From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch. He has been revisiting the feature every six months or so to look back at the new releases in the previous half-year. This week we kick off the latest revisiting with Black Widow, followed in the weeks to come by The Suicide Squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Eternals.
Marvel’s age of heroes started in 1961 with the introduction of the Fantastic Four, and in those early Cold War-era days, many of the villains the various Marvel heroes faced were Communists of some manner or other. Cold War sensibilities influenced the origin stories of the FF (beating the “Commies” into space), the Hulk (a “Commie” agent sabotaged the bomb test), and Iron Man (Stark was in Southeast Asia selling weapons being used to fight the “Commies”).
One of the many villains from behind the Iron Curtain introduced in those early days was the Black Widow.
Natasha Romanova, a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. the Black Widow, started out as your classic femme fatale, a Mata-Hari-style seductress working for the Soviet Union and facing off against Iron Man in Tales of Suspense #52 by Stan Lee, Don Rico (writing as “N. Korok”), and Don Heck. Like many other Marvel villains—Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Mystique, the White Queen, Songbird, Sandman, Magneto, etc.—she switched to the good-guy side. Over the years she’s worked with S.H.I.E.L.D., the Champions, the Thunderbolts, and various Avengers teams, and also partnered with Daredevil (sharing billing on his title for a time), and worked alongside Captain America, Hawkeye, Wolverine, the Winter Soldier, and others at various points.
A second Black Widow was introduced in 1999, sent after Romanova in the Black Widow miniseres by Devin Grayson and J.G. Jones. Both this new Widow, Yelena Belova, and Romanova were trained in the Red Room, which was introduced in that same miniseries. Romanova and Belova have continued to appear in the comics, each using the Black Widow codename.
After appearing in Iron Man 2, Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, and Avengers: Infinity War, Scarlett Johansson’s Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Natasha Romanoff had proven hugely popular, and yet she continued to not headline a movie. There was constant talk of a Black Widow film, but no forward movement on one. The rights to do such a movie had originally been purchased by Lionsgate in 2004, with David Hayter attached to write and direct, but reverted to Marvel Studios in 2006. Several directors were approached and considered, all women, and they ultimately went with Cate Shortland, whom Johansson had recommended based on her work on the 2012 film Lore. Two of the film’s three writers are MCU regulars: Jac Schaeffer, the show-runner for WandaVision and the forthcoming Agatha: House of Harkness, while Eric Pearson has worked on several of the shorts from the early MCU days, the Agent Carter TV series, and Thor: Ragnarok.
The movie was finally announced shortly before Avengers: Endgame was released. Romanoff’s idiotic death in that movie took the wind out of the sails of that announcement—whatever good will Marvel engendered by finally giving Widow a movie was drained away by the guarantee that there wouldn’t be a second film with Johansson in the role.
However, the film brings Belova, played by Florence Pugh, into the MCU, and there could easily be more Black Widow movies with her.
Buy the Book
Goliath
After hints of the Red Room, particularly in Age of Ultron, as well as an earlier 1940s version of the place seen in Agent Carter, this movie shows us the Red Room in action, and establishes that the Budapest mission first mentioned by Romanoff and Clint Barton in Avengers was the destruction of the Red Room.
Also starring in this movie are David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov, a.k.a. the Red Guardian, based on the comic-book character who was also Romanova’s husband, and Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff, based on the comic-book character Iron Maiden, an enemy of Romanova’s. The pair are older Russian agents who pose as parents, with Natasha and Yelena as their daughters, in Ohio in the mid-1990s.
The movie takes place shortly after Civil War (although prior to the bit at the end when Captain America and the Widow break Sam Wilson and Wanda Maximoff out of the Raft), and William Hurt returns as Thaddeus Ross, taking place between his appearances in Civil War and Infinity War. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss returns from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series in the post-credits scene as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, for whom Belova is working in the present-day of the MCU. Jeremy Renner has an uncredited voice-only cameo as Hawkeye in a flashback scene to the Budapest mission.
Also introduced in this film are Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, a gender-flipped version of the comics character who can impersonate the fighting ability of anyone she observes; O-T Fagbenle as Rick Mason, a dealer who acquires things for Romanoff; Ray Winstone as Dreykov, the head of the Red Room; and Liani Samuel, Michelle Lee, Nanna Blondell, and Jade Xu as other Widows.
