The Weird History of The Black Panther, New King of The MCU

[K12]

I really hope that the whole King of Wakanda isn't just treated as a backstory. I'm hoping for the Black Panther films be a bit like Batman crossed with Thor.

Also woohoo a Superhero that isn't American! (Thor doesn't count)

 

[RossaLincoln]

I think you're criminally under-representing the importance of Blade.

Sort of repeating myself from another discussion, but when i said "niche hit" I didn't mean it was a flop. Just that it was a relative success, especially for the budget, and one that did not result at all in a critical reassessment of the superhero genre overall.

Think about it like this: Prior to Spielberg with Close Encounters and Lucas with Star Wars, science fiction - as a genre - was a ghetto as far as critics and even the public at large was concerned. There were of course several successful science fiction films in the decades before those two films, but they were always treated as flukes. This is weird to think about, but a lot of the pre-Star Wars/Close Encounters scifi films that are now regarded as enduring classics only became regarded as such thanks to critical reassessment that occurred after those two films changed everything.

Similarly, prior to 2008, the superhero genre wasn't remotely respected as a fertile ground for telling stories everyone could relate to. The MCU (and like I said, to a lesser extent The Dark Knight) changed that.

Related: Think about how people viewed magical fantasy films prior to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter (both of those series' first films were released within a month of one another in 2001). We could never have had Game of Thrones before that and really, it took quite a bit after before we did.