It had been over a year since I’d gone to the cinema. I think the last film I went to see was Sonic the Hedgehog during its opening week in February of 2020. So literally RIGHT before everything started to shut down in the UK because of Miss Corona’s world tour.I’d heard not so great things about Black Widow, but I didn’t give a fuck. I still wanted to watch this film, but there was no way I was paying 20 quid to watch it on Disney+. Also, I wanted to experience the film as Marvel Studios had initially intended, and I was fortunate enough to be in a city where cinemas were opening up again. So, off to the cinema I went.
I really had to mentally prepare myself for a trip to the cinema, and cancelled on myself several times. Because despite the UK opening back up and going ‘back to normal’, I don’t trust this government, I don’t trust people, and we are still in a pandemic where COVID is giving us runway reveals into new variants every other month. I still very much keep my ass at home and only leave the crib to do my weekly grocery shop, during which I constantly see people being dumb. Therefore I went into the cinema masked up, sanitised up, and made a bit of a spectacle in my screening by spraying and wiping down my seat and those either side of me. The screen I was in wasn’t exactly busy, but there were still more people there than I would have liked; surprisingly so for a late evening showing on a weekday - so my anxiety was a mess. But I was still able to lock into Black Widow. And as raggedy as this film was, it did a good job of distracting me from the mess that is life right now as I know it.
The timing of Black Widow’s release is both a gift and a curse. In terms of theatrical releases for May in 2021, it has no competition at all. So there’s that. Also, if there’s one film that people will either pay premier access for on Disney+ or go to the cinema to watch, even if they’re an apprehensive germaphobe like myself, it’s a Marvel movie. But Black Widow is also the first Marvel Studio movie to release after we’ve had a couple of Marvel’s Disney+ shows. Shows which have really shifted expectations for Marvel Studios’ offerings in huge ways. And whilst you can’t outright compare the narrative form of a 6 episode show to a film; there is no getting away from the fact that the bar for Marvel Studios content as a whole is far higher now as a result of the shows, and that the judging standard for MCU fans will change as a result. Not only will Marvel have to work to make their movies feel more special and that bit more distinct from their shows, but they’ll also have to weigh up if a story will work better as a film, a series of films, or as a show. And Black Widow tries to juggle so much, introduce so many characters, and provide so many different setups, that the story it wanted to tell really would have worked better as a show if Marvel weren’t willing to trim it down.
I’mma just get this out of the way. I’m not a Black Widow fan. Natasha always felt disproportionately side-lined in the Avengers movies compared to everybody else. Initially she was really just put in the movies as a bit of female ass in a catsuit for guys to ogle at. This is something Marvel Studios have tried to rectify as time has gone on, in terms of how they’ve depicted Natasha in films, and now with her finally getting the solo movie fans have long wanted; on which Scarlet Johansson is credited as an executive producer. But whilst Marvel Studios did course correct the character out from under the thumbs of Jon Favreau and Joss Whedon, they moved too slow. Just giving Black Widow a movie now after 10 years isn’t the catch-all fix that Kevin Feige thought it would be. Because not only is this movie wholly unessential, but it comes far too late. And I don’t think that this is the Black Widow movie that fans wanted nor expected, because it’s less about Natasha and more about MCU world building. The title of the movie, as far as I see it, isn’t in reference to Natasha’s character at all, but the Black Widow program itself and the fact that the film is centred on several Black Widows - two of whom happen to be Natasha’s adoptive mother and sister.
There are lots of issues with Black Widow and things I could pick at, some that I already have, and some that I will go on to. But I want to address what for me, were the 4 biggest issues with this film, from which everything else stems.
The humour.Marvel Studios movies have a very specific type of humour, something they’ve often been criticised for. And something we can blame Joss Whedon for, as his first Avengers movie pretty much set the tone for humour that Marvel Studios has stuck to ever since. I’m okay with the humour in Marvel movies, as I’ve never found it to get in the way of a story. But Black Widow is the first where I found that it did. It’s almost like somebody went through the script and said ‘Yeah, we’re gonna need jokes here, here, here and here’ and each of these moments just happened to be serious moments. Black Widow wants to be adult, grounded and emotional, but it also wants to be a Saturday morning TV show. It creates this really uneven tone throughout the movie, which pulled me out of it on many occasions.
