I’m worried about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The original, released to great fanfare in 2018, was such a hit across the board – with critics, at the box office, as a cultural force – that it seems all the sequel can do is let down, especially in this economy. Never mind that this is a major studio franchise with a keen global audience we’re talking about here. Black Panther is still a Black film, a label that always makes for disproportionately higher stakes.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a Black western or a Black musical comedy like Sister Act or a Black action franchise like Creed or a comic book film like Black Panther,” says the esteemed film historian Elvis Mitchell. “They’re still first and foremost Black movies. That’s the genre. So if one fails, then suddenly, the precarious grouping of dominos all comes down.”