Xu’s next appearance is in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Pugh and Renner’s next appearances are in the Hawkeye TV series.
This movie was originally to be released in May 2020, but it was delayed by fourteen months because of the recent apocalypse.
“The best part of my life was fake”
Black Widow
Written by Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson and Eric Pearson
Directed by Cate Shortland
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: July 9, 2021
We open in Ohio in 1995, where Russian agents Alexei Shostakov (who has been given the super-soldier serum that was also given to Johann Schmidt, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Isaiah Bradley, the Flag Smashers, and John Walker) and Melina Vostokoff (trained in the Red Room as a Black Widow) are posing as suburban parents, with two little girls, Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova, as their daughters. The mission ends, and the quartet barely escape ahead of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who have been sent after them.
Upon arriving in Cuba, they meet their handler, Dreykov, who has Romanoff and Belova sent to the Red Room.
Jump ahead twenty-one years, and Romanoff is on the run following the events of Civil War. Secretary Ross seems to be closing in on her, but it turns out she’s nowhere near where they thought. With the assistance of Rick Mason, she’s set up in an RV in the middle of nowhere in Norway.
Belova, meanwhile, is one of several Widows who have been brainwashed into working for the Red Room. One of the Widows, Oksana, has broken the conditioning, and is on the run. Several Widows, including Belova, are sent to stop her in Morocco. Her dying act is to spray red gas into Belova’s face, which breaks the programming. Oksana has a case filled with this antidote.
After sending the case to Romanoff, Belova goes to ground in a safehouse in Budapest. Mason brings Romanoff her mail, including the case. When the RV’s generator goes out, Romanoff drives into town, the mail all still in her SUV’s trunk. She’s attacked by the Taskmaster, but manages to get away (barely) with the antidote, which has inside it a picture of Romanoff and Belova as kids in Ohio.
She runs to Budapest, only to find Belova in her safehouse. They fight for a time, before finally agreeing to talk to each other. Belova sent her the antidote hoping that her Avenger friends could stop the Red Room. For her part, Romanoff had thought the Red Room destroyed. Her “job application” for S.H.I.E.L.D. was to assassinate Dreykov and wipe out the Red Room, an attack that also killed Dreykov’s daughter Antonia.
To Romanoff’s shock and dismay, she failed on all three levels: the Red Room is still active, and both Dreykov and Antonia are still alive. To Belova’s annoyance, the Avengers are kind of a mess following the events of Civil War, so they won’t be much help.
Several Widows and the Taskmaster attack the safehouse. After a merry chase through Budapest, Romanoff and Belova manage to escape. Mason provides them with a helicopter, and they proceed to Russia, specifically the gulag where Shostakov is imprisoned, as they assume he’ll know where the Red Room is.
Shostakov spends his time in prison gloating about his great battles, including several with Captain America. (Another prisoner points out that Captain America was frozen in the Arctic during Shostakov’s entire career as the Red Guardian, which doesn’t even slow Shostakov down.) After smuggling an earpiece in through a Red Guardian action figure, Romanoff and Belova give Shostakov instructions that he mostly follows. After a great deal of mayhem and battle, and an RPG-induced avalanche, they escape with him. Shostakov is surprised that they aren’t friendlier to him, and Romanov and Belova are surprised that Shostakov has no idea where Dreykov is hiding the Red Room. Dreykov is the one who put him in prison.
However, Vostokoff is still working with Dreykov, and they go to her farm. It’s a family reunion of sorts. Vostokoff shows off her work in manipulating the brains of pigs—she’s named one of them Alexei (“Don’t you see the resemblance?” she wryly asks an aghast Shostakov)—and then seems to betray them to Dreykov.
They’re brought to the Red Room’s headquarters, which is a big-ass helicarrier. Vostokoff is brought to Dreykov, Romanoff and Shostakov are imprisoned, and Belova is brought to be re-brainwashed. However, it turns out that Vostokoff and Romanoff have switched places, using S.H.I.E.L.D.’s face mask technology. Vostokoff frees Shostakov and Belova while Romanoff confronts Dreykov.
However, Dreykov emits a pheromone that keeps any Widow from harming him—Romanoff can’t attack him physically, no matter how much she wants to. However, Dreykov does reveal the extent of his influence, and also opens up the computer program through which he controls the Widows. She also annoys Dreykov to the point where he punches her repeatedly in the face. Once he reveals the computer, she smiles, thanks him, and—because he wasn’t strong enough to finish the job—smashes her nose into his desk, severing the nerve and keeping the pheromone from affecting her, at which point she beats the shit out of him. (Vostokoff warned her about the pheromone.)
