Where were you on 12 February 2018? I was in the cinema with a Tango Ice Blast in each hand, with my nipples more erect than ever, because I was watching Black Panther.

I know what I was doing then, but ask me what day my baby nephew was born, and the best I can do is give you a ballpark figure from anywhere between January to December.

That’s how good Black Panther is. And I’m not the only one that thinks that way – even the film’s lead, Chadwick Boseman reckons it could be the best movie of the year. Not just the most popular.

Black Panther smashed box office records, possibly making it Marvel’s biggest movie to-date, and with the Academy creating a new category, Popular Film, it seems a shoo-in that it’ll Winkanda that category, but Chadwick doesn’t want that. He wants more.

For the first time, a Marvel movie seems like to walk away with a tiny gold man – by which I mean an Academy Award, and not just a vertically challenged bloke painted – as Chadwick, who plays the titular role, told The Hollywood Reporter “We don’t know what it [the new prize] is, so I don’t know whether to be happy about it or not.

“What I can say is that there’s no campaign [that we are mounting] for popular film; like, if there’s a campaign, it’s for best picture, and that’s all there is to it,” continued the actor.

Chadwick went on to say “What we did was very difficult. We created a world, we created a culture… We had to create a religion, a spirituality, a politics; we had to create an accent; we had to pull from different cultures to create clothing styles and hair styles. It’s very much like a period piece. So, as far as that’s concerned, I dare any movie to try to compare to the [level of] difficulty of this one. And the fact that so many people liked it — if you just say it’s [merely] popular, that’s elitist.”

If you don’t win the Best Picture though, Chadwick, don’t panic. The Popular Film category definitely wasn’t created simply to increase viewership to the Academy Awards ceremony at all. Sure. Definitely. 100% not. You believe me, right?