February is where they dump crap movies, that they don't expect to do well commercially or critically. "Black Panther" is the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a black star, and featuring a predominantly black cast. It is obviously going to be to black people and their relations/interactions with white people as the Disney Star Wars films are to female-male. In other words, the "privileged" demographic is absolutely not allowed to be competent or demonstrate any sort of superiority over its counterpart in any way. No man is allowed to help a heroine or be right in an argument with a heroine in Disney Star Wars, and the same thing is going to go for white people & black in "Black Panther". Martin Freeman is going to be the new Agent Colson, while Andy Serkis is the villain, but he's going to be a catspaw for the actual mastermind & more capable African villain, or he's going to be the irredeemable & corrupting influence that undoes the sympathetic aspects of the black villain.

My point is, this is a heavily pro-black movie, but the studio seems to be giving up on it, by dumping it off in February. What does THAT say about Marvel's commitment to diversity?**

The alternative explanation for the February release is so incredibly stupid, it makes my brain hurt, but I wouldn't put it past the entertainment industry at this point.

February is Black History Month.

Yes. They are deliberately releasing a movie, at a counter-indicated time of year, simply because of the color of the cast (and probably writers, directors, etc), and the coincidental period in which people with nothing else going for them make a big fuss about black people. First of all, this is about a comic book character, with a very suspect name***. In a month set aside to honor the contributions of REAL black achievers and successes, who did actual good for people, they are trying to piggyback on that sentiment to prop up an imaginary hero, who is basically derivative of all the white guys already established, only adolescently improved to be way cooler, because 'black', and we can't let the forces of privilege win, while the supervising producers desperately try to keep this section of their CU tip-toeing the line between "redundant" and "setting-breaking" (and trailers for the NEXT Marvel movie strongly suggest this one isn't shaking up the status quo in any way).

This then, is Marvel's message to the audience: "Celebrate black Americans who made real contributions to America, by coming to see a movie about a made-up African, that doesn't matter at all, even in his own world!" It doesn't help that the star of "Black Panther", Chadwick Boseman, has most prominently played at least three significant historical figures of the 20th century, so you're taking a guy whom people with an interest in Black History, will already be associating with the First Black Baseball Player and the First Black Supreme Court Justice, and telling them that THIS YEAR, Black History is all about a pandering character, probably made up by white people to cash in on 70s entertainment trends.

Either the movie is going to flop, and give the skinheads something to crow about, and possibly set back efforts to prove that black movies can play on the white field, and can succeed as more than just a Black Movie; or it's going to be successful and some SJW is going to notice the point I made and get on their high horse about it, because nothing riles them up faster than people having fun. On the hopeful side, maybe it will kill this Black History Month nonsense. The only people who take it seriously, are the same ones who don't need a special month to notice what black people did. And, calendrically-speaking, it's actually segregation. If it IS important, it should be in there during Everyone History Year, and it it's not actually significant, like George Carver's 47th use for peanuts, you're just making blacks look pathetic by bringing that up like they've got nothing better to offer, or else making it look like they need affirmative action even in the history books. It's stupid.

**I hear it has allegedly ruined their publishing business, but considering their business model there is "telling the same stories over and over again" while trying to hit that sweet spot of encouraging their audience to never ever grow out of their product, while hoping to keep turnover high enough that no one notices the aforementioned product repitition plan...yeah, I doubt SJWs did any more than hasten the collapse of that cycle, especially once movies came out and highlighted the verisimilitude problems of their properties.

*** What's wrong with just Panther? Or Panther-man, if you must adhere to comic-book conventions. Also, he's from Africa, where they don't actually HAVE panthers, but they DO have black people. Lots of them. More of them than any other color people. So adding the modifier to his name is pretty stupidly non-specific, since almost everyone there is black. It's like naming some Scandinavian superhero 'White Polar Bear'.