The Widows all show up to stop her, while the Taskmaster—who, it turns out, is Dreykov’s daughter Antonia—fights Shostakov. Vostokoff is able to sabotage the helicarrier, and it crashes to the Earth, killing Dreykov, and Romanoff is able to release the antidote, freeing the Widows. She also downloads the info on Dreykov’s computer.
Once everyone gathers themselves following the crash, Romanoff—who sent word to Ross as to where she’d be—turns herself in to Ross to distract him while everyone else escapes. The Widows, including Belova, take the Taskmaster in, and they vow to find the remaining Widows around the world and free them.
Romanoff escapes from Ross pretty easily, dyes her hair blond, and then Mason provides her with a quinjet. She plans to use it to help Steve Rogers free her friends from the Raft.
Seven years later, following Romanoff’s death, we see Belova visiting her sister’s grave. Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine shows up with her latest assignment: to assassinate Hawkeye, the one responsible for her sister’s death…
“I doubt that the god from space has to take an ibuprofen after a fight”
In many ways, this is the perfect Black Widow movie. Most of the MCU movies have been superheroic twists on existing movie subgenres, and the only way to go with the Widow would be to do a spy thriller, à la James Bond or Jason Bourne.
And we very much get that in Black Widow, from the globe-hopping to the car chase in Budapest to the multiple scenes of hand-to-hand combat to the fancy-ass gadgets to the ridiculous bad-guy headquarters. We get a Black Widow Greatest Hits, with her feigning helplessness to get information (Avengers), kicking ass during a car chase (Age of Ultron), disguising herself with a face mask (Winter Soldier), and coming up with clever strategies to solve problems (Endgame). Oh, and her mad computer skillz (Iron Man 2).
Plus, we get a full accounting of her background, after all the hints dropped in Avengers, Age of Ultron, and Winter Soldier.
The movie is tremendous fun, with the fast pace that you expect from a Marvel movie, but also with the strong, honest characterizations. Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh make a superlative double act, and their banter carries the movie. They talk like siblings, and Belova’s pointed commentary on Romanoff’s second life as a hero lands beautifully, as does Romanoff responding the same way she always does: not by talking about it, but by anteing up and kicking in and doing what’s right. The best, of course, is Belova teasing Romanoff about her “superhero landing” pose, which she’s used in pretty much every appearance going back to Iron Man 2, and it’s hilarious, particularly when Belova herself tries the pose. (“That was disgusting…”)
Both Pugh and David Harbour do a great job of stealing the movie from the title character. Pugh is a delight, and there really need to be more Black Widow movies with her in the lead. Harbour leaves no piece of scenery unchewed, and unlike his shouty over-the-top performance in the title role of 2019’s Hellboy, there’s a humanity behind it. Shostakov is a sad figure, and kind of a doofus, but he does care about his fake wife and fake daughters.
Unfortunately, Black Widow falls into the trap that too many MCU films have fallen into, and that’s forgetting to make the antagonist interesting. Ray Winstone joins the MCU Villain Hall of Shame alongside Mickey Rourke, Christopher Eccleston, Guy Pearce, Lee Pace, Corey Stoll, and Mads Mikkelsen, as his Dreykov is completely DOA as a bad guy. The Red Room as a concept is far scarier than its leader, and one wishes they had brought back Julie Delply from Romanoff’s flashback/hallucinations in Age of Ultron, and she might have been more effective—she could hardly have been less effective…
I must confess to a certain frustration in seeing that the only actual Russian actor in a movie filled with Russian characters is Olga Kurylenko—who has no dialogue! Instead, we have Harbour, Winstone, Pugh, and Rachel Weisz putting on comedy Russian accents, and it’s awful. Johansson just talks in her normal accent when she speaks English, which is fine—most people who learn a second language when they’re children don’t speak it with an accent, and I would rather Pugh and Weisz in particular just used their own voices instead of the fake accents. Or better yet, hire more Russian actors.
