Viola Davis stars in this controversial new film about a real-life women's army in 19th-century West Africa — and their involvement in the slave trade.
Recently the United States belatedly discovered the Black audience - in fact, several Black audiences.
Oscar-winning art films like Moonlight, mainstream biopics like King Richard and BlackKlansmen, upmarket genre films like Get Out! and Nope - but particularly box office smashes like Black Panther. Suddenly the door was open for big-budget blockbusters like The Woman King.
The Woman King was indebted to Black Panther in another way. The fictional kingdom of Wakanda boasted an invincible army of women soldiers, an army based on a real-life example - the notorious Amazons of Dahomey.
Writer and producer Maria Bello was sure there was a story in there and took it to movie star Viola Davis.
There's undoubtedly a story here, but it's not quite as simple and uplifting as the bald outline suggests.
The West African country of Dahomey certainly had an all-women army - the Agoje. This was noteworthy, not just in Africa. In the early nineteenth century, women's rights of any sort barely existed anywhere else.
But as many angry commentators have pointed out, Dahomey was hardly a feminist paradise. Its main economy was slave trading.
It was a major trading station where other African countries came to sell their captives to European and American slavers. I'm not saying this fact stops it from being a fascinating story. But it's not quite this one.
Viola Davis plays Nanisca, the general of the Agoje. At the start of The Woman King, Dahomey and its king Ghezo - played by John Boyega - are under threat on two fronts.
On one side is their traditional enemy, the Oyo Empire, and on the other European colonists - not just visiting slavers, but people who want to take over all of Africa.
In fact, the land grab that saw just about the whole continent stolen by the likes of England, France, Spain, Belgium and the rest was yet to come.
But to deflect attention from King Ghezo's enthusiastic slaving, it's a good idea to bring in a European baddie. In this case, Portugal drew the short straw - led by the evil Santo and the quite nice Malik.
This is the background to the two main stories which focus on two contrasting members of the Agoje.
There's the general Nanisca, attempting to influence the king towards the right side of history. And there's raw recruit Nawi, sold into the army after she rejected the husband her family had arranged for her.
The "Woman King" of the title was historically accurate, particularly in Dahomey - modern-day Benin. Women could earn the status of sharing the throne with the hereditary King.
And the conscripting of young women like Nawi was very common in the reign of King Ghezo.
Apart from the exotic setting, The Woman King is every "new kid in the army" movie ever made.
It follows Nawi as she works her way up the ranks... I know, we're going to need a montage here. She makes friends with two other rookies and is taken under the wing of the hard-bitten sergeant, played by Lashana Lynch, from the last James Bond movie.
Lashana's rather good in this too, as is South African Thuso Mbedu, who plays young Nawi.
Just so long as you accept that this is a popcorn muncher with about as much connection to dusty old history as Braveheart or Gladiator.
It could have been a better film if it had stuck closer to the truth. But for the producers of The Woman King, "better" isn't the same thing as "more profitable".
The purpose of films like this is to get to make more big films — not small, worthy ones.
Cynics could draw a parallel with Dahomey's slave trade. But I hope that doesn't prevent future films from digging a little deeper into other African stories.
