(ALL YELLING INDISTINCTLY)
RYAN COOGLER: We brought something for you guys today.
(CROWD CHEERING)
You guys are gonna be the first to see...
the trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
(CROWD CHEERING)
WOMAN: Oh, my God. MAN: Wow!
No woman, no cry...
Hey. What are you doing?
-MAN: Checking you out. -No, no, there's no...
There's no behind the scenes.
(CHUCKLES)
There are no, you're spoiling everything.
COOGLER: Chad is no longer with us, physically.
(CHANTING IN OTHER LANGUAGE)
COOGLER: But his spirit, his passion, his genius, his pride and his culture,
and the impact that he made on this industry
will be felt forever.
(ALL YELLING)
Standing here with y'all,
I promise you I can feel his hand on me right now.
MAN: Rolling.
(BELL RINGS)
All right.
There is a lot of grief and pain in this film,
that resonates in a way that sadly is connected to a reality.
Chad, of course, the understanding of what it meant
to really show a world like this, it came from him,
like, him and John Kani,
who played his father, who is an iconic South African actor.
You know, they came together during Captain America and said,
you know, let's put Xhosa in this film right here and now.
They set that precedent
that said, you know, we're gonna use this very beautiful
and specific African language, and it will become the Wakandan language.
(SPEAKING OTHER LANGUAGE)
That set the precedent for the world of Wakanda.
(PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY)
LUPITA NYONG'O: The first Black Panther film
so much of Africa was being celebrated, rather than exploited, you know?
Which is something we're more used to.
And it was giving credit where credit was due
and people were so excited to see themselves.
And there was an embracing of culture, of ethnicity.
There was just like, a reminder that we all come from very rich histories.
-My King! -Stop it, stop it.
(CHUCKLES)
WINSTON DUKE: While shooting the first Black Panther movie,
we became more than just actors and collaborators.
We really became friends along the way.
The entire cast.
We became very, very close
and we all suffered an incredible loss when we lost Chadwick.
-You have to keep working. -My goodness.
-Bad news, you have to keep working. -Goodness.
(LAUGHS)
Oh, man.
I mean, you don't get past a loss like this.
It's something you learn how to live with, I think.
For me, it was about realizing how blessed and lucky I was
to have had the opportunity to work with Chadwick before he passed.
He wrote a statement saying
playing T'Challa was the honor of his life.
I was moved by knowing our time together meant something to him
because it meant a lot to me.
And it was kinda, I was like, "We gotta keep going.
"We gotta find a way to do it with the people who he cared so much about."
A sense like...
COOGLER: Yeah, I think, I think how I see this is...
Yeah.
You don't use combustion technology in practice.
-Yeah. -You understand it.
It was an interesting exercise for me
'cause it wasn't my first time making a sequel.
Because I had done that with Creed before,
which was like a spiritual sequel and like a proper sequel
to the Rocky films and...
But I never like, made a sequel to something that I made.
I mean, if it stays on their head,
just one rotation, I think, will be enough.
Yeah, it keeps them in...
-It focuses, just not that fast. -WOMAN: Yeah.
Like, half that speed, I guess.
One of the questions we would ask ourselves
when we were in the early Blue Skies phase,
what is a Black Panther movie? Like, what is...
Like, we know what Black Panther is,
but what makes it a Black Panther movie?
If we're to do another, would it fit into the world?
How would audiences recognize it?
We mourn the loss of our king.
But do not think for a second that Wakanda has lost her ability...
to protect our resources.
COOGLER: Cut. Nice work.
MAN: Cutting. COOGLER: Hey, guys, stop real quick.
MAN: Yes, sir.
I just wanna say thanks to everybody for a helluva first day.
Shot a beautiful scene.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
It means a lot to be back at work.
Specially on this one.
We gotta honor our good, good friend and collaborator.
Fellow artist.
And it feels like we off to an amazing start.
I wanna say thank you to you guys for today,
thanks in advance for the other 90-some-odd days we got to go.
(ALL LAUGHING)
Just a big thank you, thank you to you guys.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
LETITIA WRIGHT: The themes are pretty strong here.
You see the themes of family,
of protection, of love, of care.
All in one place and I think that's beautiful for us to explore
'cause many are feeling that
especially with the years that we've just had.
You know, so many lost.
We can use this film to show people like,
"Hey, we feel what you're feeling, you know,
"we can connect to that, we can relate."
And hopefully that gives people an avenue
to express how they feel and just come to terms with that,
so there's so much that's happening in this movie.
It's beautiful, really.
For me, Wakanda is a symbol of home.
It's a symbol of belonging.
It's a symbol of community.
