Black Widow
I’m not sure who out there is paying the premium Disney+ subscription fee… I mean, that extra $30 would just piss me off. I’m already irritated enough that my friends insisted on us going to see movies at Midway Cinemas instead of Amherst Cinemas, where the tickets are three dollars cheaper. (On the other hand, the riffraff has been showing up a lot in Amherst, where as at Midway, we ARE The riffraff.)
I came home pretty tired that day and half wondering if I could just blow it off. After all, Black Widow is not a movie I was seriously stoked for. But, it was the first time this crew had gotten together for a film in over a year, and my daughter met me at the door to remind me how excited she was for our movie today. So off we went, looking for people that we looking around to see if we could spot anybody we knew in a theater. Maddie tapped me on the shoulder and asked me
“Why is there a Deadpool right behind us? “
I looked, and sure enough, Deadpool was sitting right there, arguing with a 10-year-old boy about whether the DC universe was better than the Marvel universe.
“My friend over there says your movie sucked.”
“Well your friend obviously has terrible taste.”
“Why weren’t you in infinity war?”
“They couldn’t match my qoute.“
“Why don’t you ever do any DC?”
“Maybe if you wore something green” I chimed in.
Deadpool swung around jabbing an angry finger in my face.
“Now that’s going to far!”
I realize I’m talking more about the experience of going to the movie than the movie itself. There is of course, a reason for that. The whole point of the outing was really about getting back to the movies, and getting back with friends. The movie was secondary, and so was it’s quality.
Black Widow is at best, and average movie. My buddy Josh really hit the nail on the head when he described it as feeling like a Brosnan era bond film. There’s some superhero elements in it, and some Marvel characters floating around… but most of them are kind of marvel in name only. Like they threw a bunch of names in a hat and just decided “OK these are the ones we’re going to use…” and then try to fit the square pegs into whatever round holes they could successfully pound them into. Red Guardian isn’t really red guardian, Taskmaster has been significantly changed just to be a better fit for this film thematically, at the cost of his character. Black Widow for her part, well, Scarlett Johansson never plays her the same way twice… So it may not be fair to suggest she’s different in this movie.
In an adventure that takes place immediately after Civil War, Black Widow teams up with her sister to find and destroy the red room, a facility that brainwashes women and turns them into assassins just like she was. It’s a thin plot, with a bit of origin thrown in a flashback…and it’s kind of unnecessary. We needed this film to have come out right after Civil War. That would’ve given it legs and momentum, and wouldn’t have felt quite as shoehorned into the MCU as it does. It would make a great double feature with the Wasp and Ant-man. But plugging it in now, retreading this ground so late in the MCU, it just feels shoehorned in… With this unknown adventure, and the secret sister that we’re only finding about now… I can’t help but wonder, did Black Widow really need her own movie in the first place?
This is a valid question . Watching this film, it’s obvious that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow cannot carry a film by herself. Fortunately they’ve surrounded her with an excellent cast that outshines
her in almost every scene she shares with them. I’m totally into the sister, despite the fact that this is the first thing that I’ve seen Florence Paugh in.
Black Widow is an excellent supporting character. She’s really the glue that held the MCU together (Far more so than Agent Coulson ever was) but she’s not solo material. I’m not even sure that it’s necessary… She’s been in more MCU films than Thor or the Hulk, and if you go outside the MCU, she still has more screen credits than the Punisher or Daredevil, or the Fantastic Four! More credits than Marvel’s first family! She’s been in as many movies as 
Superman! The first superhero, the original, recognized worldwide. Black Widow has had roles in just as many movies as he has. She’s not lacking for exposure or respect.
All that said, this is not a terrible movie. It’s fine. Pointless, but fine. It doesn’t do much to push any story further, it doesn’t do much as far as world building, he genuinely feels like someone just pitched “We need a Black Widow movie! Just do whatever, as long as you don’t break canon. Maybe have a woman directed to because that’s popular right now.”
Still, tt gave us a reason to get back out in the theater together, and it also gave us Natasha’s sister Yelena… who I’m quite eager to see show up again in the upcoming Hawkeye TV series. This one’s not a film that I would go out of my way to see in the movie theaters unless you’re doing it to get together with people like this. As far as just watching it as a Marvel movie I’d actually be perfectly content to wait until Disney+ takes down the premium fee for it and just adds it to their collection.
Argo City Comics 