At the outset of the COVID-19 quarantine, one of the first cinematic sacrifices was Black Widow. Its release was delayed indefinitely, and fans were left to wonder whether it would ever hit theaters at all. Perhaps it would become the first MCU entry to be released straight to Disney Plus. Due to the fact that the titular character is already canonically dead, her story could arguably be shuffled away from a theatrical release without it feeling like a downgrade. But with a dead character comes the absence of a ticking clock, which means that if the studio wanted to wait for a theatrical release, they had all the time in the world to do it.
Welp, the decision has been made, and Black Widow is finally going to be released on both the big screen and Disney Plus in tandem. The adventures of Scarlett Johansson’s iconic badass, who gave her life to save the world in Avengers: Endgame, would serve not just as her final hurrah, but as the starting off point for a handful of characters from her neck of the universe. Since the MCU, like the comic books it is derived from, has functionally slight stakes (nobody ever really stays dead, at least not in a functional sense), it’s not as if there was going be some gaping Widow-sized hole to fill. But since Avengers: Endgame, it seems that the stakes are at least going to start being a little more permanent for these characters (due in part, I’m sure, to superstars not wanting to sign another years-long contract, instead opting for cameos here and there if my guess is correct), which means we need to make way for a new roster of heroes to fight off intergalactic threats.
This is exciting, because it means that this ever-expanding experiment of IP management will continue to grow in magnitude and provide entertainment for all of us, homogenization of the market notwithstanding. But with such a vast web of interconnected stories to manage, there’s just no way that it was ever going to be made entirely of winners. There have only been a few stinkers in the mega-franchise so far, and it gives me little pleasure to report that Black Widow is one of them. Outside of the the abhorrently lazy and pandering Captain Marvel, Black Widow represents a low point in the MCU, but at least it’s not for lack of trying. The pieces are great, but the execution leaves plenty to be desired.
The overall story begins after the events of Age of Ultron, but the film begins in 1995, when a young Natasha Romanoff and her family have their lives upended by a mysterious bit of espionage. Dad (David Harbour) tells the family that it’s time to go on an adventure, which leads to an action sequence in which Mom (Rachel Weisz) has to load her daughters onto a plane and fly to Cuba. It’s a pretty turgid bit of action, in which low light and poor blocking rob it of excitement, but there’s usually one scene like this in every MCU entry, so it’s easy to forgive. Sadly, this is where the action peaks.
Soon after their arrival in Cuba, Natasha and her family are split up, and it becomes clear that Mom and Dad are not who we believed them to be. The family unit presented at the outset was merely an arrangement by secretive forces.
Fast forward to the “present” day, and we meet up with a post-Ultron Natasha still working to remove the “red from her ledger.” As it currently stands, she’s got a MacGuffin to chase, a family to reconstruct, and a baddie (Ray Winstone) to kick and punch. And this is exactly what she does, all while an adaptive, identity-less baddie, Taskmaster, is hot on her trail.
At this moment, I decline to give specific details to the plot, partially for spoiler avoidance, but mostly because it is a largely unengaging affair. Long scenes of chatty exposition are interrupted by choppily edited, pre-vizzed action sequences that fail to excite, despite being conceptually pretty. Perhaps this is just a me problem – perhaps I was raised on too many Jackie Chan movies, but there is just no reason why a fight scene should use ten shots to capture a single punch. Plenty of the action in the MCU is shot in the form of splash-page tableaus, but just as often the house style favors motion over any clarity at all. During the fight scenes of Black Widow, there’s really only one thing that is apparent at any given moment: there is indeed motion happening on the screen.
Jumpy edits ruin a lot of the flow that said motion could have as well. An early scene in which Taskmaster confronts Natasha on a bridge to engage in some car smashery and fisticuffs, it’s almost never clear who is doing what. The viewer just has to sit there and hope the the red-haired blur is the one which remains standing at the end of it all.
One cool byproduct of these sequences, however, is that we’re reminded of a fact which is all too easy to forget: Natasha is not a superpowered being. Her powers are training and skill, nothing more, nothing less. We see her nursing bruises and when she is on the receiving end of a blow, it clearly hurts. This is important in a film that uses her humanity to elevate the supporting characters into future main players.
Much of what moves the story forward are the tensions between Natasha, her sister Yelena (Florence Pugh), and their “parents.” As the family works out their issues under the duress of a many outside threats, we are treated to a foursome of strong performances, filled with admirable amounts of emotion and humor (and less admirable amounts of gargly Russian accents). These scenes frustrate because all of the pieces to make them sing are apparent (both Harbour and Pugh are fantastic and often hilarious), but the pacing with which they are employed disengages the viewer pretty aggressively. And when a bit of rug-pulling is later invoked to sneak a fast one by the audience, it undercuts some of what is being put forth thematically by these unnaturally long scenes of character-building. A sleepy scene here or there can really work to even out the pace of a propulsive action film and keep it from going numb, but here the slower scenes are way too long, and the action scenes are too few (and too shoddily assembled) for the film at large not to feel herky jerky. That said, the new characters established are naturally compelling, and I do look forward to future adventures with them.
Also the costumes are fanfuckingtastic.
In the end, the million dollar question has a one dollar answer. Would this movie have played better had it been released a year ago?
Nah.
Directed by Cate Shortlan
Written by Jac Shaeffer, Ned Benson, Eric Pearson, Stan Lee, Don Heck, Don Rico
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Ray Winstone
Rated PG-13, Runtime 133 minutes