And the identity of community
and how we hold on to each other to move forward.
And now, in the second film, there's been an expansion
to the world of Wakanda, that's been fun.
For those of us from Wakanda to be like,
"This is what this neighborhood looks like, that's dope," you know.
And to learn more about this incredible nation.
HANNAH BEACHLER: These are ginormous sets.
I've been very excited about building everything.
We've got little river town,
which wasn't seen last time.
Based on the River Tribe and their color is green.
We wanted to bring that in,
but we also wanted to bring in some other beautiful colors
that you would see in textiles.
So there's a real big variety in the color usage this time
that I'm super excited about.
You also get to see a little bit more of our capital city, Golden City.
Think of Golden City like Manhattan,
where you have the culmination of all the different districts in that one place.
So there's a lot of different tribes
that live in Golden City as it's their capital.
(ALL LAUGHING)
The only tribe you won't find living in Golden City is Jabari.
They are separate from the rest of Wakanda,
so they live in this sort of, southern snowy mountain tops.
North Triangle is where Bashenga first put his sword down
so it is oldest place in all of Wakanda, including the capital.
It is also where Okoye lives.
And a lot of the design in North Triangle is based on Danai Gurira,
our fabulous actress as Okoye,
her actual country of Zimbabwe,
and she is from the tribe of the Shona people.
(SPEAKS OTHER LANGUAGE)
It's where Okoye feels most at home because of the tradition,
because of what it represents.
I was losing my mind by some of these portrayals,
of various cultures, including my own.
I grew up in a country that had recently
come out of colonization when I moved there.
And so, to understand a nation like Wakanda existing,
I understood how special it was.
A nation that left you with that question,
"Who would we have been as a continent had we never been colonized?"
RUTH CARTER: Wakanda itself is such a concept
that we really wanted to come back to it and groom it.
You see technology that's upgraded, you see new armor.
(SPEAKING OTHER LANGUAGE)
When we do finally see this costume as Midnight Angel,
it connects directly to the comics.
The Midnight Angels in the comics are tones of blue.
So, the design ideas came directly from the comics
and also connect directly with the actor and the story.
(PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY)
Ruth will exhaust every possibility
in terms of her research,
in terms of connecting with other artists around the world,
to build this world of Wakanda.
To walk into the warehouse,
and just see row after row after row, rack after rack,
table after table of jewelry and fabrics
and costumes that she sourced from Africa, from around the world.
It's just absolutely, absolutely amazing.
It has always been our policy...
to never trade vibranium under any circumstance.
Not because of the dangerous potential of vibranium...
but because of the dangerous potential of you.
I know so much more who I am when I put the costumes on.
The embroidery, the jewelry within the fabric,
the capes, the headdress,
she just took it up a notch
and I felt so regal in each and every costume.
Ruth Carter obviously brought tears to everybody's eyes
with like, the beautiful costumes.
I always say like, Ryan's the smartest man alive
being surrounded by a lot of women. (CHUCKLES)
Women department heads
and every woman on this show, there's a strength that...
you don't often see, there's a level of excellence.
CARTER: We had to develop a brand new military faction
that wasn't seen in the first film, which was the navy.
I wanted to get a color story first and foremost.
We know that the River Tribe is green.
So we started with a palette of green.
You can combine all different types of green together
and it just seems to work together really nicely.
Also, the element of bringing in a tribal reference.
We really wanted to give them a sense of Wakandan royalty as well
so we brought in the gold and the silver as an accent color.
And they have hats like all military factions of Wakanda,
but it's different and unique to them at the same time.
This better not be a part of your ritual.
It isn't.
I remember talking about Namor
being in Black Panther 2 while writing the first movie.
He's always been at the top of mind.
In the comics, the two worlds have a great rivalry.
Namor and Atlantis are
some of the oldest characters in Marvel publishing.
Namor was one of the first superheroes, frankly.
But, for us to introduce Namor into the MCU,
there needed to be something that grounded it in a reality
that felt like, as tactile as hopefully, the world of Wakanda feels.
And in talking with Ryan, figuring out how to bring this character to life,
one thing we thought was really interesting
was viewing Namor through the lens of Mesoamerican culture.
In preparation, we knew the film would be
about Wakandans coming in contact with another place.
Mesoamerica was something I was thinking about a bit.
And upon research,
it became more clear that the people of the Yucatán
made a ton of sense.
We would see images of them drawing themselves with blue paint on,
that was the color that we wanted from Marvel comics that inspired the film
and the more we got into it, we realized it was meant to be.
JOEL HARLOW: This is our background area for doing the Talokanil.
These are the gills. They were grown digitally
in the computer, sculpted, then grown, we grew the mold.
