Black Panther: Wakanda Forever VFX Boss Teases the Unseen Side of Namor’s Home

Like Black Panther before it, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever introduced fans to an entirely new world within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As with Wakanda before it, the Ryan Coogler follow-up took movie-goers on an underwater adventure into the kingdom of Talokan, ruled by Tenoch Huerta’s Namor. As one of the film’s visual effects supervisors tells us, fans of the franchise were given just a gilmpse of the kingdom during Wakanda Forever.

“Put it this way. You have seen 10-percent of what the [Talokan] design was,” Wētā FX animation supervisor Sidney Kombo-Kintombo tells us. “We didn’t get into any of the houses beside Namor’s throne room. In the throne room, you have those clusters on the side, and you have the fish that are traveling in and out of those areas, a really tiny detail you can easily miss.

While fans only saw a select fraction of the city, much more was planned. In fact, the production gave visual effects vendors a complete rundown of the build-out of the city, allowing them to choose which pieces to show.

“In term of the size of the city, it’s a gigantic,” Kombo-Kintombo adds. “What was impressive is that the art team made this really beautiful fly through where we had a chance to be taken around the city a little bit for us to be able to see what it was and pick the area that we wanted to feature.”

Wētā VFX supervisor Chris White adds a compliment about Marvel’s direction on the fictional world. “‘You’re entering a space that you’re unsure of. It’s familiar, but it’s unfamiliar. It’s a little bit scary, but it’s also enticing, and here’s what you need to feel,’” White says of the studio’s notes. “Ryan [Coogler] would say, ‘She’s underwater, but she’s really an outer space. She’s not in control. She can’t see very far,’ and I love the movies of the ’80s and things of these space movies. So, their direction being not just this is what it needs to look like or do, but this is how the audience needs to feel, was a nice way to work, getting those kind of notes as well.”

Now in theaters, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever follows Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Shuri (Letitia Wright), M’Baku (Winston Duke), Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the Dora Milaje (including Florence Kasumba) as they fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death. As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with the help of War Dog Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) and forge a new path for the kingdom of Wakanda.  It has yet to be seen where the Midnight Angels tie into the story.

Introducing Tenoch Huerta as Namor, king of a hidden undersea nation, the film also stars Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, Mabel Cadena and Alex Livanalli.