Yeah, okay, something else to check off the bucket list.
I was actually a fan Black Widow before it was cool. Legitimately thought she deserved to have a movie before certain other individuals, and not just because I'm the undying love slave of Scarlett Johansson.
. . .okay, not only because I'm the undying love slave of Scarlett Johansson.
Natasha Romanoff is actually a very interesting character that deserved to be more richly developed rather than just be stuck having only vague references to her past being made in things like The Avengers or Avengers: Age of Ultron. There was a lot that could be worked out from there...and it wasn't and now, thanks to Marvel's incredibly bad planning...it won't be.
Unless Scarlett Johansson shows up for more films which is possible, but kind of unlikely and not just because of the now-settled lawsuit against them because of this movie. Thanks to COVID-19, this thing got pushed back further and further rather like a different Marvel property that I'll be happy to get into another time. Even without that, the timing of this film really isn't great considering what happened in Endgame concerning her character.
It all smacks of too little too late, which annoys me greatly considering how many hits that Kevin Feige has been able to fire off and this may be one of the biggest MCU misfires since Iron Man 3. Unlike in that case, it's not because of the content of the actual film itself but just the timing in bringing it into production and then to releasing it.
Granted some of the back half of that had to do with the aforementioned COVID (something that I'm certainly hoping can be put into the rearview mirror, possibly while spitting out the window at it as we pass by), but the lack of production is all on Marvel.
I'll get into that a bit later. For now, let's take a look at the film as it exists and judge it on its own merits and flaws.
Black Widow kicks off with Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) on the run from General Ross (William Hurt) following the events of Captain America: Civil War. He doesn't really factor into the plot beyond the first and final scenes of the film however as, by the time he catches up to where he thinks she is, Natasha has already made it to somewhere in Norway. From there, she gets back to Budapest to reunite with her "sister" Yelena (Florence Pugh) and she learns that the Red Room, the Soviet era program that created them both, is still active despite Natasha having killed the leader as part of her defection to S.H.I.E.L.D. (or so Natasha believes).
From there, Natasha must reunite with Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Melina Vosktokoff (Rachel Weisz) her "parents" in order to get to and defeat the evil Dreykov (Ray Winstone) and keep him from continuing the dark, bloody legacy of the Red Room. All the while being stalked by Dreykov's greatest creation, Taskmaster...
Honestly? It's okay. Just okay. There's the usual MCU brand of humor in here, though it seems to come up better with a Russian filter? Weirdly enough.
The action is pretty good. About what you would expect out of the super soldier variety. There's nothing too over the top as far as the fights go. The consequences of some of the fights go a bit over the top, but given that it's a largely action-focused movie, I'm willing to let it slide. If we can accept Schwarzenegger mowing down an entire island worth of goons with the NRA Christmas Pack, we can accept Natasha and her spy family bringing down a high-tech, airborne facility or destroying a prison with an avalanche.
One of the things I actually really enjoyed was the dynamic between Natasha and her "family". For characters we've never been introduced to before, they have a very good chemistry between them all, in particular Natasha and Yelena. It's one of the many things about this film that makes me said that it's 1) the only film we're likely to get with the pair of them, and 2) that this isn't a trilogy.
We are likely to see these characters in the future - in particular Yelena, seeing as the post-credits scene pretty much assures she'll have a part to play in the upcoming Disney Plus Hawkeye series - but likely never with Natasha again, which is kind of a massive shame.
Now, I know a lot of people have been criticizing the change with Taskmaster...and I agree, it's honestly kind of dumb. I get how it fits into Natasha's backstory and how it's part of her character development...but it would have been a lot easier to make her yet another one of the Black Widows given the overall story and Dreykov's plot to create more Black Widows. Plus, it would have left Taskmaster open for another movie...which, admittedly, it still might, but we'll see how that plays out in the years to come.
I don't really have anything else to say on Black Widow. It was there, now it's gone. I didn't like it, I didn't hate it. It was...okay. Just okay. I got to see Natasha get one last hurrah, which was pretty neat. I saw a lot of what could have been...and that's it.
At some point, I'll get back to reviewing the films of Phase Two, since that's kind of the area where MadCap At The Movies and MadCap's Reel Thoughts cross over.
Uh-oh...
Madcap Crossed the Streams: 10
. . .well, I'll deal with that later.
But no, Black Widow isn't bad. It's average, it just happens to come at a time when it's too little too late. Natasha Romanoff is dead in the MCU as of Endgame. Maybe they could have taken a cue from the comics and tossed her into a clone body to continue on, but they didn't. As it stands, we have a so-so action movie and some set up for later MCU events. For a character who is as complex and interesting as Black Widow, this film doesn't really match up to that lofty pedestal.
In the words of Daryl Hall and John Oates: She's gone, oh I, oh I, I better learn how to face it.
Black Widow is available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and Disney Plus from Walt Disney Motion Pictures and Marvel Studios.
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