And then mass produced that mold so we could knock out a lot of 'em.
These also have to go in water, so they've to be very durable.
Now he's gonna go over to get painted. His whole body will be painted blue.
And then he'll come back to me and I'll finish him up.
He also goes to hair, and costumes.
Each warrior has their own fish or mammal
that's signature to their look.
Attuma has the hammerhead shark.
The other warriors, some of their costumes use
what appear to be shells and stones and whale skin, fish skin.
They have their traditional Maya earspools.
The costume really does feel like
this is something that has been tooled over time.
The way we went about making the first movie was with as much respect
for the cultures we were pulling from and for the audience.
So we wanted to do the same thing
for the cultures we were reflecting in this.
Black Panther 1 for us was a big impact.
Everybody can identify with that story.
We suffer because of the racism, and social cancers.
Black Panther, it was like,
"Oh, my God, there is nothing wrong in us."
There is nothing bad, you know, we are not broken.
So, it was, important and now it's our turn.
COLE: The Mayans are...
There's so much mystery around their civilization.
COOGLER: Action.
COLE: There's so much fertile terrain there to explore,
their artwork and their advanced agriculture.
All of these things that they accomplished,
it just was a perfect palette for us to kind of, delve into.
COOGLER: With Namor, we knew early on,
I was like, "We gotta find out how he got this name."
'Cause in the comics, the explanation for his name was simple.
His story goes, they took "Roman" and spelt it backwards.
That's not gonna work with what we're doing here.
I had the thought, somebody said something to him in Spanish
and kind of curses him in a way.
That's how he got his name.
MAN: On my mark in three, two, one.
COOGLER: When our collaborators came up with the idea
of sin amor which means no love.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
His enemies were calling him that. That's how we came up with it.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
(MAN SPEAKING SPANISH)
The child without love.
Namor's costumes reflect the tradition that he honors
and a lot of researching went into that.
His shoulder mantle and headpiece that he wears on the throne
is curated from post-Yucatec Mayan culture.
It's the snake and we used a lot of kelp
and things to make the whole headdress and handwove his cape.
but we kept it pure to what he looked like in the comics.
The elements for me,
sort of the makeup effects elements, are his ears,
I did a couple of iterations of those,
and then we did a septum piercing on him.
He's got earrings that the costume department provided,
but finding his look on our actor was pretty easy actually.
He embodies so much of what I had read Namor to be,
that you don't want to cover him up with fake eyebrows and stuff like that,
I mean, he's got enough eyebrow there that I can give him a slight point,
but he's got great ears for ear prosthetics,
which was, you know, that was a gift.
That was a bonus.
The fish man.
DUKE: What's great about Tenoch is that...
like any great actor, in my opinion, he loves to play.
He enters the scene with an open mind
and ready to play and try things.
COOGLER: Action.
He carries a lot of gravitas which the character has,
but he has a lot of softness and potential warmth
which creates a really great dynamic.
For me, to be part of this world, with all the respect, it's a dream.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
-Cut. -Clean. Good job.
HUERTA: I never imagined to be here playing this character.
And I have the best allies around me including Mabel.
MABEL CADENA: It was amazing experience,
I have to learn Maya for the movie
because Namora only speak Maya in the movie.
(SPEAKING MAYA)
That was interesting challenge. It's really hard.
(SPEAKING MAYA)
(GRUNTS)
CADENA: It's really difficult but because we have a lot of time,
a lot of months with our coach
for pronunciation and for memorize the line.
But the big goal was on set
because sometimes Ryan, he needed change the lines,
and that was a big challenge
because you need learn at the moment a new line.
It's a really, really achievement for us
in that moment, learn a new word in Maya.
Líik'ik Talokan!
BEACHLER: When you look at Talokan,
we kind of took inspiration from the temples that you see,
we worked with an archaeologist
and he's written books in Mayan and he really helped us along
with how to get to where we needed to be as far as their history.
But also, being reminded that...
Namor never actually lived during those times, right?
He never lived in Maya during its glory years
'cause he wasn't born until they went into the water.
So everything that's there, is based on memory.
So that's why things are just a little askewed
because he's remembering what he's been told
and then what he saw before everything went into ruins.
This is what's underneath El Castillo.
-Right. -Which is K'uk'ulkan.
COOGLER: How did y'all model the...
-Stalactites is up, right? -Up.
-Mites is down. -Mites is down.
There's over 700 on both sets.
-Jesus. -Yeah, they hand carved each one
in about three weeks.
-COOGLER: Amazing. -And then, this is our...
sister cenote to the visitors quarters.
Those are hand carved.
-COOGLER: The big... -It took like six weeks
to hand carve those ten-foot steles.
