--Yelena Belona, Black Widow
"We stole the key to free will."
--Melina Vostokoff, Black Widow
Black Widow opens with everything the MCU needs: gravity, personal stakes, and the promise of a deeper plot that wrestles with genuine problems of the world. By the end, it does have more in common with the typical MCU story than it needed to, but its best aspects throughout care similar to those of one of the MCU's greatest efforts: Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There are plenty of similarities, ranging from the more spy-oriented story to the parallels between Taskmaster and Bucky as assassins associated with people using mind control. Black Widow simultaneously tackles a far more sinister topic than the MCU has ever addressed before and sometimes falls back on the more intrusive style of comedy that is exactly what a film confronting a truly dark issue does not need showing up in scene after scene. Thankfully, the humor is mostly left out of the first half.
Production Values
For a movie about spies, Black Widow eventually has a lot of non-practical effects onscreen for quite some time. There are plenty of quieter, more personal scenes where the focus is just on two characters talking in the first two thirds. However, the third act is by far the most CGI-heavy, some of which was seen in a trailer released last year (there is still plenty about the scene the trailers do not spoil). While not even the physical fights in the third act last very long, Taskmaster's physical performance all throughout the movie, including near the end, is an accomplishment, likely the best part of the non-digital effects. An early scene where Taskmaster shows Black Widow their ability to imitate fighting styles is one of the best scenes with the villain. Speaking of Black Widow herself, she is acted well by Scarlett Johansson, but she is not the focus of the entire movie. Her pseudo-family plays a major role.
Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, and Rachel Weisz are excellent as a dysfunctional, hurting family living in the aftermath of deceptions and decades-long separation. Florence Pugh, despite starring as a new character in Scarlett Johansson's movie, is clearly poised to be the future character to take on the mantle of Black Widow, and she deserves such a future; she is perhaps the best performer in the entire film, offering solemn dialogue and strong physical acting that is never overshadowed by her handful of comedic lines. Less excellently realized (other than the physicality of the performance) is Taskmaster. Like the majority of the other MCU villains, this newcomer has very little screen time and almost no lines at all. A revelation about Taskmaster does tie into the darker themes of the plot, but Black Widow is unfortunately another Marvel movie with a villain that needed far more development (though there is a second villain that gets to explain themselves to a much greater extent).
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Natasha Romanoff's troubled past starts when she was taken from her adopted family as a young girl when S.H.I.E.L.D. uncovers the covert operations her "parents," agents of the Russian government, were involved in. Both had worked towards the use of mind control technology that would reduce living human subjects to puppets. Following the implementation of the Sokovia Accords many years later, she becomes tangled in the efforts of a man named Dreykov to use other Black Widows to stop her sister Yelena from liberating them. Yelena and Natasha reunite with their parents, their father reclaiming his identity as the Red Guardian (Russia's version of a Captain America super soldier), while their mother informing them about the nature of Dreykov's breakthrough as they prepare to kill him.
Intellectual Content
Never before has an MCU story opened with credits that so boldly bring up parallels to events that could doom the lives of many children. Human trafficking of all things is a major part of Black Widow, paired with genuine mind control--not just a strong social influence that convinces a person to voluntarily submit to someone else, as Florence Pugh's Yelena points out, but actual involuntary overriding of the mind itself through chemical and technological means. Neither the technology used in the mind control nor the metaphysical and epistemological ramifications of such an invasive grip on someone else's consciousness are explained, though they could have elevated the inclusion of these subjects to a far greater extent. At least Black Widow acknowledges that there is no such thing as true autonomy apart from free will. Even this fact has become controversial in an era where some people claim to have or want intellectual and existential autonomy while assuming that free will does not exist.
Conclusion
Black Widow could have been far more of an introspective look at Natasha herself and a story that had more effort put into making it distinct from other MCU entries. In spite of a third act with almost astonishingly low stakes given the subject matter and some uneeded comedy from David Harbour's Red Guardian, it manages to expand the lore associated with Natasha Romanoff, foreshadow where part of Phase Four will head (specifically the Hawkeye Disney+ show), and somewhat explore an issue darker than mere murder. Sharing similarities to Captain America: The Winter Soldier just helps it point back to what is at least close to the best of the MCU while establishing its own identity. That it is not quite The Winter Soldier or Doctor Strange does not mean it is Iron Man 2 or Thor: Ragnarok--thank God not every MCU film is like the latter examples!
Content:
1. Violence: People are stabbed, struck, or shot at, just never in a graphic way.
2. Profanity: "Shit," "damnit," and "bitch" are said either in English or in Russian.
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