The movie has strong action, phenomenal pacing, a crackling script (so many great lines, even by Marvel’s high standards of great lines), and only slightly over-the-top action (mostly in the helicarrier-crashing climax). I would have liked a bit more time given to Dreykov’s commentary about how he recycles trash, using girls who have been chewed up and spit out by the world—while turning them into assassins isn’t great, it’s a better life for a lot of those girls…
Of course, it’s all a bit too little too late. Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Thor all had three movies each, while Peter Parker and Scott Lang had two each, all before they could be arsed to give one of the best MCU characters a spotlight she deserves (okay, fine, Iron Man, Cap, Thor, and Spidey are all iconic Marvel characters, but Scott fucking Lang??????), and they couldn’t do it until after the character was so wretchedly killed off.
And my hope for the post-credits scene was sadly dashed. I wanted it to be on Vormir, showing Romanoff at the bottom of the cavern, and Gamora showing up, reaching out her hand, and saying, “Let’s get out of here.” Alas.
Despite all this unfortunate and very heavy baggage, on its own as a Marvel movie, Black Widow is excellent. Even if it’s far far far later than it should’ve been.
Next week, we look at James Gunn’s reclamation project on The Suicide Squad.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is not, as far as he knows, a poser. He also, despite being a fourth-degree black belt, can’t do the superhero landing to save his life…
Good review, even if we differ a bit on Natasha’s death.
I’m fairly sure, however, that they were taking Yelena to cut her brain out to see how the serum managed to break her conditioning, rather than re-brainwash her. Charming man, Dreykov. The film did succeed in making me completely hate his guts, at least.
Very enjoyable film that would have been excellent had they made it prior to Endgame.
I am truly surprised that this spoilerrific article doesn’t highlight the one astonishing missing piece of film from this movie —
Why the bleepingdy bleeping bleep did Ross let her go at the end? Ross is a tool. Even if she had just taken down a world-spanning Nega-SHIELD organization that nobody knew about, he should have been happy to nail her black-leather hide to a wall in the Raft. And there is apparently no deleted scene to even excuse the usual “cut for runtime” crap. Why did nobody think that his attitude towards her was anything close to important for us to understand going into Infinity War? Especially since he apparently let her go and she immediately committed treason in breaking out maximum security criminals.
Re: Romanoff’s death….
Romanoff saw herself as basically a monster (her own words), and Barton as the person who gave her her shot at redemption. She loved him like a brother, and loved his family. There was no way she was going to let Barton not be the one who walked away…
She made a deeply heroic sacrifice, entirely in keeping with her character, and it was in no way idiotic, imo….
An excellent movie, with lots of fun character interplay. My main problem with it is that the action and CGI destruction just got too cartoonishly big at the end, incongruous for what’s otherwise a refreshingly intimate and grounded MCU movie, at once a spy thriller and a family drama.
What I particularly like is that, instead of your usual spy/action movie where the heroes go around callously killing dozens of the villains’ henchmen as a throwaway action beat, this is a movie where the heroes’ goal is to rescue the villain’s henchpersons. I was pleasantly surprised at the moment when one of the pursuing Widows in Budapest fell several stories and Natasha immediately went to try to help her and comforted her as she died, instead of the usual spy-movie beat where she’d just be checked off as one less obstacle to worry about. This was a movie where the villain saw his minions as disposable cannon fodder and the heroes didn’t, which is unfortunately all too rare in action movies.
And yes, Florence Pugh is very good as Yelena and I’d be interested in seeing more of her as Black Widow, though it’s unfortunate that we won’t be seeing any more of Natasha.
zdrakec: In-story, yes, her death was in character and made sense. But conceptually and in execution, it was idiotic and awful, and made worse by happening halfway through the movie in which Tony Stark also died, and his death bigfooted hers, so she didn’t get a proper mourning, because everyone was too busy focusing on him.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@5 – I have to say I’m really getting tired of the idea that there was no mourning for Natasha in Endgame. How often does a big action-focused movie take a solid couple of minutes for the remaining heroes to have a small, intimate funeral for one of their own? It wasn’t the end of the movie, and there wasn’t a slow camera panning past all of the people Natasha interacted with through all of her movies (yeah, I’m pretty bitter that it took them so long to give her her own movie, too) but instead the people who knew her best, her family, took a moment to say good bye. I didn’t really like the way the whole “we’ll fight for the right to kill ourselves” (mostly because that’s not how we’re told it works – one of them should have had to actively kill the other) but I was only a little sad when she fell. I was a giant puddle of quiet sobbing tears when the rest of the team had to deal with her loss.
