Opinion – Black Guide: Black Panther 2 is a trip to the future with reverence for ancestors and a message of union

A place where people can be who they are without fear and in all their potency. Wakanda is a mythical place that returns to the screens in Black Panther: Wakanda forever. The new movie that opens today (10) in theaters is a bow from beginning to end, literally, to actor Chadwik Boseman, who played King T’Challa from the first version and died of cancer in 2020. story, delivers a work with new elements, but does not sweep as in the first.

The struggle between the people of Wakanda and that of a new underwater indigenous kingdom in Mexico, the Talokan, bothers, at first, for not focusing precisely on the common enemy: the colonizer. Over 2h40, the feature shows that dialogue and union between peoples who managed to get rid of colonization is the great strength. If vibranium is the superpower in the previous film, here it is accompanied by the need to sit next to those who are seen as enemies and talk, trim the differences and follow each one with their diversity, but with the same objective: to be free and powerful.

From the screens to real life, the film’s lesson is still a challenge for a people who were enslaved and carry the pain of the structural racism of the present. But as one of the characters says “only the most wounded people can be great leaders”. The plot also shows that to remain powerful, you will need healing and dialogue with the other, who until then is seen as a competitor of evil for occupying a similar space. In the Wakandas that form in Brazilian cities, where there are bubbles of blacks on the rise and occupying important spaces, we still need to overcome the single black syndrome and also stop blocking dialogue and union because of past problems. We have all been injured in some way and struggled to be in our positions. It is not up to us to reproduce the colonizer’s game of fighting each other. Is it very utopian to dream of an end to disagreements between black people and a collective construction?

In the film, the technologies of travel to the future do not let us forget that our ancestors are our strength. The “Alexa” of the screen is the “griô” that gives advice and helps with daily tasks. In addition, Wakanda has a council of elders, the concept of circularity in its meetings, party, warriors on standby, but mainly strong women! They are the ones who dictate the rules, the protagonists. Lupita Nyong’o (Nakia), Angela Bassett (Queen Ramonda), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Michaela Coel (Aneka), Dominique Thorne (Riri Williams), Letitia Wright (Shuri) alternate on the screen, in great interpretations, bringing the black women to the place they always should have been. Seeing Shuri transform into a superhero with her natural hair is something as revolutionary as the very idea of ​​the film. We have a new imagination to dream of. Black Panther lives and Wakanda is forever.