And the faces are like, kind of, after Tenoch's face.
-COOGLER: Yeah, wow. -Yeah.
Mmm-hmm.
And then, this.
Everything's from Tulum.
COOGLER: Yeah, this one...
This one's my favorite one.
That's my favorite one,
-the panther and Namor. -Yeah.
In the style of Bonampak.
And the people are really brown.
Which is awesome.
COOGLER: It's pretty incredible, man.
-So much detail in all this stuff. -BEACHLER: Yeah.
All this is crazy. How do they plant all this stuff?
They plant this in real dirt?
Yes, so this whole...
-It's all living plants? -Yes.
And this whole stage is built on dirt.
We cover the ground covering and then bring in the rocks.
You know, this is deeper than any of the other tanks,
so they can dive.
WOMAN: Take it away, five, four, three, two, one.
MAN: Actors go underwater.
COOGLER: I want to go where the story requires us to go.
There was this quote about how little we know about the depths of the ocean.
And how, the deeper you get down there, the more alien things look and seem.
And so for us, we were talking a lot about this film
being like, a first contact movie, in a way.
We were talking about Namor as kinda being...
a little bit of a spaceman, in a deep ocean as outer space.
MAN: All set, three, two, one, action.
COOGLER: At that point, the movie took on this specific identity
of having these water scenes that are super tactile.
MAN: Three, two, one. Turn.
COOGLER: And I knew we needed to do it for real, as much as we could.
Hello.
MAN: Cut. And surface.
COOGLER: And it made more sense when things happened that slid our schedule.
We noticed, we're not gonna have a ton of time for...
to VFX every single water shot,
so it would be great to get in there and do it.
For me, I love doing everything I can in camera.
And it's really all about lighting.
We had to take into consideration a lot of things because...
you know, this city
is so deep under water that there shouldn't be any light.
A lot of what we're used to seeing, underwater worlds,
people breathing under water, sometimes these examples can be
over-lit, that look a little fake, right?
Like they're not underwater.
So we had in our tank
very soft light above pushing through.
MAN: All right. Camera, set.
ARKAPAW: So that's the believability factor if you're underwater.
It's like we have this soft, ambient light that feels real,
not very punchy, not reflective.
MAN: Go.
Everything is against you under water.
Safety's against you, time's against you, communication's against you.
Moviemaking is hard on dry land,
and you get under water,
the difficulty factor gets amplified by a factor of a 100.
WOMAN: Great, and charts.
DENISON: One issue we encountered was
a lot of the cast wasn't comfortable swimming.
MAN 1: Five seconds, roll camera.
MAN 2: Rolling.
WRIGHT: I struggled with it.
Ryan called me and he was like, "Tish, can you swim?"
I was like...
"Sir, sir, I'm in the lab.
"What more do you need from me coming out of that lab?"
So I had to learn to swim very quickly,
and everybody was in a corner learning to swim.
Now I've swam...
in a mediocre manner since I was little.
I used to swim like a puppy, you know what I mean?
Not anything that anyone wants to film.
I had to become friends with the water.
You have to be so present when you're dealing with water.
WOMAN: Thirty seconds.
DENISON: Five purges.
(BREATHING DEEPLY)
NYONG'O: You cannot afford stage fright.
WOMAN: Three, two, one.
MAN: Actors going down.
NYONG'O: You can't afford adrenaline, really.
NYONG'O: You can't afford to hurry.
You actually have to slow all the way down and focus.
And it was such a great lesson for performance in general.
COOGLER: The look back's great.
Right. I said... I told...
-How they're coming after... -COOGLER: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Looks good.
DENISON: Throughout the film, we don't really see anybody on actual scuba.
Majority of it is free-diving.
You look at Tenoch's character, Mabel's character,
they have to look, not only competent, but very comfortable.
Like they were born under water.
We've to get them to a point
where they're comfortable holding their breath,
they're not thinking about holding their breath,
but thinking about acting.
And being in the scene.
The free-diving is so fantastic and peaceful,
when you are down in the tank, everything is silent
and it's like, active meditation in a way, and I can hold my breath for five minutes.
That's my record.
(SPEAKING SPANISH, CHUCKLES)
DENISON: Mabel is the single best free dive student I've ever had
and I've taught lots how to breath-hold.
We could push her to 10-minute range if we had another week with her.
What's interesting about Namor and the Talokanil
is they're actually kind of, super soldiers in water
so they're going to want to move through water
in a way that the human body probably can't.
There needs to be an interesting marriage
with the stuff we shoot underwater, wet for wet.
MAN: Cut.
And some stuff we shoot out of water, dry for wet.
