Black Widow

Released: 2021

I have a bit of a complex history with Marvel movies, but I’m what you could call a casual fan. Or at least, I used to be.

It’s my younger brother who’s the real Marvel fan of my family. He was a huge admirer of Spider-Man and the Hulk as a kid (and still is to this day), and he owned a multitude of Spider-Man, Venom, and Hulk action figures. I also remember watching the 1994-98 Spider-Man animated series with him. Pretty cool cartoon.

Years later, once the Marvel Cinematic Universe kicked off, it became a long-standing tradition where my brother would get together with his high school (and beyond) buddies to watch every single film as they came out. Of course, there were plenty of successful (and not-so-successful) Marvel flicks before this, but it was the MCU which really kicked off my brother’s hype train.

As for me, I enjoyed the movies for a while. I too saw all of them; all 22 installments from Iron Man 1 to Avengers: Endgame. They were fun movies. I enjoyed Iron Man 1 enough that I got it on DVD. The first two Thor movies, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Ant-Man were other memorable highlights. Captain America: Civil War was my favourite out of all of them. It deftly managed its impressive ensemble cast to provide us with a thrilling yet heart-wrenching story. I also liked that it was a bit grittier and more serious than the previous films. The stakes felt higher, both for the world and for the characters themselves.

I emphasize “for a while,” as my interest peaked with Civil War, but then it slowly petered out after that. It’s not that the later movies were bad or anything, far from it. But, even as soon as Doctor Strange arrived (the movie right after Civil War), the constant hype and mass acclaim that each new movie kept getting began to wear on me, and it began to hurt my enjoyment of the franchise as a result. Plus, it was during that time period in particular when it really felt like the MCU’s juggernaut success was overshadowing pretty much every other film property in existence. By contrast, Star Wars, Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts, and the X-Men films were struggling much harder with keeping their respective fanbases happy, whereas all three of those I was a bigger fan of than the MCU. Thus, not only was I worn out on the MCU, but I’ll admit that I even grew a bit resentful of its success, since I wanted “my” franchises to be just as successful, and they weren’t.

I still saw the next several MCU films, but by then it had largely become an obligatory thing. By the time of Avengers: Infinity War, I was pretty much checked out. Which is too bad really, because under different circumstances I probably would’ve found Infinity War and Endgame to be a fantastic finale, but I was just too burned out to enjoy it as much as I could have. Maybe at some point further down the road, I’ll come back to those and re-evaluate them with a fresher mind, but at the time I just wasn’t feeling it any more. I still watched Endgame to see how the conflict with Thanos and the Infinity Stones arc would be resolved, but then after Endgame that was it for me. I didn’t end up seeing Spider-Man: Far From Home, or any of the Phase Four movies or shows such as WandaVision. (January 2022 update: I did end up seeing Far From Home after all and I enjoyed it. Peter and MJ were cute together.)

But my sour feelings have evaporated since then. I didn’t get back into the MCU, but nor did its success didn’t bother me any more. One thing which helped soothe me tremendously was when Disney+ premiered and with it came The Mandalorian, which not only was a smash hit, but a whole bunch of new Star Wars projects were announced at the December 2020 Disney Investor’s Day presentation, showing that Star Wars was far from dead and proving the naysayers wrong in an utterly glorious and spectacular fashion. As for Fantastic Beasts, meanwhile, I was pleased to see that despite some production delays (and a darkly comedic controversy which ended in Johnny Depp’s firing), the third film was still coming along fine and was eventually announced to arrive in April 2022.

The X-Men films did end up crashing and burning. Which was disappointing, but by that point I’d gotten burnt out on superheroes in general, not just the MCU, and so it didn’t really faze me much either. That, and I had moved on to some new interests too, including a couple of lovely children’s animated series, The Land Before Time and Watership Down (I would definitely like to talk more about those at some point).

…

Well that ended up being longer than originally planned. I’ve written over 800 words already and I haven’t even mentioned the main subject of this post yet, haha. This was originally going to be a fairly brief overview/lead-up to Black Widow, but turned into a much more elaborate personal history.

But anyway, I hadn’t planned on seeing Black Widow initially. What piqued my curiosity is when my mother watched it with a friend. Namely, that both she and her friend thought it was terrible. She even suggested I could do a “bad movie review” of it for my blog, which indeed is what ultimately led to my review of it here.

Either way, it was pretty interesting and surprising to hear this from her. I thought to myself, “Gee, Marvel movies have a general track record of being pretty good. What’s so awful about this one, I wonder?” What made it even more surprising is that Mom had seen most of the previous Marvel films with my brother and I, and she really enjoyed them too! More surprising still in that she was already a fan of Black Widow’s character, so the idea of a Black Widow solo film had certainly appealed to her for that reason.

So then I decided, “Well, now I have to check this out, to see if it’s truly as bad as I’m hearing.” I didn’t see it in theaters, but thankfully I was able to watch it on Disney+. So what did I think?

Well… not only did I not think it was terrible, I ended up quite enjoying it! Yet another surprising detail, as Mom and I often have similar taste in movies, which made it all the more jarring that we had such contrasting opinions here. While watching, I kept trying unsuccessfully to figure out what she didn’t like about it and why, and I had to wait until we could eventually discuss it more thoroughly for me to get a better idea. Either way, one thing I think which helped my enjoyment is precisely the fact that I took a lengthy break from the MCU. Since this was my first new Marvel movie in a long time and so it felt fresher.

Yet, once those initial fresh impressions wore off and I began to analyze the film more closely in the coming weeks, how did I feel about it then?

