Movie Review : Black Widow (2021)
Marvel’s Black Widow was doomed to disappoint moviegoing audiences. Originally set up to quietly kick off dumb-action-movies-season in May 2020, it got derailed and delayed by COVID-19 like every other large production. Not knowing what to do with it, Disney hurled it in theaters fifteen months later because no one really cared about the character anyway. Black Widow did what it was supposed to, but no one was impressed by it.
Was it good, bad or exactly like every other Marvel movie? It was under such insane scrutiny, I couldn’t help but give it a shot. I hate Marvel, but I do love underdogs.
Black Widow tells the origin story of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). Separated from her family after her father stole intel from S.H.I.E.L.D, she is enrolled into a government program that turn young girls into elite assassins and becomes the badass we know. Following the events of Captain America: Civil War (this is convoluted, I know), she reunited with her sister Yelena (Florence Pugh), discovers the assassin program is still active and sets out to destroy it.
The unbearable lightness of endless fistfights
I’m not going to lie: Black Widow started with what was probably my favourite scene in all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was somewhat of a throwback to corny, crazy eighties action movies. The Romanoff family is exiting the U.S on a small plane, dodging bullets and soldiers on their way to Cuba. It feels very wacky and Indiana Jones-ish in the best possible way. It also got my hopes up quite a bit. Black Widow looked like it was gonna be different.
The following scenes did not disappoint either. There was perhaps the most gripping fight scene I’ve also ever seen in a Marvel film, where Natasha fights her little sister who eventually screams in frustration because she’s still getting her ass handed to her after all these years. Black Widow’s director Cate Shortland seemed to focus on what makes these characters like us rather than better than us and it felt fucking refreshing. For an hour or so.
After the prison break scene, Black Widow starts mailing it in. So much conflict to resolve, so little time to deliver what the good American people expected: fistfights. Once again, there is a lot of fistfights in these movie. The answer to everything for these super assassins seems to punch, Judo throw and/or Tae Kwon Do kick someone in the face until they stop moving and that bores the shit out of me. It’s never life-affirming to punch someone unless there are stakes to it.
Could it have been better?
Hell yeah. I know it’s supposed to be this big feminist statement to have women punching and kicking like Jean-Claude Van Damme in action movies, but it’s not. Ladies, we suck. We don’t know what we want, so we watch the same thing over and over because we think it’s funny. Don’t be like us. You’re better. I know Denis Villeneuve saying Marvel turned us into zombies pissed a lot of people off, but he’s right and Black Widow kind of showed us that.
These mass produced and hypermarketed movies are all the same: someone who is supposed to be better than us turns out to be better than us. They all use violence in the same boring way to prove it. Black Widow gives us a peak of how someone who is supposed to be our enemy actually has moral standards and a life rather similar to ours, which was great for how long it lasted. It crosses both moral and narrative lines. Real and imaginary.
*
Is Black Widow underrated? I wish that I could say yes. Unfortunately, it’s just a telegraphed blockbuster with the shadow of what these movies could be if you let the talented directors Disney pay a shitload of money express themselves. These movies are going to go in this direction at some point, but it’ll be too late. Black Widow is an example of how superhero movies COULD be fun and most likely never will be. Seriously, fuck everything.
