The new hairstyle/color too.
That didn’t even flow from the story. She changed it in the two months or whatever it was. For all anyone cares she could have changed it after the end of BW and no one would worry.
I think the film might have worked better had it taken place after Infinity War, and/or had ended with Romanov experiencing some deep, personal loss. As it is, the film explains the things that didn’t need explaining, but they skip an emotional journey which could have been filled in some gaps nicely.
There was a lot of potential story that could have occurred in the five year interregnum in Endgame. The problem for the studio is that it wasn’t the potential for a typical MCU movie.
We already how that story would have ended; we saw in Endgame that Natasha had become despondent during that five year period. In Endgame, we saw her recover but a Black Widow movie set during that five year period would have depicted her sliding down into that despondency and then the movie would have ended with her there. That’s not an MCU story.
That’s why I prefer my idea of them having made a movie about when she was recruited by SHIELD. It’s part of her back story and we know how later events would occur. But that story has the potential for some action and the plot would have ended on a high note.
(non comic reader here)
That I would have liked to see. Did she defect, or get recruited? Instead we learn about the origin of the vest, a question I didn’t care about. Why can’t they ever make the movie we want? 
PS having mind controlled assassin/spies probably isn’t a good plan, I would think. I’d expect it takes away the ability to adapt to changing situations. There’s probably no independent initiative, especially in Widows who are ambivilant about the whole thing (Like Nat).
I watched the movie with no emotional baggage whatsoever and I enjoyed it. I don’t know the comics and I have only fleeting familiarity with the other movies, save Ragnarok, which I quite enjoyed. It was a story heavy on the female point of view, which as refreshing, and the “family” dynamic was great between Red Guardian, Melena, Yelena and Natasha. Not a real family, maybe. But close enough. Great chemistry between ScarJo and FloPu. Not sure what the haters are on about.
Yeah, it was really Yelena’s origin story masquerading as a Natasha movie.
That’s pretty much it. The new Black Widow is Yelena.
Post the first Avengers I had really wanted to see a Black Widow/Hawkeye/SHIELD vs The Hulk Movie.
Meanwhile, in court:
It would be interesting to know how much ScarJo and Disney settled for. She was apparently seeking $50 million in compensation.
Watched it on Disney Plus (where it’s finally free-to-subscribers rather than premium), and I was pretty underwhelmed. I’d put this in the bottom 5 or so MCU movies, I think.
What I did like:
-The themes of family, and the interactions between particularly the “sisters”
-The backstory (mostly) and the effect it clearly had on the adults
-David Harbour was great fun (although it’s a bit unclear what his character actually contributed other than comic relief)
-Some of the more innovative (for the MCU at least) chase/action scenes
-As is almost always the case with MCU movies, the acting and production values were top notch (I didn’t for a second buy any of the fighting-while-falling… but it wasn’t because it looked cheap and green screened)
My overall complaint is that it felt very much like they just didn’t care whether story points made sense… they had points they wanted to make and story beats they wanted to get to, so they just got of made the story go there, whether or not it made any sense. For instance, how exactly did Nat and Yelena end up in the same safehouse in Budapest? About four different things had to happen none of which made any sense at all, as far as I can tell. And then why did they nearly kill each other, while clearly recognizing each other? And then how did the baddies find them there, conveniently after they were done fighting? And if the baddies COULD find them there, why did they spend so much time dicking around? Etc.
And as the film was very clearly aware, why waste three year’s of your only supersoldier’s life on a painstaking and tedious undercover op? What in the skill set we later Alexei’s character possess see would possibly suggest that he would be the right person for that mission. Lampshading it and saying “uh huh, yeah, we’re aware it makes no sense” doesn’t make it make sense. Obviously the script wanted to have its cake and eat it too. It’s like they had two things they thought would be cool:
(a) David Harbour playing an out-of-shape cold-war-relic once-true-believing supersoldier will be great fun (and it was!)
(b) Three years of fake US family as a backstory will lead to interesting family dynamics (and it did!)
And they realized those two things didn’t really make sense together. So, the solution they came up with was… let’s just admit it doesn’t make sense and hope the audience goes for it? I mean, that’s just lazy.