Yeah, this was my takeaway. A solid story which would have been immensely improved if it were made five years previously (we all know why it wasn’t). And the character beats were really, really good–the sisterly relationship[ between Natasha and Yelana, Alexei’s clumsy bluster masking affection, and Christopher points, the inversion of the usual trope where the heroes are just as caring of the henchmen (which includes Taskmaster) as themselves—it’s the whole point of their mission. That’s the touches that brought the whole movie up.
And I was fine paying $30 for this….
First, I do appreciate that you’ve reviewed the movie this was, instead of the movie many people wished it was (which I think has colored some of the other reactions). I DO really wish we’d gotten a movie about her joining the Avengers, for example.
I don’t really min Natasha’s death in movie (although I agree with the general trope being overused) as I think she was doing it just as much for Clint’s family and her godchildren as she was for him (as opposed to making a statement that Clint is more ‘worthy’). But I also didn’t really get offended by the reveal that the Red Room sterilized her as part of a way to turn her into a tool as indicating some type of judgment on womanhood either. (Although again, I can see how the reaction to that is colored by other things Whedon has done).
But, I still liked (for the most part) what we got – I actually found the beginning really good and interesting, and maybe would have preferred something more along those lines! More espionage, secret identities etc than another big smash bang battle on a floating fortress thing. More exploration of this fake family and the ways the lines got blurred.
The Red Room was a really intersesting idea but I’ve also lost track of how many “secret” organizations that are truly ruling the world exist at this point – I think maybe it should have been scaled back just a bit.
I also think Vostokov was maybe a little too easily forgiven, but ah well. The chemistry between all of them was delightful and I do look forward to seeing more of Yelena.
One thing I was a tad confused on regarding the beginning: Had Natahsa and Yelena already been part of the Red Room BEFORE the Ohio assignment? Natasha seems to remember it, and doesn’t want Yelena sent there, but I wasn’t sure if the idea was that she had already been a part of it (and maybe just didn’t remember or hadn’t started real training yet) or not. Where did they find her otherwise?
Dreykov would also have been more interesting if his plan wasn’t “I’ve secretly controlled world events for years and soon I’ll secretly control world events even more!” Which leaves you wondering what Hydra and the Ten Rings were doing during the overlapping years their cabals were all secretly manipulating world events, and why Wakanda sat on the sidelines despite having a global spy network and superior technology.
@9 i suspect each organization assassinated global (important) leaders that another organization setup to take control or to influence countries. Lol.
I appreciate that you didn’t originate the name problem, but maybe using just one version of Natasha’s surname would be good? Switching between “Romanoff” and “Romanova” looks like bad editing, and the one instance of “Romanov” made me wonder if I’d missed a character. And if you’re going to use Romanova, which I’m all in favor of, going with Vostokova for that character would be more consistent. I believe the Russian dub corrects the names to feminine form.
Though no one is ever going to mistake me for a native speaker even after several years in Russia, I actually found Pugh’s accent not-too-awful – I could understand her Russian, and one line of, I believe it was, “Да ладно” [dah ladnuh], made me laugh because she captured the usage so well – her tone was Just Like I Hear In Moscow with that phrase. Johansson’s accent, on the other hand, made me cringe, and a native-speaker friend told me her word choice in saying “little sister” was weird, though of course that’s the fault of whoever scripted it.
@10 No doubt and it would have been a nice move to recognize that within the movie….
@9/jeffronicus: Hydra seems to have operated mostly in the West, so maybe the Ten Rings focused mainly on Asia. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hydra and the Red Room had worked together; maybe Dreykov provided Hydra with Black Widow assassins and spies to carry out many of its operations, and they provided support in turn for his.
The movie is summed up by the terrible scene where they discuss their forced hysterectomies and laugh about it. One of the bottom three Marvel movies.
Hmm. Comic book movies…
Black Widow II: The Clone Wars – Yelana finds out that Dreykov has several Natasha clones out there raised similarily and then put in suspended animation. She tries to find them before they are all destroyed, of course only one survives the climax of the movie.
Shrug. Wouldn’t be any worse than too many superhero flicks. Pass the popcorn, please.
One note: Describing Olga Kurylenko as Russian seems off the mark. She was born in Ukraine, moved to France at 16, and became a French citizen in 2001.
@5 point taken: yet I at least was very sorry….
