Black Widow (Film Review)

[selenak]

My first movie watched in a cinema for a year or so. Yay! As opposed to last years' experience, the cinema in question has digitalized so you check yourself in and out with one of the Corona warning apps. Also, there were an amazing number of amateurs (read: people not aware of the Marvel movie habit of a final tag scene after the credits) there who rushed out first thing after the film was over. In this particular case, I did find the final scene worth waiting for, which isn't always the case.

On to the movie proper, which made me suspect someone in the scriptwriting team liked The Americans a lot.



Set immediately after Civil War for Natasha, with flashbacks to her past, this was also an introduction film for Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, who certainly is put in a position by this movie to carry on as a legacy character. (In fact, the tile "Black Widow" could refer to either of them.) Not counting Ant Man, where the "legacy" Ant Man is the one the audience meets first and who is the main character from the start, though Hank Pym is still around, this would be a first in the MCU for the superhero mantle being taken up on screen. (Well, obviously there's Into the Spiderverse with Miles as the main character, but that's its own continuity.) This said, it's also a good and worthy final outing for Natasha, taken its cue from several of the Black Widow comics to send her on an adventure where she gets to reconnect with and battle her past and also free a lot of other young women. Our main villain, Draykov, is a standard Evil Overlord (a la Red Skull, with less effort to present an affable mask first than Alexander Pierce but with much the same plot role), but the charm of the film lies a) in the dysfunctional spy family getting together again and their dynamics with each other, and b) in Natasha doing her thing. (More about this in a moment). The biggest back story additions this movie contributes to the MCU version of Natasha is revealing in her childhood, she spent three years as Paige Jennings one of two fake daughters of a pair of Russian sleeper agents, Philip and Elizabeth Alexeji and Melina in Ohio. As opposed to her younger sibling Henry Yelena, Natasha did know what was going on since she'd already started her training back home in Russia, but Yelena was just six when they were all busted and had to flee, so to her, it had been real and the reveal came as a shock.

Now the movie is all over the place with accents - during the childhood flashbacks, everyone speaks perfect Americanese, but in the main story, Melina (Rachel Weisz), Alexeji (David Harbour) and Yelena all have "Russian" accents - but honestly, I don't care. Giving Natasha these relationships for her final outing was an excellent choice because it grounds the movie emotionally and makes you care. (I mean, the action scenes are nice, but these aren't why I watch the films.) Yelena as the little sister with a chip on her shoulder (and a great ability to tease Natasha about her trademark Black Widow landing pose, among other things) finally provides Natasha with another main female character to have an intense relationship with for longer than two minutes, and the way the two of them relate to Alexej (David Harbour having way more fun than during his last Stranger Things outing as Hopper) and later Natasha to Melina (Rachel Weisz is also great, able to be both chilling and human in turns) is somewhere between Sydney Bristow from Alias and the Jennings siblings and couldn't have been more designed to press my emotional buttons. Especially since for every gag (Alexeji, who is so proud of his stint as "Red Guardian" asking Natasha whether Captain America ever mentioned him, his "geopolitical adversary, despite the fact several characters point out to Alexeji Steve was still in the ice when Alexjei was active) there's also a heartbreaking scene - the moment in the flashback you realize child!Natasha knows exactly what awaits her and Yelena now the assignment is over and what she does then.

Speaking of the serious stuff, the movie also confronts Natasha with some of the specific red in her ledger - the Draykov's daughter bit mentioned during the Natasha & Loki conversation in Avengers. As it turns out, it's not something she did while still under the control of the Red Room but the "last step" of her defection to SHIELD, and as such she's fully responsible and knows it. It's probably the darkest on screen thing the MCU let one of their heroic characters do while not under mind control or somehow tricked into it by a villainous character or by accident, and it's no wonder it haunts Natasha. I was in two minds about the nature of the confrontation throughout the movie as it depended for me on the eventual resolution, but when that came, I was on board with it.

Trivia:

- Alexej referring to himself as the only successful super soldier the USSR ever managed to produce (and he does have all of Steve's physical powers) means Bucky gets counted as Hydra, I take it.

- I had read one of the comics this film drew from and so I expected Melina to be, let's say, other than she was, and I have to say, I like the MCU version better

- I loved, loved, loved the way Natasha's final victory over Draykov was achieved, not least because it was the perfect coming-back-full-circle to two particular scenes in The Avengers which had made me fall in love with this version of the character back in the day

- while this is no excuse for not giving Natasha her solo outing earlier, it actually makes perfect sense to let it happen directly after Civil War; for once, a main Avengers character really has good Watsonian reasons why they can't ask either the other Avengers or anyone else already introduced in the MCU for help

- seriously, there must be both The Americans and Alias crossovers; extra points for making Alexej and Melina their own people, very different from both the Alias spy parents and Philip & Elizabeth.

Comments

[reverancepavane]

I really was hoping for an answering whistle in the end credits scene. <le sigh>

[selenak]

Alas, I was fairly certain we wouldn't get one; btw, do the whistles feel Mockingjay-inspired to you, too?

