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The Black Panther doesn’t appear to bring much to the party, even if he does turn up to it in a Spandex catsuit festooned with little pointy ears.

But it turns out he may have the most important superpower of all, the element of surprise.

We’re now 10 years and 18 movies into Marvel’s expanding “cinematic universe” and it’s beginning to show its age.

The Black Panther takes his claws to the old formula. There are no mid-air punchups, no planet-saving showdowns, no CGI monsters and no British baddie.

The most striking difference is the setting. Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther isn’t the first black superhero but he is the first one from Africa.

An opening sequence gives us a brief history of Wakanda, a technologically advanced east African nation that has hidden itself from the outside world

The Wakandans’s secret is the mineral vibranium which they use to bestow superpowers on their anointed king.

After his father’s death in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, T’Challa (Boseman) squeezes into the sacred onesie for a spectacular coronation. As he fights off a musclebound challenger in a ceremonial scrap, his supporters look on.

There’s Wakandan secret agent and love interest Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), Queen Mum Ramonda (Angela Bassett) and T’Challa’s smartmouthed scientist sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) who supplies the king with gadgets and the film with some much-needed comedy.

When we take a diversion to a South Korean casino, director Ryan Coogler stirs in elements of a spy thriller.

T’Challa, Nakia and Okoye are there to pinch cannonarmed South African Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) who is selling vibranium to Martin Freeman’s CIA agent.

They say a thriller is only as good as it’s villain, and Michael B. Jordan brings fire and fury as Killmonger, a radical who wants to end Wakanda’s isolation and arm the world’s oppressed black folk.

It looks like the tenth anniversary of the “cinematic universe” will go off with a very big bang.