Then there’s David Harbour, who was completely wasted in this film. I’m filing him under ‘The humour issue’, because he’s nothing more than comedic relief in this movie and it’s a problem. It’s great getting to see Harbour play such a fun role, as he’s rarely given the chance to, despite being such a funny guy. But there was no depth to the Red Guardian at all. Everything that came out of his mouth was a long form joke, where the punchline took so long to arrive, that you forgot what the setup was by the time that it landed. Red Guardian was just an irritating character. I don’t get why you would bag a talent like David Harbour, make him a character who has a really cool history, and then make them so one note. The prospect of a Russian equivalent of Captain America is so cool. And then Marvel go and do *gestures* THIS. The film would have been better without him. Narratively he serves no purpose.
Black Widow’s durability.I know Black Widow is (supposed to be) the main character of this movie. But, DAMN. This bitch takes falls, tumbles and beatings like she’s a super soldier. In the final act when she’s free falling out of the sky and bouncing off broken pieces of satellites and debris like she’s Sonic the Hedgehog, I actually threw my hands up like ‘What the fuck!?’ and a guy rows behind me called out ‘I know, right!?’.
There were so many moments in this film where Natasha should’ve either died, or at least broken an arm, yet she just walked shit off like she tripped and fell. Meanwhile, everybody around her is breaking legs, bleeding out and dying from far less. It’s ridiculous. It’s like the writers and the director conflated an assassin with a super soldier. Marvel Studios did a similar thing with Sam when he became Captain America in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. They just had him able to take more life-threatening knocks and do super strength shit because he's Captain America now, even though physically and genetically nothing about him has changed.
Marvel needs to draw clearer distinctions between the fact that some of these heroes are super-powered and can be flung around like Dragon Ball Z characters and still be okay, whereas others are just highly trained individuals who can still be mortally wounded. Just because Natasha couldn’t die in this film, it shouldn’t have been free reign to say ‘Cool. Let’s have her vehicle flip over in a fatal looking explosion whilst she’s in it...TWICE, kick her off a high-ass bridge and have her plunge into water, have her fall from a 10 story building, and then have her skydive thousands of feet in the air and land real rough, survive and then proceed to fight somebody.' It’s dumb. If Natasha was able to survive all of this shit, then how the hell did some fall onto concrete on Vormir kill her in Endgame? Make it make sense.
The pacing.Black Widow hits a point during its second act when the entire film feels like it’s ground to a halt, because it wants to remind us that all of these characters are part of a family. And again, a whole scene which could have been relatively short and full of heart is turned into a set of overlong jokes, with all emotional weight sucked out of it. The second act also wants to anchor moments which don’t feel wholly earned, because the movie didn’t do a good enough job of really making you care about this group of misfits as a family. I get what Marvel Studios tried to do here, but it just doesn’t work.
The third act of the movie is also a slog. Despite there being so much action, none of it is thrilling nor exciting, and you know exactly how everything is going to play out. So you’re just sat waiting for it all to happen.
This one movie highlights where Marvel Studios fucked up when it came to Black Widow’s story, because in all fairness, she probably should have gotten more than one film. There is easily three films worth of story that’s compounded into this one movie. Natasha’s mission in Budapest with Hawkeye could have been one film. Natasha trying to acclimatise to life separate as an ex-Avenger and reckoning with her past could have been another. Bringing down the Red Room could have been a whole film. Black Widow touches on all three of these things, but glosses over them in such a way that not only feels so disingenuous to the character of Natasha, but completely fucks up the pace - because all 3 acts feel like they’re telling different stories, with no time to dig into the elements of them which are actually interesting.
The villain.Marvel Studios still has a villain problem. Casting Ray Winstone as the big bad may have made sense on paper to somebody, but it makes no sense to me. Ray Winstone is a good actor, but he has long been typecast for one particular type of role, and Black Widow relies far too heavily on that - resulting in a villain that feels one note and typical in the worst of ways. Ray Winstone’s Russian accent also leaves a lot to be desired.
Taskmaster feels so grossly wasted. She features in two of the coolest action sequences in the movie, yet doesn’t cast enough of a shadow across the movie as she should. I liken Taskmaster in this movie to Nemesis in the Resident Evil 3 remake, which will mean NOTHING to anybody reading this who hasn’t played the original 1998 release release of Resident Evil 3 and it’s 2020 remake.Generally, Taskmaster doesn’t have enough of a presence across this story, despite being tied to Natasha and having a mission to retrieve what she and Yelena are in possession of. When Taskmaster was around you really felt that Yelena and Natasha were in some form of danger, which is what this film needed more of. Even though we know Natasha can’t die in this film, we still should have felt that she’d come close, or that Yelena could end up dead. But there are no real stakes, because the Taskmaster just disappears a third of the way into the film, only to show up again in the final act.
Some MCU fans may feel that how this film handles Taskmaster is a little too similar to Ghost in Ant-Man & The Wasp. Or maybe that’s just me. And there are so many questions that you have about Taskmaster that the film doesn’t address. Taskmaster fans will DRAG how this film handled the character until the end of time. But I do like that they gender bent the character.
