Spoilers: After Watching The Film Do You Feel They Made The Right Move In Not Recasting T’Challa?

[psylockolussus]

They could have made a better/worse film with a recast, no one will ever know. All we know is that it would be a 100% different film. It’s all could have should have would have. It is what it is. I like what it is pretty well.

It would have been the usual 2quel, a set up for upcoming mcu projects.

 

[metaphysician]

Setting everything else aside, can you imagine being the poor actor actually asked to play T'Challa in Black Panther 2? They'd be George Lazenby at *best*. Some of the decision to go with the story they did might well have been "Nobody good enough to do the role, is going to want to touch the role".

 

[psylockolussus]

Setting everything else aside, can you imagine being the poor actor actually asked to play T'Challa in Black Panther 2? They'd be George Lazenby at *best*. Some of the decision to go with the story they did might well have been "Nobody good enough to do the role, is going to want to touch the role".

Comparisons would be made as always. Its not going to be the end of the franchise.

If I was a T'Challa fan from the comics, I wouldn't be happy that I wouldn't see more adventures of T'Challa in the big screen because of that mindset.

 

[metaphysician]

Comparisons would be made as always. Its not going to be the end of the franchise.

If I was a T'Challa fan from the comics, I wouldn't be happy that I wouldn't see more adventures of T'Challa in the big screen because of that mindset.

You miss my point. Casting is a multi-sided affair, and one of those sides is "the prospective actor". You can't draft someone into taking the role of T'Challa, an actor needs to be willing to do so. It doesn't matter how important the idea of "continuing the story" is, if you can't get an actor to take the job, you can't do it. And I kind of suspect that they'd have a hard time finding an actor willing to take the job, whose skilled enough to make the effort worthwhile.

 

[Another_Fool]

I wouldn't have accepted a new actor portraying T'Challa, at least within the universe that's been set up.

So in my opinion they did the right thing. As much as it sucks to have lost Chadwick, Wakanda Forever is a very poignant and unique film in the grand scape of the MCU and is among my favorites.

 

[Spider-Fan]

I ultimately would have preferred recasting, but I also don't think the topic is worth discussing all that much. We can Monday morning quarterback the choice all day, but in the end....it's the choice the made and it's what we have to go off of moving forward.

In regards to the path forward, I would like to see

Spoiler

T'Challa's son become the central character. Have Kang age him up somehow and make him Black Panther and get introduced to the homeland of his father and his people. For me, this is the most appealing option given where we are now

 

[Punisher_MAX]

They should've recast and I've yet to see a strong argument to have T'Challa killed off hold any legit weight.

What's done is done but it's the biggest misstep that the MCU has done imo.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

I've always been on team recast and after seeing and liking the movie, I still feel the same.

Wright stepped up big time, but T'Challa's absence was sorely felt throughout for me. Boseman was amazing in the role and synonymous with it after BP. But there are other great actors out there that could have done well in the role as well.

It would have changed BP2 as a movie though and the emotion behind the movie which was strong and powerful. It's a really tough choice but ultimately an MCU without T'Challa just feels incomplete.

 

[kguillou]

Marvel’s hands were tied. Assuming they would keep Wakanda Forever production relatively on schedule they couldnt recast, the backlash would have been tremendous and they'd have been accused of being disrespectful. We've had plenty of movie recastings in the past but you cannot discount the circumstances. Black Panther was a global phenomenon and Chadwick became synonymous in the role and an icon to many, much like Gal Gadot with Wonder Woman.
To many people around the world he IS T'Challa and having another actor pop up so soon after his passing would have been seen as incredibly insensitive.

Now, i think the million dollar questions is...could they have bought some time? Meaning, did T'Challa have to die? Could they have done what the F&F movies did with Paul Walker and remove the character temporarily and still pay homage to the actor? Maybe T'Challa went missing on a mission and is presumed dead but somewhere still out there? I don't know. Obviously Coogler and co wanted this movie to pay tribute to their friend and this man who became an icon to many and I think you HAD to acknowledge and pay tribute to Chadwick in some way in this movie.

 

[Frodo]

Setting everything else aside, can you imagine being the poor actor actually asked to play T'Challa in Black Panther 2? They'd be George Lazenby at *best*. Some of the decision to go with the story they did might well have been "Nobody good enough to do the role, is going to want to touch the role".

In George Lazenby's case, he literally could not act ,
The guy was a model.
The Bond producer's gave him the role because he nailed a stunt fight scene in a screentest.

Had they cast someone who was charismatic and could actually act , the response to OHMSS would have been quite a different.
Who knows if they would have been considered as good as Connery, but it's likely they wouldn't have been pilloried like Lazenby was.

As far as BP goes, yeah, there may have been a " Nobody good enough to do the role" scenario, but there are a number of other scenarios such as:

They pick someone who's met with skepticism, but wins the audience over
Someone who everyone thinks is a great recast
Someone who , while not considered as good as Chadwick , is accepted never the less
etc.

The problem is, what could come up with tons of " What if" scenarios, positive or negative, because it never happed to begin with.

