I’m not one for paying particular attention to the Academy Awards, but even I had to do a double-take when it was announced that Black Panther earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Not that I think it doesn’t deserve it, it indeed does, and it is a fantastic film. It’s just that these types of movies never seem to make the final list of nominees.

No longer can superhero movies be classed merely as summer blockbusters and be relegated to specific award categories as they have been in the past.

That was the assumption, anyway. Between 2009 and this year, superhero movies still didn’t receive much attention from the academy in its biggest categories. That’s the entire lifespan of Marvel’s current Cinematic Universe — a total of 22 movies passed over. Genre films have largely been relegated to the science categories, including Visual Effects.

— Black Panther is the first superhero movie to earn an Oscars Best Picture nomination by The Verge

It’s taken a long time for these movies to be recognised and hopefully, we will continue to see a broader range of films being nominated for Best Picture in the future.