Black Widow

If there was a marvel character that people were begging to have a movie made about them (at least one within the MCU), it was Black Widow. Gradually evolving herself from a bland role who only existed for her looks in Iron Man 2, to progressively getting better and better with each consecutive film, Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of the character made people fall in love with her role and really wanted to see the backstory that the films kept bringing up, but never fully delivered on. Throughout the MCU and even before its creation, thoughts were thrown out to make a Black Widow movie, but due to writer’s thinking that female superhero movies weren’t profitable enough (it was always that lame excuse), it took a lot longer than necessary to finally get it made. Not only was it bad that it took after the character’s death to get a proper movie on her, but even the universe was seemingly against it being screened as COVID caused delays and prevented people from going to see it in theatres. After all this build-up literally built up upon years and years of waiting, it’s a shame that what we got was pretty mediocre. Set after the events of Captain America; Civil War, Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson) is on the run from the government and finds herself hiding out until she discovers that the organisation she was forced to work with as child, The Red Room, is still operating and sending other Black Widows to their deaths on re-con missions under a mind-controlling agent. Teaming up with her ‘sister’ Yelena (played by Florence Pugh), who was recently freed from the mind-controlling agent, the two decide to track down their fake foster family; Russian super soldier father, Alexei (played by David Harbour) and black widow assassin mother, Melina (played by Rachel Weisz) who is also a lead scientist for the Red Room, and get them to expose the location of the Red Room itself to shut it down and stop the evil plans of Dreykov (played by Ray Winstone), who is planning on taking control over more women of the world and hopes to finally eliminate Natasha by sending out an agent known as Taskmaster (played by Olga Kurylenko) to finish her off. For the long-awaited film about the character, this was a pretty messy experience that doesn’t entirely feel like it’s worth the wait. While not awful, it definitely doesn’t make up for the time wasted to get to this point.

For a solo movie about Black Widow, there needed to be this awareness of what to offer, what to keep secret and what new and old stuff to give focus to. The character’s secretive nature could have made an exploration of said elusive background dampen a lot of fans built-up expectations, but with correct handling, it could prove interesting, revealing and satisfactory for the character. The problem is the content of this story doesn’t act as a very good origin story, or even as a ‘’final hurrah’’ film, instead operating in a weird limbo status where its not an origin film, but also not a final film either in many regards . The plot written by Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson isn’t the most convoluted set-up and its ties to Natasha’s traumatic past are fine, but it doesn’t allow for a lot of clarification or realization about its titular lead; nothing is really discovered about her that the audience didn’t already know or couldn’t have figured out anyway, so it can’t function as an origin, but the modern perspective also doesn’t bring much new to the character either, it doesn’t satisfy on either end. The director for this movie, Cate Shortland, has been attached to other tv shows and films that show that she is a legitimately talented director and also favors thriller-based stories that tackle themes of trauma from a female perspective and the evils of humanity in a gritty underground style, so on the surface, she seems like a good choice for a story revolving around corrupt political figures exploiting young girls and destroying them physically and mentally to transform them into ”perfect” weapons. Honestly, the moments that allow the characters to just sit and converse like real people about their tragic pasts legitimately work and fit with this underground gritty tone that the director seems comfortable in, but this isn’t just any movie, it’s a MARVEL movie and that’s where things fall apart for her. It has a comic book energy, plotline and even style of writing that just doesn’t mesh with her more grounded serious tone, which makes the movie feel incredibly imbalanced. What should have been something along the lines of Winter Soldier or Black Panther with their more personable and down-to-earth stance, instead goes full-on overblown superhero theatrics with giant sky battles, pigs that stop breathing on command and action scenes where anyone without super powers would definitely die.

One of the things that did get a decent amount of praise for the film was the cast, and thankfully a lot of them are what makes the movie somewhat enjoyable to watch. It must have been very satisfying for Scarlett Johansson to play Black Widow as a lead in her own movie (even helping to produce the film herself), and give the character a chance to shine on her own. The character has always had this element of direct ‘no-nonsense’ attitude to her that came off more as confidence in ability rather than lifeless monotone and it added a lot to her and seeing it more front-and-centre shows that it does work for the character. Also, some of the new cast members are also really likeable, adding a bit more to Widow’s story, and when the four come together, the truly do feel like a familial unit (expressed quite well in a dinner scene during the middle of the film). They feel like fleshed out roles and are acted very well; Florence Pugh acting as a more aggressive, yet vulnerable widow works as a nice counter to Natasha and the two share good sisterly chemistry, David Harbour as the father gets pretty close to being annoying, but there is an element of sad tragedy to him that holds him back just enough, and even Rachel Weisz as the mother has a demeanor that comes across as more stoic, distant and even disturbingly unapologetic, but still holds a feeling of affection for her children, its a group of disturbed people that work nicely as a awkward but still caring family. The rest of the characters unfortunately don’t work very well, mainly the villains. Ray Winstone plays the main threat with a lot of slime and uncomfortable jeer that would have made him an effective threat, but his lack of screen presence makes it hard for him to be memorable, and Taskmaster feels like a complete 180 from what the character is supposed to be from the comics, and even this new direction is done incredibly poorly so it just feels like a waste.

From a visual perspective, there’s some occasion moments on cinematography done by Gabriel Beristain that legitimately capture that intimate, physical, colorless, even realistic atmosphere that feels like the director’s strong suit, and would have been perfectly fitting for this kind of film. The gritty shaky-cam style of film-making in moments can be effective and even a creepy opening title sequence with a remixed version of Smells Like Teen Spirit, paints the film in a harsher, uglier more uncomfortable light, but its hard to imagine current Marvel being willing to explore a lot of what they are insinuating happens to these women (it doesn’t sound incredibly PG). However, the film’s action keeps preventing the film from feeling properly gritty and realistic. For a character that would excel at producing some cool hand to hand combat sequences, a lot of the action is poorly filmed and awkwardly edited, making it hard to make out what’s going on and making every fight sequence unmemorable. What makes it worse is that it doesn’t even just stick to basic fist fights and grounded combat, it features all the typical fast paced high-flying action of any other superhero movie that doesn’t click with this environment and atmosphere; it brings up scenarios where someone without powers shouldn’t survive and it sucks you out of the moment when it doesn’t feel consistent with the rest of the film. You can feel the Marvel writer’s need to worm in some comedy in this film because it feels incredibly off-putting in a movie like this, and marvel has an issue with comedy in everything they create even if it’s not needed, and it just comes across as lame, especially with a subject matter as messed-up as this one. The head person who wrote the screenplay, Eric Pearson, has been attached to more light-hearted films like Thor: Ragnarök, Godzilla vs Kong and even the Agent Carter series, so it might have been best better to stick with one who was more comfortable tackling the grim and gritty of what this plot’s material had to offer.

Black Widow is a great character and one that didn’t really deserve the outcome she got in Endgame (in the grand scheme of things, she does feel like she was fridged to motivate the others), so it would have been nice to at least have one last outing with the character so that it didn’t feel so underwhelming how her story ended already, and unfortunately this movie wasn’t that better step for the character to have a curtain call. All things considering, the movie isn’t necessarily awful, and it has some decent aspects, particularly in some of its plot ideas and its four lead actors, but the messy story-line, lack of an arc or development for the lead character, awkwardly done action, and inconsistent tone makes it a pretty uneven sit to get through. Not the worst that the MCU has to offer (honestly even their worst is nowhere near as awful as the other Marvel movies previous), but for what it is, it needed to be a lot better to warrant how long people had to wait for it.