A secretive woman with an unusual history

The film starts off in the distant past, with Natasha as a young girl before she became Black Widow. We see her living in what appears to be a perfectly normal childhood, complete with her mother, Melina; her father, Alexei (later revealed to be a superhero of his own, Red Guardian); and her younger sister, Yelena. We soon learn, however, that they are not in fact an everyday family, as Melina and Alexei are shown to be government agents. Their family unit as they know it comes to an end one day when they are pursued by S.H.I.E.L.D. and forced to flee their home. An exciting chase follows and the family is barely able to escape, only for them to get separated for real once Natasha and Yelena are taken away and forcibly recruited into the Black Widow program…

A Black Widow solo film was definitely overdue. It felt like we should’ve gotten this sometime earlier on in Phase Three. Especially since it takes place shortly after Captain America: Civil War. Why not actually have Black Widow be released shortly after Civil War? That would have made more sense. Still, better late than never. Black Widow was in development for a long time and I’m happy it was able to see a release at all.

As with Civil War, this one is a bit more intense and serious. For one thing, it doesn’t gloss over the fact that the Black Widow training program is pretty horrific and messed-up. Unlike Civil War however, this is a much smaller scale story with a smaller cast too. Of all the characters whom we’ve seen in previous Marvel movies, Natasha/Black Widow herself is the only one who has more than a few minutes of screentime. Most of the other prominent characters are new faces. Not a bad thing in itself, although I do wish we’d seen more of Natasha’s family earlier on in Phase Three. It might’ve helped better sell her family dynamic if we’d seen more of them sooner (more on that below). Again with my sentiment that we should’ve gotten this film right after Civil War.

But on the other hand, it does add to Black Widow’s mysterious aura, in that we’ve seen little of her past up to this point, which makes it all the more satisfying to finally learn about it here. There is a sort of ‘delayed gratification’ feeling.

Regardless, the smaller scale manages to work in the movie’s favour. After the childhood prologue, the rest of the film jumps ahead 21 years to show Natasha being chased by General Ross and forced to go on the run. This might actually be my favourite part of the movie, within the first thirty minutes when it’s just Natasha out on her own, including a tense and terrific showdown on a bridge when she’s ambushed by Taskmaster. I wish the parts of Natasha all by herself had lasted longer.

Looking closer

Once my initial excitement about the movie had faded, I could start to better understand why it didn’t tickle my mother’s fancy. Namely, she said that while she liked Black Widow, she didn’t care for the rest of the characters, a sentiment I can understand.

As for me, I liked what they were going for with the characters. I especially liked Alexei/Red Guardian; he was funny. I also like how it wasn’t just a happy, ordinary childhood that Natasha had; they put a unique spin on it by showing that it was never entirely ordinary to begin with.

But more generally, I do think the execution fell a bit short. The film tries to show us that despite Natasha not having a biological family, she had an adoptive family who loved and cared about her just as much as any family would. It’s a beautiful message, it really is. That, ultimately, our family is who we choose them to be, biological ties or not.

I just don’t think the film did a very good job at actually showing this. The family does start to genuinely bond towards the end before they team up to take down the vile and villainous Dreykov and end the Black Widow program for good, which is nice to see. But prior to that, they don’t seem all that close to each other or to otherwise like each other very much. When they meet up again, it’s their first time seeing each other in so many years, but it’s not a very warm reunion. After Natasha and Yelena rescue Alexei from prison, they are both rather hostile with him, and Yelena even punches him. (Although there is a darkly funny moment soon after when Alexei goes on about how genuinely proud he is of the women for becoming such powerful and destructive assassins and killing so many people.)

And then after the three of them arrive at Melina’s pig farm, there is a tense and awkward (albeit funny) dinner scene where Melina outright questions if they could truly be considered a family since “our family construct was just a calculated ruse that only lasted three years.” Natasha also calls Alexei an idiot and Melina a coward, and then the scene ends with an angry Yelena grabbing a bottle of alcohol and storming off. Yikes.

It’s not that the character dynamics aren’t entertaining and fun to watch; they are. But if we’re being asked to see them as a loving adoptive family, then it’s just kind of hard to buy. This probably would’ve worked better if they hadn’t been a family unit, but instead more of a ‘begrudging buddy cop’ dynamic with the reluctant characters being forced to work together and then starting to bond. Or, if they had been a family, but were more openly warm and appreciative of each other instead of constantly bickering and insulting each other, and giving off the impression half the time that they want to strangle each other. Perhaps it was the intent to show them as a dysfunctional family, but even then, they just didn’t seem all that family-like.

Ultimately this was my only real complaint. The four of them still manage to carry the film and keep it going in a way and give it a quirky energy. But it felt like there was something missing.

High above

After the farm, the characters are captured and taken to Dreykov’s sky fortress, the Red Room Academy, which is definitely one of the coolest ‘villain bases’ I’ve seen in a long time. Everything seems hopeless, but it turns out Natasha and Melina just might have a secret plan to snag the upper hand, leading to a suitably thrilling climax with lots of spectacle and explosions.

Dreykov himself is a memorable villain. He’s a cold-hearted monster with no redeeming traits whatsoever, but he gives an intimidating and chilling performance.

And lastly, we cap off with one of the best Marvel post-credits scenes, a pretty epic twist that I did not see coming!

Overall though, this is about a middle-tier Marvel movie for me. It’s fun and stylish, but a bit sloppy in places too. It had the advantage of being my first new one in a while and it was fun for that reason. When I compare it to some of the previous entries, it’s not my personal favourite, but it has enough unique elements to stand out and rise above some of the other movies.