Great movie. I’m glad personnel changes in the top ranks of Marvel finally made it possible. It had the perfect mix of action, humor and emotion, and all the actors in Nat’s “found family” were great.
Well, I’m glad someone liked that movie. I found it over the top and yet boring simultaneously.
While it is true, and a travesty, that there will be only one Black Widow stand-alone film, the character of Natasha Romanoff has the second-most MCU non-cameo appearances with 8, behind only Tony Stark with 9. So while she only has one spotlight, she certainly wasn’t an afterthought.
I waited a long time for a Black Widow movie so I was very happy to finally get one.
There is a lot I like about the movie, but overall I didn’t love it. There is nothing in it that I dislike strongly, but it just didn’t grip me the way a lot of previous MCU movies did. I do wonder if it is because Nat is dead.
Susan: the one instance of “Romanov” was a typo on my part, and should’ve been “Romanoff.” I was differentiating the comics character (Romanova) from the movie character (Romanoff). A cheap way to do it, I admit, but every time the MCU calls her “Romanoff,” I wince, as that’s not the right construction for a female character……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I don’t mind Ray Winston’s Dreykov at all because I read him as a transparent stand-in for Harvey Weinstein–an abusive, overweight ‘producer’ with an army of brainwashed starlets. The whole Widow plot works quite well as a #metoo allegory, which gives the film a nice political edge that’s been missing from the rest of the MCU, and it gives ScarJo’s confrontation with him an extra layer of meaning.
@22/krad: Natasha would hardly be the first person to Anglicize their surname when living in America. Just ask Stanley Martin Lieber or Jacob Kurtzberg…
@23/zeg: Well-said. That’s part of what I like about the movie. It’s not just that the heroes are trying to save the henchpersons instead of killing them — it’s that this is a movie about women helping women escape an abusive system that reduces them to expendable, interchangeable tools of powerful men.
Keith: However, it turns out that Vostokoff and Romanoff have switched places, using S.H.I.E.L.D.’s face mask technology.
Maybe I am channeling Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (the show) here too much, but wasn’t that mask HYDRA tech? In that show (which at that time hadn’t taken off fully from the movie MCU yet) it seemed to be used by them, agent 33 in particular. I haven’t seen S.H.I.E.L.D. use it, and I could well see how HYDRA wanted to keep it hidden from them because it was a good tool for even more infiltration.
In this movie the mask seems to have come from Vostokoff’s stock, and there was a remark she was undercover in the S.H.I.E.L.D. tech division to steal their secrets, although they were mainly HYDRA back then.
On the movie, I enjoyed it a lot and didn’t mind the main antagonist was 2-dimensional. Like somebody above mentioned another Black Widow movie with Scarlett Johansson, telling the story of how she became recruitable for S.H.I.E.L.D. ending with them going to Budapest, would be nice to see happening.
The face mask tech was first used by Natasha herself in the movie The Winter Soldier to disguise herself as one of the World Council. That implies that it’s S.H.I.E.L.D. tech, and why shouldn’t it be?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@25-6: In Agents of SHIELD, Ward and Agent 33 had to kidnap the inventor of the Nano Mask (aka Photostatic Veil) to force him to repair the damage to 33’s mask, which I don’t think would’ve been necessary if he’d worked for Hydra. The implication is that Hydra got hold of the tech from their infiltration of SHIELD.
Thanks for reminding me of what I forgot :)
@2
There actually is a deleted scene showing how Natasha managed to get away from Ross.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Orl6HzF6w
Why it was cut still makes zero sense.
If you’re going to complain about accents, what about the dumb bit in which Natasha complains about somebody saying BudapeSt instead of BudapeSHt? I’m not sure this many weeks after seeing, but ISTR other cities not given their native pronunciations — possibly because their native names are far enough from the ones native-English speakers know that they wouldn’t have been understood — but this bit could just have been dropped. (For that matter, didn’t she say BudapeSt in the first Avengers movie?)
wrt accents in general, it’s not as simple as age-of-learning; there’s also the question of what the environment is for the rest of childhood. Obviously Yelena had to have perfect child-English(*) while part of the masquerade, but as the younger girl she might have reverted more when taken out of an English-speaking environment. Note that that shows a weakness in the Red Room; they should have encouraged her to maintain her knowledge of native-sounding English, as it would make taking a cover identity easier.
