Black Widow (2021).
“Your pain only makes you stronger.”
Directed by Cate Shortland
Written by Eric Pearson
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz
The Stage.
This is the origin story of how Black Widow got her vest and blonde hair for Infinity War. It involves her sister, Yelena, her parents, the Taskmaster, and your good ol’ Marvel trope of the old, uninteresting white bad guy in a heavily fortified office pulling all the strings.
The Review.
As the movie got underway, I had a bad feeling about it. See, I cannot stand this current trend of taking a really great song from yesteryear and slowing it down and modernizing it, so when a slow, piano driven cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” started playing over the credits, my eyes nearly rolled all the way into the back of my head. Fortunately, that was one of the worst parts of the film, and although I hated the cover, it kind of made sense later on.
You’ve seen plenty of Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow by this point so let’s talk about the new additions to the MCU. Florence Pugh plays Yelena, Natasha’s sister. I’m guessing this is going to be a lot of casual movie fans’ first impression of Ms. Pugh and what an intro it was. I’ve been a fan of hers since Midsommar and I thought she was absolutely fantastic here. She gets a chance to show both her dramatic and comedy chops and she just never misses. David Harbour also joins the MCU as the Red Guardian, and what a treat he was as the Russian Super Soldier. He was really funny and I am becoming just a very big fan of his. Rachel Weisz rounds out the family as the matriarch - it was good to see her and although she didn’t do a whole lot on screen, she’s never been bad in a role. All were welcome additions.
The story is pretty typical Marvel fare and will make you wish you rewatched Captain America: Civil War. It’s one of those tales that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny if you try to pick it apart (like asking yourself, “How has this guy not only built a floating castle, but managed to fly it over England without anyone knowing about it for this long?” or, “How has Black Widow survived this movie without actual super powers?”, but it’s a Marvel movie, so it’s not grounded in our reality. The film not only fills the gap of what Black Widow was doing between Civil War and Infinity War, it’s also presenting an allegory for Harvey Weinstein and other child grooming sick fucks. “Smells like teen spirit” indeed. They even tossed a few swear words in there and a conversation about involuntary hysterectomies was as uncomfortable as it was intended. As a “number two”, The Taskmaster is a pretty interesting character, but the final fight seems a bit abrupt and didn’t seem to ratchet the tension up constantly like it could have. At that point, maybe they just didn’t want to gas the audience since the final set piece lasted around thirty minutes.
The action was surprisingly fantastic with some absolutely brutal moments. There’s a fight scene between Natasha and her sister when they first meet up again that doesn’t make any sense but looks cool as hell. There’s a fantastic car chase scene, and the end sequence is thrilling despite the bad CGI that seems to always rear its ugly head during Marvel films. I’m always baffled with how much money Disney has and they still cannot manage to fix some of this awful CGI. It happened in Black Panther and it happened in many shots here. There’s a shot in which Florence Pugh jams a staff in something and is blown backwards and it looked like Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves level green screen work. I’ve got two other complaints but I’ll address those during the spoiler section.
The End.
Overall, I really enjoyed Black Widow. I thought it was a fitting final (?) look at Natasha Romanov’s character that set up an interesting arc for the future. Florence Pugh was so goddamn good and David Harbour was great as usual. The chemistry between everyone seemed so genuine. If you’re a fan of action movies and spy movies, you’re really going to like those elements here. Black Widow seems like it has something for everyone, so unless you’re one of those contrarians who despises Marvel films, you’re probably going to enjoy this. Upon one watch, I’d probably slot it into the top third of all of the Marvel releases, which says a lot because I do enjoy these films.
Spoilers.
You’ve been warned.
Would it have been that bad to have Black Widow shoot Dreykov in the face? The film presented this man as an allegory for a pedophile, one who grooms forgotten girls from a young age and uses them to his own advantage. In his own sick words, he uses “the only natural resource Earth has too much of…girls.” He deserved a brutal, one-on-one death at the hands of Natasha Romanov. Instead, he gets unceremoniously blown up with a bunch of other cronies like we’ve seen so many times before.
Give Black Widow that moment, give Natasha that moment. Have him get out of the helicopter before it takes off. Natasha sees him, stalks him, watches him beg for his life, but the pheromones don’t work anymore. She plugs him in the head from a wide shot (because this is Marvel, after all, and ten year olds shouldn’t see brains splattering from the back of someone’s head), and kicks his slumping body off of the falling wreckage, mixing it indiscriminately with the rest of the trash.
I get it, Disney doesn’t want its heroes shooting people in the face, but someone like Dreykov deserves to get shot in the fucking face and Natasha and the audience wouldn’t feel the least bit bad about that, nor should we. Stop treating these villains with the respect they don’t deserve.
