About halfway through Black Widow, Florence Pugh’s Yelena mocks the titular character, Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanov. Yelena calls her a poseur, makes fun of her infamous fighting stance, and even takes note of her place in the Avengers pecking order. Natasha is not “one of the big ones”. It’s a bit joke that is perhaps meant to poke fun at how long it took for Natasha “Black Widow” Romanov to get her own standalone movie. Johansson started in the role in 2010’s Iron Man 2. Since then, we’ve had three movies for Thor and Captain America, not to mention the four Avengers movies proper (and so many others). Romanov was a steady supporting player in most of these films, often secondary to whoever was meant to be the actual star. It’s quite ironic that the film that finally put her front and center is the one delayed over a year due to the (ongoing!) COVID pandemic.
But whatever odd, prolonged route it took, the Black Widow film is finally here. I’ve read that this is the first film in “Phase 4” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and honestly don’t know what that means. After some research, I learned that the events here are between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War – a cozy little pocket of time, where a miniature story of familial discord, government mind control and (once again) massive industrial destruction, just happened to occur without much of a notice from the rest of the Avengers team. Suspension of disbelief is the name of the game here, and Black Widow sure does require a lot of that. To entire buildings just floating in the sky, to human bodies surviving head-on explosions without even a burn, Black Widow really pushes the limits of realistic comic book action.
The film is directed by Cate Shortland, an Australian filmmaker known for her unsettling thrillers with a historical bent. The script (by Eric Pearson) has a long first act which reveals Natasha’s origins as the daughter in a Russian family living undercover in Ohio in the 1990’s. The set up infers some kind of Cold War intrigue (despite all events taking place after the fall of the Soviet Union), lending some half-hearted historical context for Natasha’s introduction to the world of trained assassins. Her “parents” are actually high-ranking spies under the thumb of Russian general Dreykov (Ray Winstone). Her “father” Alexei (David Harbour) is a Soviet superhero dubbed The Red Guardian, and her “mother” Melina (Rachel Weisz) a leading scientist in Dreykov’s experiments with mind control. When Drekkov calls them back in, a young Natasha, and her little sister, Yelena (Pugh) are brought as well, and indoctrinated into the deadly Black Widow program.
Decades later, the events of Civil War have left Natasha a fugitive searching for a place to hide. Her isolation is interrupted when she is attacked by Taskmaster, a Dreykov-controlled super soldier in head-to-toe robot fixtures. Natasha eludes nearly certain death, but finds out what Taskmaster is looking for: a red dust antidote to Dreykov’s mind control. Sent to her by Yelena, the two sisters reunite, review various hard feelings, and then hatch a plan to kill Dreykov and use this antidote to free all the other women from his mind control. To do so, they must also reunite with their sham parents, Melina and Alexei, for assistance in probing Dreykov’s sky-suspended fortress and ending his reign.
Black Widow‘s action set pieces are actually among the best Marvel has done in quite a while. Before a boom-heavy third act, there is a healthy dose of impressive fight choreography and car stunts that feel refreshing compared to the CGI-soaked pyrotechnics of most other MCU entrees. Of course, Shortland’s infusion of grittier action contrasts against the movie’s aforementioned denial of any physical reality, but the style still pays dividends, gifting an edge to a movie that is otherwise drowning in the sentiment of surrogate family storylines. These films are always drowning in plot (considering the sheer amount of movies in the MCU, you’d think they’d want to spread the wealth a little more), but Shortland takes pains to break up the mediocrity of the storyline with exciting, abrasive action sequences.
Johansson, a very loyal soldier in Marvel’s cinematic tyranny, gets her own movie here, and for the first time she isn’t being forced into quasi-romantic curios with random co-stars (though a friendship with a black market dealer named Mason (O-T Fagbenle) does get a little flirty). Johansson’s rapport is instead with Pugh, whose Yelena is a replica of Natasha’s ruthless trained killer, with a large helping of obstinate little sister energy. It probably goes without saying that Pugh steals all of her scenes. Her comfort with humor, drama and now action, makes Black Widow‘s Marvel-required sentimentality go down much easier. The baton seems to be being transferred to Pugh, who will carry the Black Widow franchise going forward. Pugh has more natural charisma and star appeal than Johansson, and is a more classic fit to head a movie, but one hopes (prays!) that this is not the limit of what we will see from her for the next decade.
After the majesty of Avengers: End Game (which I loved), it seems difficult to see where the Marvel movies go from here. They will be chasing an Avengers high for quite a while, and it will be interesting to see if they’re able to recreate that magic in their next “phases”. They seem quite confident that they will. Black Widow is a brief journey to the past before the forward momentum of new characters like Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch in the hit show WandaVision or Simu Liu’s upcoming Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Perhaps Pugh’s Yelena will be a member of this new assortment, coming together for big battles against big baddies, while still vanquishing smaller potatoes in their standalone films. We’ll see if takes another eleven years to see another Black Widow film in the theaters.
Directed by Cate Shortland