Black Widow (2021 Movie) Review

It’s been over 10 years since the Marvel Cinematic Universe began, and since her first appearance in Iron Man 2, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow has had fans wanting to see the Marvel Super Spy in her own solo movie. Due for release in 2020, then pushed back due to the worldwide pandemic time and time again (coughBullshitcough), meaning that the film, which was meant to be the start of Phase 4, became something of a middle title for the phase. All the delays did was build hype and speculation for Black Widow’s solo outing, and did it live up to expectations? I’m not telling… yet.

Title: Black Widow
Production Company: Marvel Studios
Distributed by: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Directed by: Cate Shortland
Produced by: Kevin Feige
Written by: Eric Pearson
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ray Winstone & Rachel Weisz
Based on: Black Widow by Stan Lee, Don Rico & Don Heck
Release dates: Out Now
Running time: 134 minutes
Rating: Text

There’s a Lot of Red in These Ledgers…

In 1995, Russian undercover agents, super-soldier Alexei Shostakov, and Black Widow Melina Vostokoff pose as a normal family in Ohio, along with their surrogate daughters Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova. When the mission to steal S.H.I.E.L.D. intel is complete, the family escapes to rendezvous with their boss Dreykov, who has Romanoff and Belova put through the Red Room for training. Years pass and Romanoff defects to S.H.I.E.L.D., believing Dreykov to be dead after bombing his offices, killing his daughter Antonia in the process.

In 2016, Romanoff is a fugitive for violating the Sokovia Accords. She escapes from U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross and flees to a safehouse in Norway. Meanwhile, Belova kills a rogue former Black Widow, only to come in contact with a substance called Red Dust that removes her from the Red Room’s mind control. She sends the antidote to Romanoff hoping she will return to help Belova free the other Widows. When Romanoff unknowingly drives off with the antidote, she is attacked by Taskmaster, who is after the Red Dust. Romanoff manages to evade Taskmaster and learns that the Dust came from Belova. The two reunite in Budapest but are then attacked by Black Widows. Romanoff learns Dreykov is still alive and the Red Room is still active. Romanoff and Belova evade the Widows and Taskmaster before meeting Rick Mason, who supplies them with a helicopter.

Romanoff and Belova break Shostakov out of prison to learn Dreykov’s location. He tells them to speak with Vostokoff, who lives on a farm in Russia, where she developed the mind control process used on the Widows. There, Belova reveals that while they were not a real family, she believed they were so. Vostokoff gives away their location to Dreykov, whose agents arrive and take them to the Red Room, an aerial base. As Dreykov congratulates Vostokoff, he realizes that Vostokoff and Romanoff used face mask technology to switch places before being captured. Romanoff learns Taskmaster is Antonia, who suffered damage so severe that Dreykov had to put a chip in her head, turning her into the perfect soldier. Romanoff discovers she cannot harm Dreykov due to a pheromone lock he has installed in every Widow and that he controls Widows worldwide via his desk console. Romanoff intentionally breaks her nose, severing a nerve in her nasal passage to negate the pheromone, and then attacks Dreykov. Vostokoff attempts to take out the ship’s engine while Shostakov battles Antonia and Belova searches for the other Widows, who are sent to protect Dreykov.

Dreykov escapes as the Widows attack Romanoff, but Belova creates a Red Dust bomb that releases the Widows from mind control. Romanoff gets into the control desk and copies the locations of the other Widows worldwide just as the ship begins to explode and fall. Before leaving the control room, she picks up the two surviving vials of Red Dust. Vostokoff and Shostakov escape via a plane just as Belova takes out Dreykov’s escape ship, killing him. Romanoff gives Belova a parachute before battling Antonia through the sky. After landing, Romanoff uses a vial of Red Dust on Antonia, freeing her from servitude. The freed Widows arrive as Belova, Vostokoff, and Shostakov say goodbye to Romanoff. She gives Belova the last Red Dust vial and the portable drive, telling her to find and free the other, still mind-controlled, Widows. As they leave with Antonia, Romanoff awaits Ross and his men. Two weeks later, Romanoff reunites with Mason, who supplies her with a Quinjet. She leaves, intending to free the detained Avengers on the Raft.

In a post-credits scene set after Romanoff’s death, Belova encounters Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine at Romanoff’s grave and receives her next assignment: take down Clint Barton, the man “responsible” for Romanoff’s death.

A Story of Mystery, Mind-Control, Humanisation, and Character Assassination

Director Cate Shortland’s vision for Black Widow was brought down to three words: Grounded, Gritty, and Real. These three words are represented really well in Black Widow, however, while it might work in many movies, when you’re making a SUPERHERO film, these are words that can kill a character dead in their tracks. Shortland’s intentions behind the story of Black Widow was to tell a tale about the more emotional side of Natasha’s story, moving away from all the flash and action that most other Marvel solo films have done in the past. Again, well-intentioned, but it has made the overall feeling of Black Widow fall flat.