Because they're stronger and faster swimmers than any human on the planet.
So there was a lot of figuring out to do
between the different ways that Wakandans move through water
versus the Talokanil.
There's a lot of kind of, math and geometry being done constantly
to make sure that those two different groups of people are moving differently.
But there's an internal logic to how everybody moves.
ARKAPAW: When we did our dry for wet,
we were always trying to keep true to how light works in the tank.
Since a lot of wet for wet stuff was shot first, we had a reference.
So, trying to make it look more real is kind of making sure that
the rules, the scientific rules of light,
stay true to when you're shooting it underwater.
You want these to maybe push a little bit?
COOGLER: Yes, I do.
-Kind of step out... -Okay, man.
One of the most difficult elements of this film was the exosuits.
It's a submarine that you wear, with the arms and legs.
They make 'em for utility work under water.
Each suit is about a million and a half dollars.
People don't realize that was wet for wet.
Those were the actual suits.
And using the exosuits in the tank was an incredible opportunity to learn.
But it was a massive challenge.
MAN: If we can try to see past it through the vibranium detector.
DENISON: We had to all kind of, become experts in them overnight.
Worst thing that could happen is the suit breaks,
they go, "No, the scariest thing is a fire inside of the suit."
It's pretty frightening.
We don't want that.
So we had to develop, just like we do for all stunts,
a safety plan for how the suits work.
But it was pretty phenomenal, the end result.
This is practical moviemaking at its finest,
which, in the age of VFX, is a very cool thing to see, right?
MAN: Alex, you ready?
All right, here we go. Ready?
And, action.
-You okay? -I moved my head.
I was intimidated. I'm not gonna lie.
You know, I've seen Danai on TV for years, you know.
The Walking Dead.
So, meeting her, it was like...
"Hi, how you doing, I'm Alex." (CHUCKLES)
But she's been great, you know.
She's the one that I worked with the most.
And she's been the most amazing person
in the sense of...
This is my first time in the MCU
or doing something this big and that fight on the bridge...
(ALL GRUNTING)
You get goosebumps.
When I first started and I actually saw the video
the stunt guys made for our fight,
I was intimidated.
I was like, "Man, I look so good."
Why should I mess it up? (CHUCKLES)
So it was a lot of training for a long time, for a lot of weeks.
When I started, it was like I had two left feet.
I couldn't move as well as they did, but through time,
I... I got it.
You know, I started dancing, as they call it.
(GRUNTING)
(EXCLAIMS AND BREATHES HEAVILY)
Something that was very important
was to highlight what Danai could actually do as Okoye.
Because I think it's important to capture her on screen, you know?
We could always go to a double, it's not... That's easy, right?
But Danai put in a lot of work.
And I think actors are different than your average stunt performer
because a stunt performer will try to definitely...
Not all of them, but they will try to do everything
physically with more grit,
but an actor thinks about the emotion behind it.
COOGLER: Cut. cut. MAN: Cut it, cut it.
Let's do one more, I'm sorry.
MAN: Reset.
Don't you think like she should get right next to camera
-So I can come in faster? -COOGLER: Yeah.
TONEY: There's more weight, and so when that translates,
you get something very special.
GURIRA: In Okoye's mind, there's no one who's gonna top her
in regards to combat.
Doesn't matter what their size is,
it doesn't matter what their musculature is.
It's like I'm too skilled to be taken down
by y'all who just came off of a killer whale's back.
Cute, but let me just get to work.
So that's how she thinks, you know.
Take another step closer...
and I will kill you all.
(GRUNTS)
(GROANS)
I really wanted to make Attuma just bigger
than everybody else physically, to create that intimidating size.
So, yeah, a lot of working out and a lot of eating,
I was eating like, every ten seconds.
You know, I was consuming about 6,000 calories a day
and I gained 30 pounds.
They're gonna see Attuma be large, look intimidating, but be swift.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
Danai is gonna be different.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
She has to be extremely tactical about how she attacks,
because this guy is extremely powerful.
So you're gonna see her calculating.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
You're gonna see her...
(GRUNTS)
rarely on the ropes,
but you're gonna see a little vulnerability here.
(GRUNTS)
She's never faced anyone like this before.
(GRUNTS)
With Okoye, what I was deeply attracted to
was, from the jump, Ryan was very clear about how he wanted her to be.
And then, kinda going like this.
GURIRA: And the way, the idea of her being a general
the idea of the Dora Milaje
and then, the traditionalism of who she was
was definitely something that really helped me anchor her.
'Cause her connection to her country was so, so passionate.
This is a woman who actually really enjoys her life.
And she loves being a Wakandan more than anything.
