My knowledge is the same as yours, roughly. The attraction to 'Black Panther' amongst many readers was that he was a prince-becoming-king that fought for people with honour. Much reflecting a want for a working class society and Black people seeing positivity. This was my personal relationship with the comic, but it reflected, somewhat, in the film adaptations. To understand from an outside PoV, you have to recall who 'The Avenger' characters were and how they related to the reading/ watching audience.
Mid-90s is kind of where I bowed out as there were too many different takes on the hero genre to keep up with.
Hollywood is just trying to anchor its world in a 30 year period, except not using comic book readers (Kevin Feige, Ryan Coogler and James Gunn aside) as typical writers/ filmmakers/ producers for the projects. This is what's fucking up Marvel! They've changed up storylines that lead away from the obvious continued arc and into the wildness and now they're lost.
Good job timelines are going to restructure the narrative!!
And this is where they can save 'Black Panther' as well as others, which should get Marvel back to the billion dollar profit margins it used to have!