The slog that is the third act of the movie features two big moments involving Dreykov and Taskmaster. One being that Dreykov knocks Natasha about. A man beating up a defenceless woman is not something I ever thought I’d see in a Marvel Studios movie. And the other being who Taskmaster is. But both moments feel cheap, because they feel like last ditch attempts to make a weak villain seem villainous. Because who is gonna root for a character who beats a woman and enslaves his own daughter. And despite both of these characters being such forces in Natasha’s life, you never feel that in the movie.You don’t feel enough of the weight nor the guilt that Natasha feels for making a decision that led to the creation of Taskmaster. And you don’t feel enough of the hatred that Natasha has for Dreykov for what he put her, Yelena and countless other girls through.
Thankfully, Dreykov ends up dead. But Taskmaster makes it out alive. So Marvel Studios still have a chance to redeem character and have Taskmaster become the cool badass that fans identify them as, from either the comics or the Spider-Man PS4 video game.
Marvel Studios really just gave toxic male comic book fans a reason to hate on the character and blame it all on the fact they’re a woman, and it's a shame. Because whilst Taskmaster is a let down, the character being a woman is not the reason why.
One of the few good things Black Widow does is bolster the roster of badass female characters in the MCU. But it also does that typical Marvel Studios thing of not giving enough of them any sense of breadth or depth. It’s just female characters for the sake of female characters to check a box.Black Widow has a whole history which has only been teased at in movies. And despite getting a Black Widow movie in which Natasha features, we still don’t know a great deal more about her history. We see more of the Red Room in Age of Ultron than we do in this film. We hear more about the mission in Budapest in Avengers Assemble than we see in this film. We get a 20 second flashback and that’s it, and it’s basically just Natasha sat in a car. None of this would have been a problem if the film actually went some way to fill in more of her history, even if it wasn’t explicitly expansions of things which were hinted at in prior films. Or if we weren’t going to get a look into more of Natasha’s history, then there should have been a story at the core of this movie which told us things about Natasha that we didn’t already know. Movies such as The Winter Soldier, Civil War and Endgame showed us that Natasha has a heart, that she isn’t some mindless assassin, and that she really cares about those around her and struggles with finding her purpose beyond being a Widow. All this movie does is show that, but it doesn’t build on any of it. I didn’t come out of this movie feeling like I knew Natasha any better than I did before.
So much of what Black Widow did felt cheap to me. The forcing of the family dynamic in the opening scene. Black Widows being mind controlled. ‘Oh, you can’t find the Red room because it’s in the sky’. Casting Ray Winstone in some typical, one note, mob boss style role. The family stuff felt unnecessarily shoehorned and there was no pay off as a result of it.Black Widows going through psychological conditioning would have been far more harrowing and sadistic than just some spray that takes over their mind and allows the villain to control them via an iPad. The Red Room having more than one location in places which are protected by the government would have been far more shady and shown how deep the rabbit hole of the Black Widow program is, rather than just ‘It’s in some Empire Strikes Back looking-ass base in the sky that’s why we couldn’t find it’ nonsense. Nat couldn’t have called in a favour to Nick, Maria or T'Challa to track it down!? And could we not have gotten a villain with some nuance? What the villain was doing was far more intriguing than the villain themselves. Nobody is gonna to remember Draykov. He's one of the most forgettable villains in a cinematic universe which has a junkyard of forgettable villains. Making the villain a woman would have added a other whole layer and really muddied things in a way that felt more interesting and thought provoking. She thinks that she’s doing these girls in the Red Room a favour and being the mother and maternal figure they never had as children. It also would have played into the narrative theme of motherhood and sisterhood, and nature vs nurture. Rather than just some maniacal mob man wants to control women. It reduced what could have been powerful narratives in the film to Men = Pieces of shit. Which...we are. But there’s just no sophistication to how Black Widow handled its villain and this premise. None at all. I mean, SHIT. They coulda made the villain Rachel Weisz's character, who in the comics is the Iron Maiden. It would have forced the story to make her face some form of repercussions for the part she played in the Black Widow program and what Yelena had to endure because of it.
And this is Black Widow all over. It’s a film with so many little issues which could have been so easily fixed. It’s wild to me that at no point during production these things weren’t ironed out, and that Marvel Studios left the film for a whole year and didn’t think to further refine it. Whole reshoots would have been impossible given the pandemic. But just tweaks to the edit could have at the very least fixed the pacing.