But you know, when you're being told you can't be a soldier anymore,
and that's all you've been that's all you know,
that's definitely... a dark corridor.
But that's the arc she has to take.
She never thought she'd do anything but die for Wakanda,
you know, in that uniform.
But when that's taken off, now who are you?
And that's what she has to find
and that's what she... ultimately finds with the Midnight Angels.
I'm excited about the cultures celebrated in this film,
I'm excited about the new characters that will be introduced to the world.
Especially to see how Dominique's portrayal of Riri
come alive, it's so beautiful because...
Riri is now in Africa
and Riri is now a reflection of T'Challa's decision.
She is a result of T'Challa's decision in saying
we're gonna open our borders, we're gonna help.
We must find a way...
to look after one another...
as if we were one, single tribe.
When we were making the first film,
one of the things that we kept talking about
is that, yes, Wakandan is extremely African, right?
But, in terms of their mentality,
because they are, quote-unquote on top of the world,
they are only concerned with themselves.
And in a sense, that's a reflection of America.
I believe I speak for all the member states here...
when I say that I am deeply disappointed in Wakanda's failure.
So, in our narrative, Wakanda is that.
And what Riri does for us
is open up Wakanda for us to be able to relate
and for other people to be able to see other perspectives.
Riri, I love all that she represents
and Dominique herself is extremely impressive.
She's the daughter of immigrants,
first child to go to college in her whole family,
she just graduated from Cornell herself in the sciences,
and she's playing this role, I think that's so cool,
like, it gets me teary-eyed.
Hey.
The poetry of it is that's actually who's playing it.
You forgot to Venmo me.
It slipped my mind. It's eight hundred, right?
Eight hundred was yesterday's price. It's a band today.
My name is Dominique Thorne.
Dominique auditioned for Shuri for the first movie.
The particles absorb the kinetic energy
and hold it in place for redistribution.
And we really liked her and we thought she was smart
and she has a great presence and she is funny
and she has a lot of attitude but we remembered that audition.
Old tech. Functional, but old.
Oh! People are shooting at me. Wait, guys, let me put on my helmet.
And so when we decided to put Riri Williams into Wakanda Forever,
she was the first and only call.
DUKE: This is her foray into coming into something
that felt really established and like, we all had our own relationships
and she came in strong, holding her own, very prepared,
and just willing to go toe to toe with everyone and that's her character.
Yo, we got him.
It felt like stepping into a family, stepping into someone's home.
Please show Miss Williams where she's working.
WOMAN: Right this way.
And wanting to enter in with the utmost respect
and reverence for what it is and what they've done.
But it was also exciting because sort of, Riri's presence there
along with these new characters meant that there was more
to be found, more to explore.
It was very, very fun and beautiful
to sort of, go on that ride with the folks who know the place best.
CARTER: You see that in the story, Riri builds this machine
that Shuri is very impressed by,
and it flies and it shoots and it does all kinds of things.
MAN: Three, two, one and blast.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Oxygen, 0%.
CARTER: And it's also a very difficult costume to craft.
It's actually, you know, put together
through some mold work but also, you know, there's metal work there
and it's also a costume of all kinds of mechanical parts.
And you can imagine the plethora of pieces that would go into a costume like that.
They were all discussed over many multiple meetings.
What these cannons do, what her armpieces do,
how she moves about.
There were so many elements to that costume that had to be sussed out.
It's such a smart build because
as heavy and as bulky as it is, all of my joints are free
and so I could step, I could walk, I could wave, I could squat.
I could do all the things, but just with this extra weight on.
I think it's probably most comparable to football gear,
(CHUCKLES) is what a lot of folks were comparing it to.
And I definitely do feel like, "Yeah, like, I'm ready for anything now,"
you know, which is a great feeling. (CHUCKLES)
MAN: On my call, in three, two, one, action.
MAN: Cut it. Cut, cut.
You all right?
But the Mark II is where we get to see
that sort of, Wakandan flair sort of, rub off on Riri.
It has a much sleeker design.
There were a lot of discussions about how closely
it would relate to the Iron Man costume.
And Ryan wanted it to be Chicago Bulls red
and we moved the heart to the side,
but only half of the costume actually was built.
We built a maquette, which is like a doll, which was the full size
that they're able to use with visual effects.
There was a kind of movie magic that went on with that costume
because it had to perform, you know, such fantastical things in the air,
and spin and dive and all kinds of stuff
that she would not have been able to do in a full costume.
Old tech, functional but old.
People are shooting at me. Wait, let me put on my helmet.
For now, tell it to go on.
Once we realized what the movie was gonna be,
this version of the movie was gonna be,
I realized that it was a unique opportunity for me as a creative
to have a protagonist just go on like, a transformative arc.
