**MINOR SPOILERS FOR BLACK WIDOW, PLUS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU FILMS - ESPECIALLY CIVIL WAR, INFINITY WAR, AND ENDGAME - ABOUND WITHIN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.**
It's been a minute.
After most of 2020 saw the movie theaters closed for months at a time (depending on where you live, of course, but I still lived in California at the time so maaaaaaaybe one or two months open was the best we got, and I didn't even go back there then, not even for Tenet like I'd really been hoping), 2021 is looking to be the year when, with the help of various hybrid theatrical/streaming releases and most people (assuming you can trust their Insta and/or dating app profiles anyway) taking their Covid vaccines, the box office starts finally coming back to life.
And so far, the biggest boon in this year's cultural story has been, naturally, the swan song of the great Scarlett Johansson's performance as Natasha Romanoff, going back to before her untimely death in Endgame to a period between Civil War and Infinity War when she was still on the run for violating the Sokovia Accords (and especially for assaulting the King of Wakanda, according to Secretary Ross in an early scene as he tries to apprehend her.) While it's no longer technically the start to Phase Four of the MCU like nature intended - that honor goes to WandaVision now, and all its bonkers sitcom pastiches, deep explorations of the persistence of grief, and gleeful pokes in the eye to all the fans and their theories (to the point where it almost feels like the writers deliberately made...adjustments...to torpedo the theories with extreme prejudice, as impossible as it would've been given the known production timelines and logistical difficulties posed in the world of Covid.)
But for Black Widow, director Cate Shortland and a spot-on cast - particularly the supporting cast, many of whom do a great job acting circles around ScarJo and making promising cases for their own movies and TV shows further down the line - serve up a damn fine thriller in the vein of Mission: Impossible - a little more grounded than most Marvel productions, but still, never losing sight of where to spend all the money Disney racked up in the last few years.
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| Where one family leaves, another awaits. |
Seriously, though, that supporting cast. Without Florence Pugh (whose rising star most have seen in Midsommar, though I gave that one a pass because I got spoiled for it and apparently Ari Aster is too disturbed a director and screenwriter even for me, who survived every episode of Hannibal) as Yelena, Rachel Weisz as Melina (at times sounding virtually indistinguishable from her signature role as Evie in The Mummy, though still putting on a distinct performance as a mom, spy, and scientist all at once), and especially David Harbour hamming it up magnificently as Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov, coming off like if Arnold Schwarzenegger had played that Russian oligarch in 2012 - absolutely enjoying all the scenery he chews up. Petition to cast Harbour as North in a live-action reboot of Rise of the Guardians, anyone?
I've seen a few people go around asking, why the hell does Nat need another story? In my case, I'm still smarting from her death in Endgame, and I'm not the only one - why the hell does she get to die while actively trying to atone for the red in her ledger while Hawkeye gets to live to get more blood on his hands without an ounce of regret? (To say nothing of the fact that her death, as well as Gamora's in Infinity War, follow a rather misogynistic pattern - intentional or otherwise - on the part of the Russo Brothers in particular, though at least there's a noticeable difference in that it's nowhere near as easy for either Nat or Clint to give up their lives for the Soul Stone, while Thanos, as sad as he is over it, barely hesitates in comparison.)
To those fans, I'm sure this movie is exactly the answer we all needed. Granted, as far as story goes, it's a story that manages to borrow pretty liberally from several previous Marvel titles (most notably, The Winter Soldier and Ant-Man and the Wasp), as well as Mission: Impossible and numerous international spy-thrillers of varying budgets that all use Russia as the most obvious "villain nation" du jour (not that Russia isn't still a "villain nation" in the grand scheme of things, but still.) But it also manages to be pretty fresh in that it comes much more from a woman's perspective, with Nat and Yelena as the protagonist and deuteragonist, and Cate Shortland in the director's chair (not the first woman director in the MCU, but the first to get her own solo cinematic directing gig).
This particularly reflects in the movie's villains, and especially Ray Winstone (also, like Rachel Weisz, occasionally failing to hide his natural voice so you can't unhear Mac from Crystal Skull) as the Big Bad, General Dreykov. Now, while the villains are something of a weak link at first - again, there's really only so much you can do with Russian villains when they're a dime a dozen in international thrillers, with Dreykov also showing up in his early scene in the movie's 1995 prologue in a hideous tracksuit that wouldn't be out of place on an episode of The Sopranos - and I'm pretty sure a lot of fans of Taskmaster in particular aren't taking kindly to how radically this movie reinvents that character - when we get to see Dreykov lording it over Nat, portly and piggish and controlling, it's hard not to read that whole thing as an allegory for #MeToo in general and Harvey Weinstein in particular. Though I do remember when the first trailer dropped in 2019 and some fans took offense to the "you got fat" joke at Alexei's expense (the joke is still in the final cut but timed slightly differently; Melina's immediate response instead is to clap sarcastically as he sits at the table, while Nat and Yelena down more shots of vodka), it's pretty clear that Dreykov is a cold, heartless asshole first and a fat dude second, and that his characterization as a villain is much more about his willful subjugation of women than anything else.
As with all other Marvel movies, of course, expect nothing more than the highest grades of action and visual effects, and especially some ludicrously precise stuntwork - Nat and Yelena are particularly good at threading these needles with their bodies, and with various improvised weapons too; a real highlight is the car chase in Budapest (sorry, "Buda-pesht," Nat has the pronunciation right) where Yelena props the door open so it gets sliced off, then slides backwards to cut down a pursuer on a motorbike. ("You're welcome.") But for sure one of the movie's greatest scenes is its prologue, where we establish Nat, Yelena, Melina, and Alexei as a family living in America (and they all have American accents, though those quickly vanish when they eventually fly back to Cuba after Alexei completes his mission to steal some vital intel from a top secret SHIELD installation), and the mood quickly whiplashes into the sort of tension and tears I haven't seen in any superhero prologue since The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (well, maybe Guardians Vol. 1, but that prologue is much more about the tears than anything else.) No kidding, the movie's opening will make you cry and that's a promise (though those tears will probably fade out in the face of the distractingly trailer-like extra-moody cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in the opening credits.) And the end credits scene is the stuff of legend, promising one of the most intense and personal twists of MCU Phase Four to date.
To Black Widow and the MCU's long-delayed cinematic return, I give a grade of A, and eagerly awiat what comes next - most notably the final episode of Loki, as well as the three movies still on the calendar for 2021 alone, giving Marvel a new record of content in a single year.
Till next time, Pinecones...
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| #FeedTheRightWolf |
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| Remember: Denis Leary is always watching. Always. |
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