I’m getting to the age where “recent” can refer to things that happened up to twenty years ago, so it might have been the same series.
Looking it up, the series I was remembering “from a decade or so ago” was a mini-series from 2002, and a supporting role in a short-lived ongoing series from the same creative team, Agent X, from 2002-2003. So…
Saw it with the kids (9 & 12) on the weekend.
It’s good! I thought it did a lot of things very well. But unlike other Marvel movies, both kids found it hard going and I slightly regret taking the 9 year old.
At the beginning, the violence was a lot more real than pretty much any Marvel movie we’ve seen. I’m thinking primarily of the “Marvel does Bourne” sequence in Morocco where Yelena stabs the defecting widow - and then twists the knife. It was brutal at a human level in a way that was a surprise for a Marvel movie. (Worse, for example, than Loki’s backstab of Coulson in Avengers.)
But the seeds had been shown in the extended montage sequence of the girl’s upbringing post their escape from the US. A series of images of young girls being torn from their families, then brutalised and traumatised. It set a really strong theme about male control of women - which is a great theme for a Black Widow movie. Obviously it was literalised in comic-book style as actual mind-control but that montage was close enough to shit that happens in reality to really ground those comic book elements and give them heft.
Winstone’s Dreykov worked really well - an abuser and manipulator who takes forces women to do the hard/dirty work while reaping the benefits. Acts the bully and braggart when he thinks he’s in power; runs away as soon as he’s lost his control. And of course he’s not above using his daughter. I was also interested in how useless Alexei/Red Guardian turned out to be. He’s a self-obsessed braggart who can’t build a relationship with his girls, and who actually doesn’t achieve that much. Natasha and Yelena break him out of prison so he can tell them where the Red Room is - but he doesn’t know. It’s Melina who has actual useful information. Alexei’s sole contribution is to occupy Taskmaster in a one-sided fight until Melina turns up and saves him. But generally, he’s a slob, and an adequate at best dad. I liked this - Black Widow is and should be a female-led movie and keeping Alexei to little more than comic relief lets us focus on the central relationship between the sisters, which was excellent. And Florence Pugh was brilliant in moving between snarky comedy, bitterness, rage, and above all the pain and hurt of her character. In that vein I would have liked to see more of Melina ,whose change of heart came a little too quickly.
The bit I didn’t like (although the kids were happier with) was the Marvellosity of the end where we’ve moved from human level vulnerability to stabbings to skydiving through exploding buildings. I personally don’t need the spectacular sequences - I think a more grounded (literally and metaphorically) final confrontation would have worked better. But, it’s a Marvel film and they’re going to do Marvel things. The writer/director/cast deserve a lot of credit for making the film so much about relationships, overcoming trauma and confronting abusers within the context of 'splodey bang bang Marvellousness.
Saw it and agree that the shift between ‘Bourne fight’ and ‘Explosions hurt only bad guys, sometimes’ was unfortunate. If you put in the joke “I bet the Space God doesn’t need Ibuprofen after a fight” into your movie you should think twice about the number of exploding space cities your movie needs…
I can’t really get that upset about a marvel movie having comic book levels of unrealism. It’s pretty much in the name, and if it bothers you why are you watching it at all.
I saw it last night and might see it again. I really liked it. I thought the mix of the drama of the found family drama with the over the top action worked. I thought the slow reveal of the true plan was pretty well done. I liked the scene at the beginning where the soldiers are dragging Yelena away and instead of crying 8 year old Natasha kicks a gun out of a soldier’s hands and threatens to kill everyone.
Also the throwbacks to Avengers 2012. Drakov’s daughter and “Thank you for your cooperation.”
Oh and I also liked that in a brief scene there’s a shot of Moonraker playing in the background, foreshadowing the fight on the hovering base and Drakov’s monologing Bond villain.
The credits scene was very interesting to me. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character tasks Belova with seeking revenge on the person “responsible” for Natasha’s death: Clint Barton. Of course Natasha killed herself and Barton tried to prevent that by trying to save her and kill himself, but Belova doesn’t know that. The MCU is about to take a radical turn and I don’t see how the producers fit this in unless it is to give Hawkeye his own movie which would be a continuation of Black Widow. Hawkeye is the only Avengers character not to get individual treatment so far. Is this credits scene a herald for a Hawkeye movie?