(*) speaking like Krushchev’s translator would also have been conspicuous
@29: That’s a good bit; if they had to clip a few seconds they could have kept that and dumped the BudapeSHt bit. Maybe they figured anyone who cared would assume Ross couldn’t hold her and didn’t need to be shown.
Just being able to listen to Alan Silvestri’s Marvel Studios theme on the big screen once again after this long was worth the price of admission. The fact that it was followed by a pretty good new entry in the MCU was icing on the cake.
This may be our goodbye to Natasha Romanoff, but the film made damn sure to leave us with a worthy substitute. Yelena Belova is a great new addition to the MCU, and I’m eager to see more of her in the future. Overall, I wouldn’t call it the MCU’s best, but it’s still a competent spy thriller with plenty of fun to be had.
In terms of villains, they’re definitely not the best (especially coming after Thanos and Killmonger), but that doesn’t bother me so much. The concept of infiltrated communist agents feels increasingly dated as we move further away from that era, and there’s only so much you can do to keep that concept interesting. The real scene that shines is the family reunion scene. Such a mixture of comedy and tension, expertly played by the cast. Plus, planting the fear that Vostokoff might betray them works beautifully.
But the real star is the banter between the sisters. It pretty much carries the film, and I laughed out loud during the scene where they subvert Shostakov’s assumption that they were on that ‘time of the month’.
I was disappointed in this version of Taskmaster. In the comics the Taskmaster is a wisecracking mercenary who usually hires out his services to train the goons of other villains. This movie instead took the Winter Soldier route, making the character a silent mind controlled zombie killing machine. We’ve already seen that done with Bucky. This was an opportunity to show us something new and different and instead covered old ground.
I did like how they portrayed Taskmaster’s powers. That was very cool.
Intriguing that the villain is named Dreykov.
While he is Russian, the name in German means “three heads.
What mythological beast has three heads?
HYDRA!!!!!
Black Widow has never interested me, but I would definitely watch more movies with SJ as BW. Plenty of room in the timeline to make more. I’m a bit confused, though: you praise several performers in one section, but want them replaced by Russian performers in another? Did you have anyone in particular in mind?
And yes, I wish they’d made Hank Pym movies instead of Scott Lang movies, but I’ll take what I could get, I guess.
Richard: I don’t necessarily want them replaced, but I don’t not, either. I just think that their first thought upon casting Russian characters is to cast actual Russian actors instead of British or American ones who then use dopey accents.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@36/krad: Well, to be fair, even real Russian actors might be asked to use broad faux-Russian accents in American movies because that’s what American audiences would recognize as Russian. Remember, both Walter Koenig and Anton Yelchin were born to Russian parents.
@37 That’s similar to how Asian American actors (of whatever heritage) are always asked to use dopey “Oriental” accents that have no analog in the real world.
She jumped from a two story building, got in 2 SERIOUS car crashes in under a week, a third vehicle accident, and fell off A BUILDING and kept running….
This movie was absurd
This isn’t even including the huge Climax which was actually more plausible than all the stunts before for a HUMAN.
This movie gave us Alexei the Pig, who is my spirit animal. I will be forever grateful for that.
@39/theDRaGonrebOrN3: “She jumped from a two story building, got in 2 SERIOUS car crashes in under a week, a third vehicle accident, and fell off A BUILDING and kept running….
This movie was absurd”
Par for the course for action movies. I just rewatched Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, and it has Spike fighting the bad guy as agilely as ever in the climax even though he got shot, had his ribs crushed, and fell hundreds of feet into a river just a day or two before.
Oh, it’s easy to see why Scott Lang got a movie before Black Widow — shrinkage. Significant shrinkage can sell a movie. What can BW do? Shoot a gun. Do a flip. Uh-huh.
I’ve always found ex-convict single dad Scott Lang a lot more interesting than Hank Pym so I was fine with Lang getting some time in the spotlight. Then again, I’m kind of biased because I used to read the Micheline/Layton/Bright Iron Man comics where Lang would guest star and often go on way cool infiltration and spy missions for Tony.
I was incredulous at Ant-Man getting his own movies, though. Especially when you had folks like Scarlet Witch, Vision, Falcon, and Hawkeye not.
@34: Sorry, but the hydra had 9 heads (and grew a new one whenever one got cut off). It was Cerberus which had 3.