I'm not my brother.
Namor will beg me for mercy...
and I will stand and watch as he dies.
You know, I was thankful that Letitia's such an amazing actress,
'cause this is not the role that she auditioned for.
We were really blessed in terms of her being that versatile
that she could make you believe that she was that younger sister
who could have fun, you know, with T'Challa and rib him,
and feel youthful and like she was full of love and light.
And then become this character, which is a totally different thing.
Was the herb not destroyed?
Yes, I recreated it.
With science?
Yes.
MOORE: For us as storytellers,
I think Ramonda's passing was important in bringing Shuri to her lowest,
and really breaking down this girl whose spirit seemed unbreakable,
to see what the breaking point might be.
I just buried the last person who truly knew me.
My heart was buried with her.
It was not a decision we made lightly
because Ramonda's a fantastic character and Angela Basset is a talented actress
and a part of the family.
Shuri.
Show him...
who you are.
COOGLER: Okay, cut.
MAN: Cut it.
(CREW APPLAUDING)
WRIGHT: I'll be very honest.
When I read that Ramonda was going to die by the hands of Namor,
I was very upset.
I think I almost cried on the phone to Ryan.
I was kinda like, "What are you doing? What is this?"
I'm so sorry about your mom.
BASSETT: I guess it's...
When you take an audience on a journey, it's like you gotta grab them by the heart
and rip it out of them, I suppose, but I was...
It took me a moment,
I had to process it, I had to get over it.
For Ramonda, here's a woman who has been girded by loss,
who has become a very, very successful queen of Wakanda,
and has done a great job in defending her nation from all comers.
And yet, her daughter is suffering from depression over the loss of her brother
and it's Ramonda's job to try and pull Shuri out of this place
and let her see that there is the potential to move forward through loss.
When that illness took your brother from us...
I had to lead a wounded nation and a broken world.
But I still took time in the bush.
My most precious resource is my daughter at this point.
You can imagine with her husband and her son gone,
that her embrace is that much, you know, tighter around Shuri.
Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.
And that's what a mother does,
she does sacrifice her life for her kids, you know,
and being a mother, I know this all too well,
we'll do anything for them.
WRIGHT: As we were doing it,
I realized, it did inspire Shuri's arc.
It did really inspire... that thirst for vengeance
that you'll see when Shuri takes on the Black Panther mantle.
Very early on, Ryan explained to me where he was at
and he asked me where I was at.
And he felt really strongly that Chadwick would want us to continue.
He slowly explained to me how we can honor Chad in this film,
and how we can honor what was created by us as a family
and I started to realize what he was saying.
And it was for me, like a bittersweet experience
because Shuri does become the Black Panther in the comic books.
But like, I didn't have my brother to pass the torch to me.
So...
I had to, kinda like, process that.
And once I felt at peace that it was the right thing,
I accepted and I said to Ryan, I'll do my best.
And I made a commitment, I was like, I'll honor God and I'll honor Chad.
When I put the panther suit on, it was a surreal moment.
I did feel pretty cool
and they incorporated a few Shuri elements from the first film.
So Shuri had gauntlets and they kind of, incorporated those into her suit.
Essentially, we were working with the design language of
silver being representative of T'Challa,
gold being representative of T'Chaka,
and the little bit of where Killmonger's coming from.
And Shuri's design, we're essentially taking those two elements
and combining them.
So that she is taking what works from each one of those methodologies
and making them intertwine into her Black Panther suit.
Finding her own voice with the things
My first day in the suit, I did feel really nervous.
I was like, am I meant to walk like this, talk like this?
And I just kept hearing my brother saying like,
"Calm down. It's cool, don't worry.
"And just keep going, just keep walking and just be confident.
"Just be confident."
MAN: And here it comes, back at you and... Duck!
COOGLER: And... duck.
Nice. Nice, nice. Much more like that, okay?
DENISON: When you choreograph a giant scene like that third act battle,
you read the script, you're just drinking out of the firehose.
How're we gonna get this action done?
But then you start breaking it down piece by piece.
What are the main beats?
They come out of the water.
(GRUNTS)
(SPEAKING MAYA)
They climb the side of the ship.
The Dora come off and then you have to just fine tune things from there.
So, we had these huge days like, 50 plus performers,
we've got a crane up, we have warriors coming up,
doing organic falls, there's lines everywhere.
It gets tough.
Go.
DAVID HUGGHINS: They have to make sure they're committed.
Once a person commits to the jump, they've gone beyond the point of return,
they're out there, you can release 'em bring 'em down at whatever speed you want.