There’s a Hawkeye TV series coming out later this year.
I’m aware of the Hawkeye series but don’t have cable or subscribe to any streaming service, and don’t intend to. So, they intend to fold that into the Hawkeye series? Damn. I was hoping for Hawkeye cinematic treatment. I would love to see him get his own movie, as every other Avenger got, not just a mini-series.
I was surprised they’d refer directly to a story that’s only going to be on TV. But that just emphasises the faith they have that their TV series all tie in together and will be just as important to the ongoing storylines. And of course, Loki also has direct implications for Phase 4 of the MCU.
@Gretzky, though I admire your stance to stay away from the wormhole of expense that streaming services entail, Disney+ is an especially good one, in my opinion. Hawkeye’s series has not announced release dates yet, but I would expect it in Oct/Nov if you want to get your free month then.
I thought they might be building toward a government controlled type team made up of second string replacements for dead Avengers (Yelena for Black Widow, John Walker for Cap, Roady for Iron Man, etc.)
Yes, the theory is they’ll be under the command of General “Thunderbolt” Ross (and recruited by La Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine), and therefore called The Thunderbolts. Rhodey (War Machine) won’t be part of it, though. He’s getting his own series, Armor Wars.
I mini series is bigger and longer than a movie. One season of the Mandalorian runs ten hours while a movie is about two.
It’s pretty clear now that Marvel considers the Disney+ shows to be as much a part of the MCU narrative as the movies are. All three of the shows so far have had major plot developments for the overall MCU story. It will be interesting to see whether there’s a big enough portion of the movie audience who don’t subscribe to Disney+, such that it ends up being an issue with them seeing the new movies without the knowledge from the shows.
I completely sympathize with people not wanting the expense of subscribing to the streaming services. I have to say though that Disney+ really is a good deal. Subscribing for one month to watch Wanda, Falcon, and Loki would be fantastic value. Comparing it to the money I spent to take my kids to see Black Widow in the theatre makes it look even better.
I don’t actually think it would be that hard to pare down the Disney+ shows into two hour movies that could be released theatrically. Each episode really only has one or two essential plot turns.
Well that gets a solid, “that was okay I guess” from me. I was hoping for more of a spy thriller than we got and every character in the MCU being a quip machine has gotten boring. Speaking of boring, the action scenes were so cartoonish and over the top that they too were not exciting at all.
I think this story would have been better served by being told after Civil War. By it being a prequel and knowing BW was going to get out of this just fine there were very little stakes.
Also, I get that Disney has a Brand to protect but when you decide to tell a story that clearly should evince sex trafficking/exploitation but don’t it just seems cowardly.
Also they turned Black Widow from something special to just one of literally thousands. Buffy the Vampire Slayer made a similar move and in both cases it was a mistake.
I did like Red Guardian and Rachel Weisz. I liked the story of a fake family becoming a real one and I liked the switcheroo twist (although feeling like they had to then explain it with a flashback was kind of silly).
I wasn’t a fan. I’m not a big Black Widow fan in the first place (she and Hawkeye just aren’t believable to me as fighting alongside Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, and Cap - I’m glad they’ve added some geniunely powerful female heroes like Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch) and the whole spy-movie thing didn’t really do it for me. I think I might have nodded off for a minute or two during one of the slower sections, and big bombastic fight scenes bore me. Plus, it annoyed me that BW got upstaged by her second banana more than once. Yelena was much more interesting to me than BW.
So yeah, I probably won’t be seeing this one again.
There was potential with the family storyline, and they should have worked on that. Everything else was at best average.
Also, while I surprised that Task Master ended up being the daughter, I knew they would be a woman. In movies whenever someone appears in a helmet and you didn’t see them put it on and they don’t talk they are always a woman as a “surprise”.
There’s been rumors it was a woman from the very first trailer simply by how small they looked.