At the same time , we can't say X or Y would have definitively happened because the decision was made not to recast the part.

It would be speculation as to how the audience would respond to the recasting of T'Challa and then to how they would respond had they seen the actor's performance.

At this point, there's not gonna be a definitive answer to the question of what would have happened since Marvel Studios stance is that they won't recast the part.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Look, I haven't seen the movie, and I didn't end up seeing it because the more that was coming out, the more discomfort I felt using a man's real life death in the story of a fictional movie. Not that it has bad intentions, Coogler is an artist, and it comes from a place of trying to pay tribute, but I think this inadvertently comes off as very weird. Boseman seems more like an effigy in this.

You're putting a dead man on a pedestal and it kind of goes against what these movies are as works of fiction, particularly with first movie was in its impact. It wasn't Boseman in real life, Boseman was playing T'Challa, and though he greatly contributed to what made the first movie what it was, he was still playing a fictional character. And if we're talking about the impact of the first movie, this kind of goes against that and takes away from it. I thought the representation of the character was the impact. And if you want that lasting impact, it would behoove Marvel to keep the character. The marketing was even in poor taste. You have behind the scenes of people who let's be honest were mostly co-workers talking about Boseman like he's Jesus Christ. Imagine if the marketing for TDK included Nolan revolved around talking about Heath Ledger. It's a bit perverse.

Did Boseman even want this? It would have been respectful to just move on and recast. You can still pay tribute to a man and his contributions without going in this direction. I don't know how it's handled in the movie because I haven't seen it, but principally speaking, I'm skeptical this movie is going to age well.

 

[psylockolussus]

using a man's real life death in the story of a fictional movie.

Yeah I agree with this.

I felt like this was worse than recasting.

 

[Melpardus]

Maybe I'm just not that creative but I feel like this was overall the best story they could've had given the circumstances. I definitely would like to have seen and compared it to the script Coogler had pre-August 2020. SO much has been said at this point that I feel like the horse has decayed a long time ago, so not much more to say on that other than yeah, the marketing felt a little weird at times but I also get why they did it and it didn't feel overly cynical to me. (Not to mention that the more I learned about Chadwick outside of the MCU context, the more I personally understood why his Black Panther cast and crew mates felt like they couldn't have done it with someone else, at least not as soon as Disney was pushing for this movie to get made.)

 

[Babillygunn]

Except Thunderbolt Ross is a relatively minor character who has only appeared a handful of times over the years. Civil War was his first appearance in eight years. And he only appeared twice more very briefly after that. In other words, it's an easier role to recast than T'Challa/Black Panther who was a marquee character.

Audiences around the globe didn't fall in love with Thunderbolt Ross like they did with Chadwick Boseman.

This.
And millions of kids around the world looked up to T’Challa and dream of being him. It’s maybe the single most socially important character in the MCU. And Chadwick Boseman was the definitive portrayal.

No one ever says “I want to be Thunderbolt Ross.” (People just naturally grow up to be the old white male bureaucrat without aspiring to it.)

 

[Prison Mike]

The decision was a tough one to make. They weren’t going to make everyone happy. Even if they recast the role, this thread would still exist, just the other way around.

 

[BoredGuy]

I still think they made absolutely the right decision

No matter who they cast, it would've been one hell of an uphill battle to fill that role
I don't blame Marvel for not wanting to try, and if I were an actor they were looking at recasting with, I would turn it down without a second thought.

To "take time" and recast the role later would've still felt weird, and the moment he showed up it would've been like the Rhodey moment from Iron Man 2, times a million.

Aging up T'challa Jr. feels pretty hokey, but its a better option than any of the above ideas

And as far as the "using a man's death for a movie" I completely disagree; it was too big of a deal to not incorporate it, and it wasn't like Ledger dying after the film was complete. He was going to be absent from the film, and that had to be addressed. Add to that the fact that Boseman was someone who meant so much to everyone around him, and paying tribute via film was much more appropriate than just pretending nothing had happened. The cast and crew were dealing with their grief and this was a touching way for them to deal with that.

This movie had some minor issues, but imo none of them had to do with their decision on not recasting

 

[Chesterfield]

Setting everything else aside, can you imagine being the poor actor actually asked to play T'Challa in Black Panther 2? They'd be George Lazenby at *best*. Some of the decision to go with the story they did might well have been "Nobody good enough to do the role, is going to want to touch the role".

There's also the possibility the new actor could have pulled off a great performance and had better material to work with. Anyone who believes Chadwick was the only actor who could bring T'Challa to life is being shortsighted.

 

[Mr. Peanut]

I still don't understand why they didn't just have T'Challa mysteriously vanish. Leaves the door open to recast him later, and avoids the extreme awkwardness of T'Challa dying immediately after he was just brought back to life.

 

[HammerDown]

Yes. I was never for recasting the role anyway. I think it would have felt wrong because of what happend to CB.

I like what they did to honor his passing and even introducing the character’s son felt like a nice touch to me.