We also have to make sure that in the choreographing of that scene,
we gotta have people climbing up
in a way that they're out of the way when they're running down
so they're not hit by accident.
Everybody has to know where they're at.
It's like a dance, everybody needs to know exactly what step they're on.
Are you ready to bathe in the blood of Wakanda's enemies?
With some really great training, it's just the physicality of the Jabari,
where you get to dive a little bit more into that.
(GRUNTS)
There will be no climbing here.
The fight training was really incredible
and I always try to make M'Baku feel like a strong man
instead of like, a bodybuilder or a guy that's about aesthetic.
So, like, he has a lot of weight culturally on his back.
And he carries it with pride.
And that's a really big part of what defines the character.
MAN: Follow the chart.
(CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY)
TONEY: Shuri versus Namor.
We put a lot into that fight.
(SCREAMS)
And it's got a lot of heart and there's so much weight behind this moment,
because you don't see a lot of Shuri, you know, in action.
So, when you do, it's gotta be impactful.
Go!
WRIGHT: Yeah, it's a great payoff.
I'm so proud of it.
And Shuri's looking amazing, Namor's looking amazing.
But something that is very important to take into account
was that Shuri is smart.
She uses her mind before she uses her body.
There isn't a lot of flash, there is more calculation.
(GRUNTS)
With Namor, when it came to fighting styles,
I pulled from not only sort of, cultural aspects like Lucha Libre
the sort of ball game that they go out and play with their bodies,
but also I pulled from Asian cultures.
I pulled from a style called Baji
and Baji is a style that focusses on grounding your body
while delivering shoulder strikes,
elbow strikes, so you're gonna see Namor do things
that are unorthodox,
but effective because he is the person he is.
Namor is more like, yeah, the fight is not an explosion,
it's little by little, you know, he's more in control.
TONEY: It was fun to play around with the wings, you know,
special, sort of like, quick attacks.
Or him boosting.
But also, they said, can we rip the wings off?
They grow back, he'll be fine, but it gives you an opportunity
to humanize this God-like character and make him come to her.
And so that's playing to Shuri being smart.
COOGLER: Shuri, look at me.
See your Ma.
Call out to her.
Mother.
COOGLER: It's time to show him.
Time to show him who we are.
Go get him.
Make him pay.
WRIGHT: For Shuri, it's kind of like a coming of age moment
where she's thinking that, processing in a way of violence.
Wakanda forever!
Processing in a way of expressing her pain and her fury
towards Namor, she thinks that's gonna be satisfying to her soul and it's not.
And I think that's a beautiful way to complete that arc.
To realize that, wait, my brother wouldn't do this.
You know, my mother wouldn't want this for me.
And she learns from that and she becomes a woman,
you know, we see Shuri become a woman in her own right.
Sometimes life imitates art and art imitates life.
And I feel that this movie, the art is imitating life.
DUKE: This is a movie about loss...
and about growth, and about pain
and the transformation that happens as a result.
COOGLER: More than anything,
different people will get different things out of it.
Hopefully you see something in it and it speaks to you in a way that...
deals with things that you've been
wrestling with consciously or subconsciously.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's a picture finish on Miss Angela Basset.
Ryan has such a big heart and such a great storyteller
and within the storytelling, what Ryan has done
gives lightness and joy to our sadness.
MAN: Picture wrap of Mr. Winston Duke, ladies and gentlemen.
-(ALL APPLAUDING) -We did it, man.
MAN: It's also a picture finish on Ms. Lupita Nyong'o.
(ALL CHEERING)
COOGLER: After Panther one, what I was most excited about
was seeing everybody who I worked on the first one with,
'cause we'd become like family.
And then we lost Chad.
And it kinda changed everything for this one, you know.
It just became bigger in a way that was unexpected for all of us.
WRIGHT: Having the support of Ryan,
he just confidently, always would say, "Hey, Tish, like, you could do this."
And just pushing me forward each day.
You gotta keep inspiring people.
And I'm praying that that will be the result for Shuri,
that as she's growing and she's evolving,
that later down the line we can be like,
"Wow, that's a great woman,
"that's a great example to so many people in the world."
COOGLER: From our family to yours, we just wanna say thank you.
Deeply. Deeply, deeply, deeply, for taking care of this story,
for taking care of me, taking care of us.
And you guys allowed me to heal, from something that was really...
(SNIFFLING)
(SOBBING)
From something that was difficult. So, thank you for that.
Wakanda forever. Líik'ik Talokan.
Love you guys, thank you.
(ALL APPLAUDING)
I think part of the reason you make this movie
is it changes perspective.
People can see a superhero in a different light.
A different worldview, and to be a part of that is a special thing.