The worst part of the life cycle of any d?rkenkultur event is the week or two ahead of its release, once the swells in the filmblogging community have had a chance to see it while sitting next to celebrities at the premiere and start building up hype on their Twitter feeds, claiming that this new thing is definitely the best thing of all time and also the most original thing of all time and definitely a thing that all people who care about things will need to see.
Last week’s “Black Panther” premiere was no different, naturally, though it came with an added annoyance of having to hear about the film being the first superhero movie with a lead black character. As USA Today put it, “The first superhero movie to star a black lead character — with Chadwick Boseman playing an African king, and director Ryan Coogler at the helm — had its world premiere on Monday night in Hollywood.”
While I want to be polite, I feel the urge to shout from the rooftops that this is ahistorical bunkum being propagated by people who are either utterly ignorant or unwittingly in the service of Disney’s marketing department. It’s a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, it’s going to be huge, we don’t need to be lied to, we don’t need to erase our past.
We don’t need to forget about 1998’s “Blade.”
Now, look: “Blade” wasn’t the first superhero movie to star a black lead character either (more on its predecessors in a moment). But it was the movie that served as a proof of concept for Marvel’s jump into the world of big budget licensed filmmaking. If you want to look at the current glut of superhero movies, “Blade” is as good a place to start as any.