According to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler, the upcoming MCU sequel originally had close ties to Thanos' Snap seen in Avengers: Infinity War.
As fans know, Black Panther 2 has gone through plenty of changes in its bumpy production. After the tragic loss of franchise star Chadwick Boseman, the entire project had to be retooled, becoming as much a tribute to Boseman as a sequel to his 2018 adventure.
Despite these changes being made, Coogler has said that the film is still "spiritually very similar" to the original script, but the exact details of what was swapped out and rejigged still remain unknown.
However, the Black Panther filmmaker has offered up a small nugget about what could have been in Wakanda Forever, tying the film back to Infinity War.
Wakanda Forever's Original Vision
Speaking with Inverse, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler, pulled the curtain back on the original vision for the film before the untimely passing of star Chadwick Boseman.
Coogler said that the original script focused heavily on Boseman's T'Challa struggling in the wake of The Blip and Thanos' Snap.
This first draft of the story apparently was much less of a tonal shift from the final cut of the film than some may expect. Coogler noted that grief was always a part of the film and that, "The tonal shift...was less of a shift than in [casting]."
The Marvel filmmaker said that "the tone was going to be similar," with T'Challa "grieving the loss of time:"
“The character was going to be grieving the loss of time, you know, coming back after being gone for five years. As a man with so much responsibility to so many, coming back after a forced five years absence, that’s what the film was tackling. He was grieving time he couldn’t get back. Grief was a big part of it.”
This original vision also always included Namor as the villain of the film. Coogler remarked that Tenoch Huerta's newly introduced Mutant "was always the antagonist." Sure, the team had toyed around with other characters, but "Namor was always there."
That is not to say there were no changes made to Black Panther 2 though. Coogler closed by saying:
“Who the protagonist was, the flaws of the protagonist, what the protagonist was dealing with in their journey, all of that stuff had to be different due to us losing him and the decisions that we made about moving forward.”
What Changed in Wakanda Forever?
Of course, there were going to be changes when it came to Black Panther 2. One cannot simply carry on making a movie after the star of said movie passes away mid-development.
But it is shocking to see how little actually changed. Yes, the focus went from T'Challa's state of mind in the wake of The Blip to honoring that very same character (and the actor that played him), but the fact that tonally it remained very much the same is, quite frankly, amazing.
It is just serendipitous that the film could at least, from a tonal standpoint, remain the same while so many aspects of the movie had to go back to the drawing board.
And it would have been interesting to see what that original script would have looked like on-screen. It would have been fascinating to take in this "character study" of a hero devastated following this universe-wide loss of time. Early reviews have dubbed Wakanda Forever as a heavy movie, and this seemingly would have still been the case had that original vision come to fruition.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever comes to theaters on November 11.
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