Similarly, the Red Room as a whole makes less and less sense the more you think about it. Why only kidnap and brainwash little girls, not little boys? Sure, there are contexts in which you want your brainwashed super-spy/super-soldier to be female, for a variety of infiltration/seduction reasons. But there are also contexts in which you want them to be male. I don’t think there’s an in-universe reason, other than that it leads to the desired story beats and messages. (And to be clear, I’m not some redpill asshole who is bitching ideas of representation, etc. Obviously they were trying to tell a story that resonated with genuinely important issues of the struggles that women face to have agency and control of their own bodies, etc. I just want those story beats to organically flow from the story and the situations.)
(It also felt a bit silly for Nat to learn the massive secret of the existence of this horrific criminal conspiracy, and be like “well, Tony and I aren’t really speaking right now so… I guess I’ll just keep the secret rather than telling, oh, I don’t know, anyone”. It’s not like “other team” from Civil War wouldn’t act on this information, or refuse to believe her. Granted, this is an issue that almost all the standalone MCU films run into, how to justify NOT calling in the cavalry… but again, it was handled clumsily.)
Finally, the big confrontation between her and general badguy was just SUPER anticlimactic and nonsensical. (a) the pheromone business made no sense at all (so his entire safeguard plan won’t work if… he put on deodorant? or the widow has a bad head cold?) (b) and the way she worked around it ALSO made no sense (ffs, just “sever the nerve” ahead of time! or shove some cotton balls up your nose, but, like, high tech cotton balls!) (C) and Nat, of all people, would NEVER waste time monologuing so that he has time for his army of trained assassins, who she KNOWS about, to arrive.
It’s always dicey criticizing superhero movies for lack of plausibility, and getting comic-book-guy-style irritated at misuses of science. But the better MCU movies are written in a way that the nonsense-y macguffins and technobabbles don’t jump out at me and detract from the fun… but for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get into that headpace this time.
There is a whole Marvel comics storyline that kinda explains this…
Niko Constantin was the only male trainee of the Red Room’s male equivalent of the Black Widow Ops program dubbed “Wolf Spider”. He proved an effective killer, but impossible to control, leading the program to be declared a failure. Years later, he was found imprisoned in a Russian gulag, leading a gang of convicts dubbed the Wolf Spiders, and holding a grudge against Bucky Barnes, one of the Wolf Spider trainers.
I think the reason it is girls and not boys is there is a sex slavery undertone that they never quite had the courage to state openly.
One of my biggest plot quibbles was Rachel Weisz’ sudden turn toward good when there was no reason given why she should. The idea of her just going along to wipe out the Red Room and her nefarious deeds so as to get away seemed more plausible (and if Nat kills Draykov, so much the better). Why not have her just kill him, since she could get closer without suspicion. And Taskmaster was just wasted.
She had the same conditioning that stopped Natasha from killing him. And I don’t think she was prepared to break her own nose.
Ah, I wasn’t sure if the mind-control chemicals and pheromones were a new development that her generation hadn’t experienced since they didn’t mention it or have to hit her with the antidote. It’s also possible that Nat being the one to confront him was part of the plan since he wouldn’t have felt threatened by her and Weitz’s character knew more about the whole Red Room flying base.
Nat undoubtedly had better chances. We’ve never seen her fail an interrogation.
Oh, 100% that’s the our-world justification for it. I just wish there had been an in-world justification as well.
I think there’s not just a sex slavery undertone, but that’s it’s strongly implied that Generic Evil Mastermind Guy enjoys controlling women, and specifically women, like puppets. He uses Red Guardian, a man, and then buries him in a Siberian gulag and forgets about him; the women, though, he keeps under his thumb. He seems very possessive of the products of the Red Room - they’re “his” girls. I mean, the pheremone thing is pretty ridiculous, but it makes at least some sense as part of his psychopathology.
Plus the sexist assumption, which has some grounding in reality, that women would be far more useful for infliltration and assassination. Their targets would be overwhelmingly straight men (not really true nowadays, or even back in the '80s, but not entirely baseless), and therefore women would far more useful for seduction. Women would also likely be viewed as less threatening, which would make it easier for them as assassins. And GEMG probably thinks of women as being easier to control.
I personally thought Black Widow had several flaws in the premise and the plot, but I personally didn’t think the all-female Red Room was one of them.