‘Black Panther:
Wakanda Forever’ director Ryan Coogler remembered Chadwick Boseman, the
celebrated actor who played Black Panther from 2016 to 2019 before he died on
August 28, 2020 of cancer, at the San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday. Coogler was
speaking at the launch of the trailer of his new Marvel Cinematic Universe
(MCU) film.

“We put our love
for Chadwick in this film. We also put our passion. The film has a ton of
action and humour. It’s also a roller coaster of a movie. It goes to new places
in Wakanda that we have never seen before but other corners of the MCU,” said
Coogler, the director of ‘Creed’ (2015) and ‘Black Panther’ (2018).

Coogler added: “Chad’s
passion and genius and his culture and the impact he made on this industry will
be felt forever.”  

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In the trailer of ‘Black
Panther: Wakanda Forever’, there’s a war going on. Houses are on fire. Angela
Bassett’s Ramonda is seen as Queen of Wakanda. There is someone dressed as
Black Panther, but we don’t know who that is. A version of Wailer’s “No Woman
No Cry” plays.

Right before
Coogler and the cast came on stage, an African musical inspired troupe raised
the roof.

The ‘Black Panther’
character was introduced in ‘Captain America: Civil War’. This was Chadwick
Boseman’s moment to shine. Critics praised the character but also acknowledged
that it was largely meant to pave way for ‘Black Panther’, the film.

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The 2018 film came
as a defining moment for Black narratives in Hollywood superhero cinema. It was
also a defining moment for Black America, according to Carvell Wallace, who
wrote on the film in The New York Times Magazine. Wallace wrote Black Panther “is
steeped very specifically and very purposefully in its blackness.”

Historian Nathan
D.B. Connolly said: “‘Black Panther’ was a powerful fictional analogy for
real-life struggles” that taps into a “500-year history of African-descended
people imagining freedom, land and national autonomy.”