When people think of Black Widow, they think of something along the lines of James Bond mystery with a lot of action. A lot of the attraction to Black Widow, and by relation to Natasha Romanoff, is the mystery behind her character. While there have been stories written about The Red Room, which features in this movie, we don’t have a 100% clear picture of Natasha’s past, and what we do know about it is treated like trying to tell the origin of The Joker, you never know what is real and what is fiction. What Shortland tries to do with Black Widow is place a more human face on the character and her background, trying to focus on emotion over just telling a good Black Widow story.

Black Widow, as a story template, is a decent attempt at trying to uncover the background of a lot of the main parts of the Black Widow as a character and Natasha as a person, but at the same time, by going down this route, you’ve taken away too much of the appeal of the character and almost pushed her into the background of her own movie. Because let’s be honest, by the time the credits roll, you’re going to be more interested in Yelena Belova to the point where you’ll be hoping we see her take over the Black Widow mantle going forward.

The whole plot of the movie, that being the revelation that Dreykov (A Russian General who is in control of the Black Widow program) and the Red Room are still alive and working after an attempt at assassination from Natasha during her defection from the Russian KGB or whatever agency to S.H.I.E.L.D., and finding out that her fake sister Yelena is also alive after she was cured of the mind control that is implanted into the Black Widow soldiers during their time in the Red Room. Together, the two team up to shut down the Red Room and kill Dreykov once and for all. In order to do this, they have to go back into their past, including reuniting with their fake parents (A Black Widow agent and The Red Guardian) in order to make this happen.

While this is all well and good, 99% of this has nothing to do with the overall mission. Red Guardian is wasted as a joke character who is only used to get one bit of information and then hangs around for no real reason. Even the reunion with the “mother” seems almost pointless as it’s only used to set up the trap to get everyone into the Red Room for the final fights. Practically nothing of what happens comes from the two mains in the story, Natasha and Yelena, as they just seem to go from one breadcrumb to the next leading to where they need to be. There are no Avengers used in Black Widow since this is all set during the time Post-Civil War where Natasha is on the run, even though we know that she had access to people and services (Like Nick Fury for example) but just doesn’t use them for an unknown reason… Possibly the whole “no males allowed” in this movie unless they are a joke or the bad guy thing that sinks up the place.

The good, The Bad, and The Why Are They Here…

• Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow:
  Black Widow… Natasha Romanoff… One of the biggest and best female badasses in comic books and movies, a role model for any woman who wants to stand on their own feet and face down the world. At least that’s what I see when I pull out any Black Widow comic book I own. What we get in Black Widow: The movie is a Natasha who stands around going “I want to take down the Red Room, but I guess I have to stand back here and allow other people to do my work for me” and pretty much does so. For some reason, Natasha has the plan, has the means, and could do the whole thing solo, but because the filmmaker wanted to do something more emotionally driven, we get a Natasha who does next to nothing, comes along for the ride, and gives up the spotlight in her own film.

  Basically, Natasha is a complete waste in her own film. Yelena takes every aspect of the character Black Widow and embodies it better than she does. Melina and Red Guardian are the characters who move the plot along. Taskmaster gets the better fights. All this left nothing for the main character. Hell, I know origin stories are done to death, but I’d rather have seen Natasha from the beginning of the movie, complete with everything that happens in the opening credits being detailed instead of what we got here. Imagine seeing what you see in the opening, then Natasha’s training in the Red Room, her early missions (aka the real reason she has “red in her ledger”) as a Black Widow, then ending with the assassination of Dreykov and joining S.H.I.E.L.D. Sounds like a much better movie, complete with the emotional connections, than what this one was forced to be.

• Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova / Black Widow:
  The true star of the film is here! Pugh as Yelena is sassy, badass, aggressive, and everything that I expected from Natasha from the get-go. Every moment she is on screen she feels like she should be the center of attention, and pretty much steals every scene from Johansson. While there are times where Yelena comes off as emotional, you’ll notice that she does so out of confusion instead of actual requirement of the emotion of the moment, showing that she is still new to the freedom she has been granted from the Black Widow mind control. If this is what we get for her introduction, I cannot wait to see where Yelena goes from here.