[reverancepavane]

Oh I knew in my heart of hearts that there wouldn't be, but, as they say, hope lives eternal.

No, not really. Until you mentioned it I never even considered the matter. I see it as an entirely natural bond between two young siblings - a shared secret language if you will (although such things are outside my actual experience, being an only child). I don't think it was even influenced overmuch by the young Natasha's early training (presuming one of her actual duties on the undercover mission was to look after her kid sister), although it probably influenced the idea. ["If you get lost whistle like this and I will always find you."]

[wychwood]

Alexej referring to himself as the only successful super soldier the USSR ever managed to produce (and he does have all of Steve's physical powers) means Bucky gets counted as Hydra, I take it.

Bucky was already a super-soldier when the USSR got hold of him, it was Nazi-Hydra that created him, so I think that's fair.

I haven't even seen The Americans, but I still thought of it while I was watching!

I don't think it's one of the MCU greats, but it was pretty solid, and I thought Yelena was great (and the whole family vibe, Alexei is just such a dork)

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I agree.

[selenak]

He is. And might I add: when the movie first used American Pie in the opening teaser, I thought it was a neat detail (not least because of the "did Lenin write the book on Marx" line) but did not expect this great pay off in the scene with him and Yelena much later.

[reverancepavane]

Not to mention the fact that he was originally American, which is a definite down-check where the True Believer Alexei was concerned. He may have been a Soviet super-soldier, but he definitely wasn't a Russian super-soldier. Alexei believed himself to be a Soviet Hero. Which is probably also the reason that Alexei ended up in prison - he actually believed in the Soviet state, and was thus eventually an embarrassment to the more pragmatic powers that be in the USSR at the time. Although he might be needed later, which was why he was in prison (which was probably supposed to represent the White Swan prison near Solikamask), and not executed.

There were also the other super soldiers that Zemo killed in the Hydra facility that did indeed do work for the USSR. Although it was probably more of a secret alliance with Hydra than anything else.

[trobadora]

I'm not ready to go to the cinema yet, but yay, this sounds great!

[selenak]

I'm pretty certain you'll enjoy it!

[oracne]

I am looking forward to seeing more of Yelena, though it looks like I'll have to wait until the Hawkeye miniseries.

[selenak]

When is that due anyway? I wasn't aware there was to be one until I saw the movie tag scene, and then it was obvious.

[oracne]

"Late 2021" is all Disney has said so far.

[lynnenne]

I got chills when Natasha said, “Thank you for your cooperation.” That was AWESOME.

Loved all the “family” members in this, especially Yelena. Can’t wait to see more of her.

[kore]

That was such a BEAUTIFUL callback. You think the Black Widow's down? That's when she has the upper hand. You think you've beaten her? That's when she's won. FUCK yeah.

[selenak]

I do hope they contracted Florence Pugh for multiple projects when signing her on for this one! The character is great, and she plays her beautifully.

"Thank you for your cooperation" was in this movie full of good Natasha moments I loved the most fantastic one, both for its own sake and for the way it brought everything full circle. I adored it.

[kore]

I was really surprised at how dark it was and how much depth it had, from the credits on, when the trailers made a lot of it look like a yukfest. (Srsly, whoever does MCU trailers should just be fired. Fired and left in the desert with a bottle of Pepsi.) All the acting was great, and I liked the pulls from various comics stories -- they even made that one moment MORE badass, when "He broke my nose" got turned into "You weren't quite strong enough, so I'll have to do it myself." BADASS.

I really hated the idea of a post-CW Nat cut off from everyone, but they really made it work -- and the movie itself was REALLY patterned on TWS, the first movie where Nat got to be an actual character rather than a walking smirk with a perpetually stuck boob zipper. It wasn't just a copy, but a mirror (FITTING) in so many ways. (I might have screamed "SHE'S HER BUCKY!" in T's ear when that mask came off.) It was so well directed, too, not just the action beats and character moments but there were just a lot of gorgeous shots in it you don't often see in MCU flicks (unless they're connected with CGI space f/x). Weisz was so great, her locked-down misery and imprisonment suggesting a real psychological Iron Maiden while never getting blank or cliche.

I could also see why the director and stars keep saying "it's a very #metoo movie" in interviews, altho that's been pretty much completely ignored in reviews (I saw ONE so far that pointed out the theme of trafficking). It's also amusing/infuriating to see the comics fanbois pompously point out what they think are reasons this movie shouldn't exist ("She was originally undercover to seduce Tony Stark," no, "she never had her own title until decades later," no, "Yelena is now the Black Widow in comics," no no and no).

[selenak]

TWS, the first movie where Nat got to be an actual character rather than a walking smirk with a perpetually stuck boob zipper

I strongly disagree. She was much more than that in The Avengers, which was the movie that made me fall in love with the character. The Winter Soldier solidified and added to it, no doubt, but the Natasha I saw in The Avengers was already three dimensional, not least becauses in addition to the two (awesome) interrogation scenes the film gave her intimate character beats (her loyalty to and concern for Clint throughout, the exchange about knowing what it's like to be mentally turned inside out once he's deprogrammed, both the recruitment scene with Bruce Banner and later the way the movie let her be both genuinely scared of the Hulk and rally herself by her lonesome to get up again). In no way can these scenes be described as "a walking smirk".

