With reality and fiction woven together inextricably. this ain't Sony and Marvel fighting over Spider-Man. This is the actual death of the titular role and the one who was going to LEAD the MCU for the foreseeable future, and who in real life, had built a hell of a resume in a short time, all brought to a tragic halt. There is no comparable scenario. Heath Ledger was an incredible talent, and him dying before Dark Knight impacted DKR, but he wasn't the lead character of the franchise, and Batman has always had a rogues' gallery of villains to lean on. As someone else said, not having the ability to bring Killmonger back, and having to forge heroes out of everyone else who is left earlier than they were planning for, nevermind still cope with the loss, just too much to ask. But they still did it.

The way in which they inserted Chadwick's battle into T'Challa's was painful, but masterfully done. The emotions were probably the easiest for them to convey since they were 100% authentic. But to do it in the work of fiction and still tell a story, a tall fucking order.

Regarding the movie: fuck the academy but Angela Bassett earned that damn supporting actress, nomination at the very least. People try to minimize the gravity of the personal stories told in comic book movies but there can be no better expression of grief and loss in a movie than how she did it.

The pacing was actually fine to me, they had a lot to get done, but the conflict between Wakanda and Talokan was too contrived. Like why would Namor go after a people that did them no wrong rather than the colonizing/settlers who were trying to tap the natural resources? With his age and what he saw, he had a better appreciation for imperialism than even the Wakandans could, and yet he went for the sucker shit. Would have been more interesting if they treated each other as third parties while dealing with white supremacy or if they fought each other over belief of who had rights to their special resources. Seeing Black and Brown/Blue people fight each other when white people STARTED the movie doing some devilish shit, was just so unnecessary. But maybe that was part of the point???

The ancestral plane sequence was a nice surprise, I expected to see Namor's mother or in a long shot, T'Challa. Mid-credit scene was basically predictable when calculating how long N'Kia had been gone and when Ramonda had something to tell Shuri before Namor first surfaced. Still a nice touch and leaves open a lot of possibilities.

Chadwick was too large a presence for this movie to have been "better," but I think it was about as good as they could have done with all they were up against and was legitimately a very strong effort. The first Marvel movie of 2022 worth actually watching. The BP and Captain America films have always been the best standalone of the MCU.