Ryan Coogler

Weapons, Zach Cregger’s sophomore picture after the acclaimed Barbarian, was a conspicuous success story in its opening weekend: brilliant reviews, an A- CinemaScore from audiences (rare for the horror genre, in which anything above a B is considered a major hit) and, of course, a massive box office. Its first weekend gross was $43.5 million, an astonishing amount for a film without an existing intellectual property, A-list stars (although Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich and Julia Garner are hardly unknowns) or big-name director.

Heading into this film, director Ryan Coogler confronted a virtually impossible situation: the sudden, tragic passing of his franchise’s leading man. Chadwick Boseman’s untimely 2020 death casts a long shadow over Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The fact that the movie is coherent at all is remarkable. That’s probably underselling things, though. From an action standpoint, Wakanda Forever is a serviceable — if somewhat less inspired than its predecessor — Marvel epic. Beneath all the CGI, it’s a surprisingly meditative passing of the torch. Following the death of King T’Challa (Boseman) from an unspecified illness, the cloistered Afrofuturist nation of Wakanda reels.