Jason: I don’t know that I agree that Lang is more interesting than Pym, but I will argue (and did, repeatedly, during the rewatches of each of the two Ant-Man movies) that Janet van Dyne is way more interesting than either of them.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Casey- You’re right, that’s why I never understood why the movies never gave Widow the Widows Bite, those wrist laser things she had in the comics. The movies kind of gave her that but it was more a taser situation, whereas the comic version is a full on laser blast. It’s no more fantastical than flying suits of powered armor or invulnerable shields.
Krad- You are absolutely right about that. Janet Van Dyne—especially in the Roger Stern era of the Avengers comic—is a force to be reckoned with. In fact, I wonder if instead of, or in addition to Natasha, we’d gotten Janet instead. But that was my thought when they announced an Ant-Man movie. “They’re doing this guy instead of WASP? Really?” She was always the more interesting of the two of them. She’s been a pretty consistent character in the Avengers over the years while Ant-Men come and go.
@44 you are correct, I stand corrected. What we CAN learn is that this character is secretly an aardvark (if one accepts the typo that changes Cerebus to Cerberus)
I loved it. I agree with people who say it would’ve been a perfect Black Widow II, especially with many sequels making a second hero with the same powers come along, so it becomes Two Black Widows, the film most expected to see would’ve been Black Widow’s life before SHIELD and Barton and the climax being Budapest.
That said, I love Black Widow (2-1). Florence Pugh was a delight and I look forward to more Yelena in the MCU. The sisterly love thing was amazing. Yelena clowning Nat for posing is one thing, but she was so adorable talking about her vest and clearly wanting Natasha’s approval. Nat being too cool for school and then relenting that she liked her vest, and Yelena being pouty that Nat didn’t approve and then being so elated when Nat did. “It’s got so many pockets, you wouldn’t even know.” You spend the whole movie wanting to hug her.
I also liked how they consistently showed that Nat was the best at this spy sh*t and why Yelena is a worthy successor. Melina showing how she really is their mother by blowing the engines and then being completely calm walking away was also a highlight. But Melina’s scene with Nat was also wonderful. She showed her regret and how she felt trapped and was proud of Nat. Telling her about her mother was a beautiful moment.
The Taskmaster thing…it’s fine if that’s a beginning. If she comes back as the Taskmaster and grows her own personality, even if it’s the classic wisecracking Taskmaster but it’s just to cover up all the shit she went through, or she’s overcompensating since her father treated her like a robot her whole life, so now that she’s free she’s going to have a big personality and use her skills for some thrillseeking it could be a lot of fun.
@14/Dave
The movie is summed up by the terrible scene where they discuss their forced hysterectomies and laugh about it. One of the bottom three Marvel movies.
Except that’s not what happened. Alexei is being a bull headed moron looking at their history through Red Patriotism colored lenses, and Natasha and Yelena throw frozen water in his face, telling him how they suffered. Nobody laughed in the scene. The audience may have laughed at Nat punching him in the nose, or Yelena’s brilliantly deadpan (and Florence improv’d) delivery of how a hysterectomy is done being as intentionally as gross as she feels like to drive it home to him, but in the scene itself they were trying to tell their bumbling dad how he hadn’t done them any favors but instead they had suffered and he had gone along with it.
I found the movie rather tedious. I like Natasha Romanoff, but I thought this was a pretty lousy take on her.
Also, anything which includes Taskmaster but isn’t Greg Davies is just a miserable failure.
I love the movie much more than I expected to, but there were enough moments to roll my eyes, too. I am Russian, and I am fine with the actors – they all did great job with what they had, and I don’t think the roles should have been played by Russian actors to give them an authentic Russian accent. They are super spies who are supposed to blend in, so they wouldn’t have any accent that can betray their origin. Olga Kurylenko though deserves a better part in MCU. What was even the point of bringing her as a masked silent mind-controlled woman? It would be nice if someone Russian or with some experience in Russian were part of writing team. There were several moments grating in their slight wrongness, but there were several moments that were good, too. Better than average, on the whole.
I found it amusing that the movie Natasha watches to relax and unwind is “Moonraker” – James Bond during the depth of the Cold War, with some space action, rather silly but entertaining. A perfect choice for her, really.
@50/Annosk: “Olga Kurylenko though deserves a better part in MCU. What was even the point of bringing her as a masked silent mind-controlled woman?”
Maybe they have further plans for her character. It is the MCU, after all.
@51 I hope they do. It’s not Earth 616 Taskmaster, but I think there’s material there for an interesting character (fan fiction at least….).