• David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian:
  For someone who is meant to be Captain America’s Russian equal, the respect given to Red Guardian here is just about as much of a joke as the character comes off as in the film. Instead of giving the guy some intelligence, we go the modern route of making him the dumbest man on the planet, obsessed with his own strength and just being an arrogant brute. Sure, he tries hard near the end of the film to apologize to the girls about their upbringing, but then in the same breath, he’ll do or say something stupid and go back to being the pointless joke that he is. But what did I really expect from a movie in 2021?
• Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster:
  Well, it wouldn’t be a modern 2021 movie if we didn’t take at least one character and gender/race swap them. In this case, the badass Taskmaster goes from being a guy to a girl. Not that bad of a change, except that they stripped everything that made the character worth including in a movie and replacing it with “She’s another experiment by an evil man”. Instead of Taskmaster being a very skilled fighter with the ability to memorize and learn an opponent’s moves, making him a formidable opponent, she is just a girl who is disfigured and had her brain pretty much replaced with a Raspberry Pi and downloads the skills of her opponents. That’s it… I want to rant more, but I’m trying to keep this somewhat family-friendly.
• Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff / Black Widow:
  Someone who was meant to come off as the emotional counterpoint in the girl’s upbringing, Melina ditches that after the opening scene to be another soulless, pointless plot device to keep the movie going without actually having neither Natasha nor Yelena do anything involving their own brains. Sure, Melina is placed into the “Unwilling scientist” role, thinking that she was doing some great discovery, only to be manipulated by an EVIL MAN into using the same research to hurt the poor girls in the Black Widow program. But it’s ok, Melina joins the good girls in the end, for no real reason other than “girls good, men bad” in the end, so I guess that makes her a good character?
• O-T Fagbenle as Rick Mason / William Hurt as Thaddeus Ross / Ray Winstone as General Dreykov:
  Yeah, going to group all these guys into one entry because they are pretty much side characters to the story. Ross chases Natasha in the opening of the film and again at the end of the film and that’s it. Mason is Natasha’s go-to guy for her equipment throughout the film. They do try to create some sort of sexual tension between the two, but it ultimately feels forced and falls flat. Dreykov is your typical over the top abusive bad guy, who thanks to his mind control, comes off as more of an allegory for domestic abuse to children and women in his actions more than anything else, and that’s just sad from a writing point of view as if that’s where we have to go for a movie villain, then we have failed as a society. Dreykov feels cheap and written in a way that show no creative direction at all, just playing off modern sensitivities to draw cheap Twitter heat.

The Passing of A Character to a New Generation

As I mentioned above a few times, Yelena is the highlight of Black Widow. Given that this is the first time that Florence Pugh has been in a Marvel movie, and that it has been rumored that this is Scarlett Johansson’s final Marvel film, it’s sort of fitting to see a possible new character to be given the Black Widow mantle take center stage. As the sassy, badass, aggressive version of the Black Widow that is meant to be the counterpoint to Natasha, Yelena comes off more as the Black Widow we have seen in previous films, while Natasha looks like someone who had begrudgingly been stripped of everything that made her stand out in the first place.

A mention has to be given to the film’s third act, which takes place in the floating fortress that is called the Red Room. It’s here that Black Widow finally lives up to the reputation of both being a Marvel film and something that we actually want to see. It’s during this part where the fights are really good, we get to see the mystery unfold, and the action is the over-the-top nature that you expect from a COMIC BOOK adaptation. After spending over an hour having to go through all this pointless dialogue from way too many characters, seeing everything culminate into an explosive payoff finale is just want I was hoping for. But did it save the whole film? Not on your life or mine.

Nothing Like Anyone Would Expect, or Want

My god, when this movie dropped the ball, it did so with the force of a thousand suns. As I’ve said before, when you think Black Widow, you think about his badass femme fatal with a mysterious past who is doing her best to make up for her mistakes, not someone who spends 99% of her time talking about her past in full detail and then doing something so stupid as busting her fake father out of jail and reunite the family because she “needs” them. NO! Natasha is that spy that you send in to get shit done, and solo because she’ll do what needs to be done without getting emotional about it. She’s like the “Black Ops” of the Avengers, and none of that comes across here from her… Instead, it comes from Yelena, a character who isn’t used much in the comics because she is DEAD.

When you take everything that made the main character a success to the point where people have been demanding a solo movie about the character for 10 years and place it on someone else, then I’m going to call this movie for what it is… A FAILURE! And that was not the only character that got royally screwed over here. Red Guardian, someone who is meant to be the EQUAL of Captain “On your left” America is made into a complete joke, then I’m just going to lose it… and don’t get me started on Task Master again because the rage about the complete fuckery that was the character isn’t something that can be heard in polite society.

I know that Black Widow is going to have its defenders, people who want to see this film succeed purely on the basis that we finally got what has been demanded… But did we really? Step back and think about what you have watched and how it relates not only to the characters who know from the comic books, but also the character you’ve gotten to know through the movies over the last 10 years and you’ll notice that there is something wrong with what we got versus what we needed and expected.

Cate Shortland’s vision for Black Widow was brought down to three words: Grounded, Gritty, and Real; and she accomplished that. But this is not something that anyone who has seen the last 10 years of Marvel movies, or fans of the comic books should have gotten with Black Widow. If there was a concept that should have been done with Black Widow, it should be something more like a James Bond film, which was referenced in this one. What we got was the stripping down of a badass character to the point where the second banana actually feels more like the character we wanted the main to be, and when someone like that gets more attention post-release than the main we’ve talked about for 10 years, then that’s a fail. It’s not a Captain Marvel-level failure, but still not a good movie in itself.