Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler says that without two crucial scenes, the Marvel Studios sequel would have been terrible.
Coogler revealed that they experimented with different versions of the film during the Wakanda Forever audio commentary. This included one version that removed the opening scene with Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) at the United Nations as well as the opening Dora Milaje action scene with Okoye (Danai Gurira). "We were experimenting with all types of stuff with this movie," he said. "And at one point, we experimented with taking these two scenes out of the movie, like [the U.N. scene and the opening Dora Milaje action scene] here. And we were just talking like, 'Yeah, it’ll work without it, 'cause X, Y, and, Z.'"
He continued, "And I remember I came in early at 6 am to watch because I just wanted to watch it down before we tested it with the scenes out. And we pressed play on it, and I was watching it, and it was just the worst movie ever, you know what I’m saying?"
Plotlines Removed From Wakanda Forever
While these two scenes remained in the film's final cut, there were several other scenes that were ultimately removed from the movie entirely. Wakanda Forever editor Michael P. Shawver previously revealed that an early version of the movie had a runtime of nearly 5 hours. According to Shawver, most of the footage featured Namor's underwater kingdom of Talokan and further developed the relationship between Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne).
"There were big parts that we had to take out before anyone else saw the movie," he said. "But the movie needed to move, the pacing needed to move, we needed to get [Shuri] back to her mom. We ended up just figuring out later that, 'Let’s incorporate [Riri] more into the plan of capturing Namor.'"
Wakanda Forever serves as a sequel to Black Panther, which starred the late Chadwick Boseman as King T'Challa/Black Panther. The movie's plot was restructured following Boseman's death in 2020. Wakanda Forever introduced Tenoch Huerta as the film's villain, Namor the Sub-Mariner, and Thorne as Riri Williams/Ironheart. It also marked Wright's debut as the MCU's new Black Panther. Wright has portrayed Shuri, the younger sister of Boseman's King T'Challa/Black Panther, in the MCU since 2018.
Other cast members who returned for Wakanda Forever were Winston Duke as M'Baku and Martin Freeman as Everett Ross. The film also stars Michaela Coel, Mabel Cadena and Alex Livanalli. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now available to stream on Disney+.
Source: Marvel, via The Direct