With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania coming out this week, we'd have expected the debate to have moved on. Yet, here comes the French government to trash Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, in a development we certainly didn't anticipate.
The action immediately shifts to the United Nations, where Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett's Queen Ramonda demonstrates her unwavering distrust of the rest of the world in ways that would prevent them from receiving Wakandan aid.
Dora Milaje invites French military personnel to the auditorium to prove a point, something that became especially embroiled in the craw of Armed Forces minister Sébastien Lecornu, who criticised the MCU blockbuster.
According to the politician, he "strongly condemns this phony and deceptive representation of our armed forces." His particular issue concerns the uniforms the soldiers wear, which mirror the genuine clothing worn during Operation Barkhane, leading Lecornu to condemn Wakanda Forever for what he described as an insult to "the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali on its request, in the face of Islamist terrorist groups."
Although you can always argue that the Black Panther sequel is merely a mass-marketed comic book film meant to entice viewers, it is clear that the minister has taken some serious offense at the way his troops have been used to advance a plot.