Natasha Romanoff finally gets to spread her wings and star in her own solo flick. Too bad she gets upstaged by her sister and her father. Tough break
A film about Natasha Romanoff in her quests between the films Civil War and Infinity War.
It took long enough, actually, all it took for Scarlett Johansson to land her Black Widow solo movie was literally dying. I don’t want to say it was too late or this didn’t matter because it did and Black Widow is surprisingly one of the better MCU solo flicks that sets up a few storylines for Phase 4. After the big showdown at the airport in Civil War, which leads to the break up of the Avengers, Natasha only has one choice and that’s to go on the run. She no longer has any friends or family…….. or so she thought.
Audiences and fans have always wanted to learn a little more about this character, she has always been at the forefront of the movies, being an original Avenger and one of the biggest female characters if not the biggest the MCU has to offer. So this movie was a great opportunity to showcase who she is and where she came from. Introducing her hilarious and superfamily, baby sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), father Alexei (David Harbour), and mother Melina (Rachel Weisz). These are worthy additions to the MCU, all of them providing a ton of comedic moments, especially Pugh who was so rough around the edges and I really felt like all of her jokes landed. She had great chemistry with Scarlett and I’m very excited to see what they do with her next in the MCU. As for her parents, Harbour plays the Russian Captain America still living in his glory years and he was just a dumb stump for the majority of the film, but in the best way possible. Melina serves as the voice of reason, the strong motherly figure who is so happy to have her “family” reunited.
One aspect of Black Widow that I enjoyed was in all other solo movies, there is always some world-ending event going down, and everyone is like “why don’t you just call another Avenger,” but this time she actually couldn’t and I think it was cool to see her with her back against the wall and relying on people she thought she had lost forever. Behind this event is the scum of the Earth Dreykov (Ray Winstone) and his trusty sidekick Taskmaster. Honestly, the villains could have used a little work, Taskmaster has a cool gimmick but they certainly didn’t showcase it enough and from the trailers, I really thought Taskmaster would be at the forefront of the movie. On the other side of things, I don’t really think this movie needed a strong villain to be successful, because this was more about spending one last movie with Natasha and finally learning about her backstory and what really went down in Budapest. They achieve that goal and it was nice to get some emotional scenes with Natasha and everything that’s happened to her prior to this movie finally catching up to her.
I thought the first 20-30 minutes were solid as a rock, especially the opening credits. If you can pull off and execute effective opening credits, it only helps your movie. Throw in some Nirvana cover songs and we are talking nothing but positive things. Yelena and Natasha’s first encounter was a great scene and you knew right away that they would be fantastic throughout the entire film together. The comedy really works, although with some more emotional scenes I think the MCU as a whole needs to stop tossing in one last joke to overshadow the scene. It takes away from some of the most powerful scenes in the movie and you really don’t need jokes in every single scene of the movie. I think that and the weakish third act would be my only complaints about the movie.
We got introduced to some great new characters going forward, we got an amazing sendoff to one of the OG Avengers and it was nice to have an MCU movie back in our lives. Overall, Black Widow works on just about every single level and I look forward to seeing where they take all these storylines next.
Black Widow – 71/100