Sorry, but this is a bit of a red button for me because those scenes were and are still among my favourites in the MCU.

Trafficking theme: and it's not like the movie is subtle about it! Though maybe viewers are conditioned now that if there are no rape scenes, it's not trafficking. Draykov's "no one cares what happens to these girls" was pretty hard to miss as a summary, though.

I also appreciated that while Natasha heard two things about her biological mother, this was not what drove her through the movie, and that both of her claimed families at the end were ones she'd made. I had been somewhat afraid we'd get a reveal that Melina is her biological mother, or that someone else is, and there are fictional universes where I'm cool with surprise biological relations being all over the place (Alias is one of them), but here I think it was really necessary that Natasha was no different from the other girls the Red Room had kidnapped, not the child of anyone "important", that she became who she was not due to genetics and that she "kept her heart", to quote Melina, by her own efforts, not because someone in the staff was secretly looking out for her.

[lynnenne]

Weisz was so great, her locked-down misery and imprisonment suggesting a real psychological Iron Maiden while never getting blank or cliche.

Rachel Weisz is BRILLIANT. I think she’s one of the most underrated actors of the past decade. Every expression on her face tells a hundred stories.

[hannah]

I commented elsewhere I'd have liked it if Black Widow did the same thing Black Panther did to show the characters weren't speaking English, but it was rendered that way inside the world of the movie - have a couple lines at the top of the scene be in Russian, as BP did with Xhosa, then switch to accented English.

I was delighted at how far from "Marvel house style" this movie was. I really liked that the fight scenes were just people hitting each other really hard - though I'd have liked longer takes with fewer cuts, so I could've followed the movement and action better, I could easily see what every punch took out of everyone.

[selenak]

I commented elsewhere I'd have liked it if Black Widow did the same thing Black Panther did to show the characters weren't speaking English, but it was rendered that way inside the world of the movie - have a couple lines at the top of the scene be in Russian, as BP did with Xhosa, then switch to accented English.

Yes, that would have beeen a good choice.

Fighting style: it reminded me a bit of how the series Agent Carter let Peggy be a bruiser, actually (and there put it in contrast to the Red Room trained Dottie with the more athletic "Widow" style fighting).

[andraste]

I, too, greatly enjoyed this story of Spyrents! Just imagine how exasperating Spy Daddy, Spy Mommy and of course Uncle Arvin would fine Red Guardian, how well they would get on with Melina and how much Sydney and Nadia would bond with Natasha and Yelena .(I have still not got around to watching The Americans. Really should remedy that some time.)

I am baffled that there are still people who do not realise that Marvel films have important stuff after the credits. But then, less than two weeks ago I watched someone be furious on the internet because they'd stopped watching Loki episode four before the mid-credits reveal.

I am so excited about Dark Avengers or Thunderbolts or whatever it's going to be called already. I also want Yelena to star in Black Widow 2, of course, but the concept of her and Val and John Walker and Helmut Zemo all sharing the same space is just delicious.

[selenak]

The Americans would be very much up your alley, I think! So I hope you'll get around to them.

Just imagine how exasperating Spy Daddy, Spy Mommy and of course Uncle Arvin would find Red Guardian, how well they would get on with Melina and how much Sydney and Nadia would bond with Natasha and Yelena

I suspect Alexei is capable of some finesse while undercover (otherwise they'd never have remained undetected for three years), but yes, there would be much eye rolling. Thouogh Marshall at least would want his autograph and thereby make Alexei's day. :)

Sydney and Nadia and Natasha and Yelena might have a debate about whether it's better or worse to not be biologically related to your Spyrents, and/or to know what's what from the get go versus blissful ignorance, then shock reveal. Presumably Nat and Yelena would disagree on the later point themselves... But I bet Syd and Nadia would say that no Rambaldi in their lives is a big plus for Yelena and Natasha!

[andraste]

I suspect Alexei is capable of some finesse while undercover (otherwise they'd never have remained undetected for three years), but yes, there would be much eye rolling.

I guess the exact level of eye rolling would depend on whether they were dealing with pre-jail Alexi (capable of staying undercover three years even if he's bored and would rather be punching Captain America) or post-jail Alexi.

Thouogh Marshall at least would want his autograph and thereby make Alexei's day. :)

Those two would be adorable together!

But I bet Syd and Nadia would say that no Rambaldi in their lives is a big plus for Yelena and Natasha!

Indeed! Natasha had to fight Thanos and his various minions, but at least none of them had any prophecies about her.

[likeadeuce]

Oh, yes, I very much enjoyed the family dynamics here, and honestly did feel like the best use of Natasha since 'Avengers.' I'm crossing my fingers for Yelena to get screentime with Hailee Steinfield's Kate Bishop in the Hawkeye show.

[lynnenne]

Hailee Steinfield is playing Kate Bishop??? OMG my head just exploded!!!

[lokifan]

thank you for your co-operation was SO GOOD