Black Widow (2021)

Film: Black Widow (2021)

Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, Rachel Weisz

Director: Cate Shortland

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Scarlett Johansson has been playing Natasha Romanoff since 2010 when she first appeared in Iron Man 2, the first female cinematic Avenger, and basically since that time we have been hearing "when is there going to be a Black Widow movie?"  After a near-decade of pressure from comic book fans, who pointed out repeatedly the boy-centric nature of all of the titles that had gotten their own stand-alone films, Johansson finally got to have a sendoff for the character (presumably this is her final moment with the role), by giving her her own origin story/adventure.  Black Widow comes in an interesting situation, though, as it is the film most famously delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic-it was supposed to be released in mid-2020, but was bumped back over a year as a result of Disney not wanting to risk the lost box office dollars.  As a result, Black Widow represents the longest gap the MCU has taken from theaters since 2010 (when she first came onto the scene), since we last checked-in with the Avengers cinematically with Spider-Man: Far From Home two years ago.  Since then, though, the franchise has expanded into three different television series, that, rightly or wrongly, clearly have impacted Black Widow and the way it's perceived by audiences.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in 2016, though we do see some flashbacks to Natasha aka Black Widow's (aka Scarlett Johansson) childhood, which puts it roughly at the Captain America: Civil War point in the MCU timeline (we have not had the Thanos snap yet).  The movie is about Natasha trying to take down Dreykov (Winstone), a Russian general who controls an army of female super soldiers, one of which was Natasha, and two more of which are her "pretend" mother Melina (Weisz) and her pretend sister Yelena (Pugh).  Joined also with their faux father Alexei, the Red Guardian (Harbour), the four team up to take down Dreykov, while also in the process working through the abandonment issues the two girls felt when their "parents" surrendered them to an assassin program.

Black Widow, as I mentioned above, is a movie that should have come out two years ago, and that honestly wears on the movie.  It's possible that this film will play better years from now if you watch all of the MCU films back-to-back (that happens-occasionally when films are seen in rapid succession & viewed as one long story, similar to a TV show, they play better), but now we're a few years out and Black Widow's moment-in-the-sun feels done.  Johansson's character died in Avengers: Endgame, so we have already said our goodbyes to her, and she has been replaced in the years since by other Avengers with more compelling back stories such as Scarlet Witch & Black Panther.  There's just not enough intrigue left around this character for us to care about this coda, and in a similar fashion to Spider-Man: Far From Home, these feel like movies that don't really keep us interested in the longer-game storylines of the series in the way that we cared about the Thanos 'Infinity Stone' chapters as a collective unit.  The only time, honestly, we've seen a real urgent need to continue these tales has been WandaVision (full confession: I haven't yet caught Loki though I will), and I stand behind my initial assessment that it may be worth moving on from this series if we don't start seeing some growth in the tales (or some better mysteries unfolding within the series).

That said, Black Widow has its fun moments.  Pugh steals the whole picture wholesale as Yelena, Black Widow's spunky younger sister.  She consistently wisecracks-the broken, petulant sister of a world superstar, and Marvel wisely is putting her centerstage in its upcoming series Hawkeye.  Harbour's accent work is really bad (he shifts out of his Russian accent way too often), and as a result his scene-stealing isn't quite as worthy.  Johansson & Weisz are two of the most consistent screen presences, with the former eternally understanding the assignment (few actresses are better today at totally enveloping their character into the fabric of a film without ever needing to steal focus quite like ScarJo) and Weisz is the fabulous badass who you know will always get out of everything.  There's a lot to like in the chemistry between the four, but it feels somewhat disjointed, and it's hard to care about them when we already know the titular character's destiny (and that this tale will have little impact on the future of the Avengers franchise).