I also couldn’t help but draw parallels between things in this story and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, because there were moments of the story which strongly paralleled that of Agent May. The fact that she had to put a hit on a child, and it haunting her. The way she gained a reputation because of her kill count that people glorify, but isn’t something she herself is proud of. Having trust issues. I mean, shit. Agent May’s story is a better Black Widow story than Black Widow’s. Go watch season 2, episode 17 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and tell me what y’all think. It’s a shame that Kevin Feige is like ‘Fuck Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D’, because there were so many things in this film that not only reminded me of the show, but could have interlocked with it so easily.And speaking of shows, Black Widow highlights more than ever how you can’t watch these films separate from the Disney+ shows and visa-versa. If you haven’t watched The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, then the Seinfeld woman turning up in Black Widow's post credit scene will confuse the shit out of you. As will how Yelena and Hawkeye may cross paths. Clue. In the Hawkeye Disney+ show. OBVIOUSLY. I’m really surprised that there was no splash at the end of the credit scene that mentioned the Hawkeye show or The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on Disney+. It seems to be such an easy way to send viewers from the cinema to the streaming service. In my screening several people openly asked ‘Who is that woman?’ and then a whole discussion broke out about The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, which a bunch of folk in attendance hadn’t seen.
Black Widow is (obviously) set in the past. But not as far back as many of us may have thought or expected when this movie was announced. The story told in this film is set between Civil War and Infinity War. There are a couple of moments which tie in the continuity and the timeline, such as General Ross trying to track down Natasha, and the movie ending with Natasha sporting her Infinity War getup and hair. The worst of Natasha’s outfits, but I’ll allow it because we get the origin story of that ugly green vest, and discover that it has sentimental value to her; which makes it a shame that she didn’t wear it in Endgame. But of course, the Black Widow movie wasn’t mapped out back then to a point where it could influence anything in Infinity War or Endgame. But I digress. Even as somebody who is clued up on the MCU and is always mining for detail in the movies and shows, I found the nods to where this story takes place not obvious enough. I feel like a montage or just something giving us the year or the timeframe would have helped to make it super clear to audiences exactly where in the MCU timeline this story takes place.Whilst I do like the notion that Marvel Studios aren’t afraid to jump around the timeline, something we’re seeing with Eternals, part of which is set WAAAAAAAAAAY in the past. And possibly with Shang Chi, either set pre-blip or during it. The Black Widow film can’t shake that it came two MCU phases too late. Something that wouldn’t have been such an issue if the film was actually good. But when the titular character of the movie is already dead, and you come into this movie after The Falcon & The Winter Soldier knowing what is being set up - it robs a lot of the suspense of the film, because you know that the 2 main characters aren’t going to die. Something that wouldn’t have been such an issue if the story was better and knew what it wanted to commit to. Or if it had...ya know, actually released between Civil War and Infinity War. I get that every film from phases 1 to 3 had to involve an infinity stone. But how hard would it have been to worked infinity stone shenanigans into a Black Widow movie? The toxin that mind controls the Widows could have been made from fragments of the mind stone. Then the freed Black Widows could have shown up to join the final fight in Endgame in honour of Natasha’s death.
Y'all see how easy that was?
Marvel Studios have a production setup and a formula that’s so robust that I don’t think they could ever make a flat out terrible movie at this point. But Black Widow isn’t good, and highlights all of the issues with Marvel Studios movies in one film. Black Widow feels like a film that at one point was going to be one thing, but then went through numerous re-writes and the MCU wringer to become something different. The end result is a film that can’t decide on where it wants to place its focus and what it ultimately wants to leave the audience feeling. The movie wanted to be about family, but it didn’t do a good enough job of making us care about the family unit, and used every opportunity to make jokes instead. The movie also seemed like it wanted to be about the free will of women, but pulled back on this and went back to family, which then resulted in more jokes, and then the cycle just continued until the post credits scene.
Black Widow’s inability to fully lean into one aspect of the story or the other meant that it undersold both. And it’s a shame, because family and the free will of women are such powerful themes which tie into other stories that have been told in the MCU and stories that it’s set to tell further down the line in phase 4. I honestly feel that Black Widow could’ve left the family shit aside, and focused on the relationship between Natasha and Yelena, and hunkered down on the narrative of motherhood, sisterhood and free will. Removing the Red Guardian character completely, and having it be that Melina raised Natasha and Yelena both single-handedly would have worked far better. David Harbour would have lost a cheque, but he wouldn’t have been made to be nothing but a joke and ONLY a joke. The motherhood and sisterhood aspect of the movie is the one that feels like it's the most organic and easiest to build on.
