Well folks, Black Widow is finally here, the movie to initiate Phase 4. A movie that I admit I was pretty excited about, mainly because the MCU hasn’t released a new movie in 2 years. The last movie they made was Spider-Man Far From Home, which you may remember led to Spider-Man being temporarily pulled from the MCU when Disney got a little greedy over revenue splitting with Sony. So no surprise I was looking forward to seeing a Marvel film after all this time, however I kind of recoiled when right before the movie started a montage played to remind me that there are 8 to 10 new Marvel movies due to bombard my cinema in the next 2 years. Jeez, I know COVID messed up your money plans, but slow down, I’m not keen for a second bout of Marvel movie fatigue.
Black Widow is the movie that fans have being wanting since they teased a bit of her origin story in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Well the movie we got isn’t an origin story, but actually a mini adventure that Black Widow had in between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers Infinity War. We do learn a bit about the mysterious organisation that raised her into the badass ninja chick she is today, but if you want more than just surface level information on that, then you’re out of luck. In that regard it was disappointing because I was waiting for them to explore a bit further on certain parts of her backstory but instead they march on forward with the plot of stopping evil man from doing evil stuff. Not that you’re really concerned about this world endangering plot because this is a midquel after all.
Ignoring the plot, Black Widow is about as fun as any other Marvel movie. Scarlet Johansson proves to be a good lead, but I believe that’s mainly thanks to the strong chemistry she has with the supporting cast as they deliver some solid stuff together. The highlight of this film is when Black Widow reunites with her estranged family, like her sister played by Florence Pugh, who’s deadpan sarcasm was very delightful to watch. Eventually Rachel Weisz as Mummy Widow and David Harbour as wannabe Russian Captain America join the movie, both of whom made fun additions to the already strong sister duo. The relationship Black Widow has with this family did remind me of Fast and the Furious 9 (mainly due to the recent memes) but it fits well in this movie and isn’t a total joke. The action is enjoyable as it’s good flip off your brain excitement especially with how ridiculous it becomes by the end. The first fight is just a simple one on one between Black Widow and this robot person who can perfectly predict her every move, then the final battle takes place on a James Bond sky fortress, which includes these two falling from that at some point. The movie thinks it’s clever because they foreshadowed this earlier when Black Widow was watching Moonraker on her laptop, but I say they just pushed my suspension of disbelieve out of that fortress.
Speaking of the robot soldier for someone who’s prominently shown in the trailers, that’s not in the case in the actual movie. This character shows up at the start as pretty intimating T-1000 like villain, until the movie gets too wrapped in it’s own plot and forgets about it. I liked Ray Winstone as the main villain even though his character is basically William Stryker from the X-Men movies. There are some big twists and reveals in this, that didn’t really get a reaction out of me mainly because every Marvel movie does this and I’m just about over it. With all that out of the way, Black Widow is another enjoyable Marvel movie. It’s not as good as the recent Avengers movies, but better than Captain Marvel. I could easily watch this again, but not as much as something like F9, which revels in absurdity and doesn’t ask me to care about what’s happening.
That’s just my preference, enjoy the first Marvel movie for the year while it’s here before you need to return to the cinemas in two months time. I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.
