelling synergy for corporate synergy. The themes don’t get to breathe here because Marvel needs Coogler to shoehorn in Riri Williams to promote the Ironheart series that’ll debut on Disney+ in 2023, as well as Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who will appear again (at the latest) in 2024’s Thunderbolts. These teases and cameos were tolerable, even exciting, when they were just small glimpses or mentions peppered throughout a film, but at some point Kevin Feige and company decided that they had to play an actual, meaningful role in the story too, and the result is about thirty extra minutes of runtime featuring characters who don’t fit in with the rest of the film. Thorne’s Williams has a few exciting action scenes, but as a character she’s relegated to unconvincing comic relief, while de Fontaine’s cat and mouse game with Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) actively takes our attention away from the wondrous, futuristic architecture of Wakanda and the vibrant Mesoamerican aesthetics of Talokan and redirects it towards stale Washington boardrooms. In other words, the action and spectacle that the MCU built its reputation on is being undercut by Feige’s obsession with cameo and cross-promotion. We can’t simply enjoy a story anymore – it has to be padded out with 30 minutes of Disney+ advertising as well. 

It’s a shame, because there are some inspired choices from a spectacle perspective within Wakanda Forever. Coogler has particular fun with the denizens of Talokan, who are flung into battle from the tails of killer whales and cause destruction by detonating bombshells full of seawater. They’re the first Marvel villains in a while that feel legitimately scary and imposing – their appearances are accompanied by an eerie, vocal-based score and their preference for swimming gives them an inhuman grace. Huerta’s portrayal of Namor, while differing significantly from the character found in the comics, still conveys the necessary amount of imperiousness and moral ambiguity; in a fictional world so often divided between black and white, he’s just self-serving enough to find the shade of gray. There’s the making of something epic and memorable here, but the time allocated to teasing the next project and expo-dumping dialogue drags the rest of the film down, and the big action scenes feel rushed and compulsory. Instead of opening viewers’ eyes to a world of infinite possibility, we’re introduced to the limits of a high-powered producer’s attention span.

Wakanda Forever is the official end of “Phase Four” of the MCU, with Phase Five slated to pick up in February with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. I think I speak for most viewers when I say that it doesn’t feel like Phase Four built up to anything the way that the previous phases built up to the Thanos saga, but I also think I speak for most viewers when I say that I don’t necessarily care whether or not these films do build up to anything. But I do care that, as stand alone entries, they’ve become less and less memorable as time goes on, and that I don’t feel particularly inclined to revisit any of the films Marvel has released since the pandemic. Of course, Kevin Feige doesn’t care that I care, because these movies will make money no matter what – but nothing lasts forever, and even Warner Bros. found a way to water down Harry Potter’s potency with the execrable Fantastic Beasts films. Marvel isn’t at that point yet, and they may not reach it for a while, but treating Wakanda Forever like a marketing tool instead of a franchise tentpole sure feels like the first step down that dull, depressing road.