I don’t know why we got family shit worked in. Actually, I do. But none of it worked for me. And again, take Red Guardian out of the equation and it would’ve better served the story, and also cut out a whole section of the movie, which despite being fun, was overlong and also featured a really shitty exchange about Yelena’s hysterectomy. Another instance of Marvel Studios taking something serious that should’ve been allowed to be serious, and just making a joke out of it. A moment that could have been fixed by either simply removing it, or having Natasha interject with how she once wanted to be a mother, which ties in with her moment in Age of Ultron about perhaps wanting to start a family, her closeness with Melina, and her guilt over assassinating somebody’s daughter. Such obvious threads to connect, but the movie didn’t wanna do it, because it'd rather tell a joke than be serious. And such a small thing would have given something this movie sorely lacked: actual development for Natasha as a character.
Whilst Black Widow shies from going as dark as it should have, it also does the typical Disney thing which is having characters forgive and forget, because HAPPY FAMILY. This is part of what makes the whole family unit story shit fall flat for me. The film goes out of its way to show how harrowing the experience of Natasha and Yelena being sent off to the Red Room was, right before a credit sequence which is so extremely pointed for a Marvel Studios movie. In light of all of this, I find it so strange that Natasha and Yelena could so easily sit back at a dinner table with the two people who betrayed them and took away their free will. Especially Yelena, who was under the mind control that her own mother had created. I think it puts out a really damaging message for the sake of Marvel and Disney just wanting the story to show a happy family together. Family are the ones that can hurt us the most. But them being family doesn’t mean that they should always be forgiven for the wrong that they do. Especially when it’s as bad as what Natasha and Yelena were subjected to. Marvel could have made a really powerful point of having Natasha and Yelena reunite with their family to take the Red Room down, whilst also confronting them and making it clear that they are only there for a means to an end - and giving them the whole ‘Y’all deserve to be alone’ speech and having Natasha sting them with ‘I already have a family who has my back, and would never do what you did’ and then walking away as the Avengers theme plays and the authorities take in Evelyn and Hopper.
Black Widow’s entire plot, structure and how it plays out is pretty much Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Some set pieces and moments are yanked straight from it. Bad guy shooting an explosive under an SUV and flipping it. A plot around some bad guy with a flying fortress tracking down millions of people for nefarious reasons. Some mind controlled assassin. Giant shit blowing up and falling out of the sky. The Winter Soldier was a smart choice to base a film on, as it’s one of the best movies in the MCU hands-down, and presented a world that is a perfect fit for Natasha. But nobody here seemed to really grasp what made The Winter Soldier work. It wasn’t just the spectacle, and the setting, it was the understanding of the emotional stakes for each of the characters, and that for all of the fantastical moments, it was still grounded in some form of reality. The Winter Soldier is a better Black Widow movie than Black Widow. To this day, I think it’s the one film that characterised Natasha the best.
Black Widow as it is, at any point in time, would have been a wonky movie, but it comes off so much worse at a point when we’ve got three shows which display how much more sophisticated Marvel Studios can be with their storytelling. Marvel Studios were sloppy with this film. They figured that because they were giving fans a Black Widow movie and ticking boxes of a predominantly female cast, with a female director and lots of action sequences, that viewers would be so enamoured with Marvel Studios' progress that they wouldn’t notice how messy this film is and that the film has more holes in it than Pietro.Black Widow comes off like an obligatory scrap thrown to Scarlett Johnasson for not giving her a movie after a decade, rather than a movie that was made out of necessity to tell a story that passionately needed to be told. It’s trash. But more than this, it’s really unfortunate, because there is so much good stuff in this movie - but it’s badly handled, badly paced and lacks the finesse that it should from such a talented team and a studio that should know better by this point. You can tell Scarlett Johansson has really grown to love this character, and she plays her well here, with a similar fragility to what we see of her in Endgame post snap. O-T Fagbenle has a small bit role that makes me wonder why Marvel Studios bothered giving him a character poster, other than to feign ‘representation’. But he has a great chemistry with Scarlett. They light up on screen together, and it’s far easier to buy into the two of them maybe being a thing than the Natasha and Hulk mess that Age of Ultron tried to push onto all of us. Florence Pugh as Yelena is a highlight in this movie. I cannot wait to see more of her and where they take her character. But these aren’t enough to save this film.
Black Widow isn’t a completely terrible film. But it’s not a good film either. If you want something to watch at the cinema and aren’t too fussed about the movie quality and just wanna indulge in a cinema experience, go watch it. Or just wait for it to be free to stream on Disney+. Either way, you’re not missing much. This is a wholly unessential movie and one of the most forgettable entries into the MCU. Even as much as I wasn’t a fan of Black Widow the character, she deserved far better than this.Verdict: Sue Disney