The long-awaited Natasha Romanoff standalone film is finally in theaters.
Marvel's 'Black Widow' Has Heart and Not Much Head—But That’s What Makes It So Fun
Heading into Black Widow, the latest Marvel superhero flick, I wasn’t sure what I hoped for—because I wasn’t entirely convinced it was necessary. The origin stories of the original Avengers lineup were covered over a decade ago, and it’s not like I needed to know how Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) story would end. (Spoiler: She dies halfway through Endgame and is given a send-off that neither felt complete nor made me want more.) In the other Avengers movies, I’d heard enough—too much, in fact—about all the “red” in Nat’s “ledger.” She’d already confessed to being forcibly sterilized, and she’d gotten half a love story. What else was there to explore?
Sure, the character of a brainwashed assassin gone good is intriguing enough to build a movie around, hypothetically. And her position as the first female member of the team pointed to the idea that this movie should exist. But to be honest, after the totally (I think) mediocre Captain Marvel, I’m no longer sold on female heroes for female heroes’ sake. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that Black Widow is mostly unconcerned with its place in the Marvel canon; in fact, it doesn’t even try to add too many twisty new dimensions to its titular character. It’s a more straightforward spy-action flick in the vein of *Mission: Impossible—*and it’s just as fun, too.
Like the currently-airing Loki, another spin-off about a canonically dead character, Black Widow finds a pocket of time when its protagonist was M.I.A.: Natasha’s months into hiding following the attack at the U.N. in Civil War. A wanted fugitive, the former killer is just trying to stay out of everyone’s crosshairs when she finds herself in possession of a chemical agent that can de-brainwash Red Sparrow girls like herself. It sounds more complicated than it is: The juice is the MacGuffin, so Nat’s got a team to round up. And not just any team: her family. We meet dad Alexei (David Harbour), mom Melina (Rachel Weisz), and sister Yelena (Florence Pugh) in an extended cold open reminiscent of *The Americans—*establishing that for one brief shining moment, young blue-haired Natasha had an adoptive spy family in suburban America.
Though their faux-familial unit has since fallen apart, Natasha needs them to accomplish her goals, leading to a jail-break sequence I suspect would be thrilling in a theater and a dinner scene that’s as close as Marvel’s going to come to Arthur Miller. Oh, Alexei does long for his glory days as the Soviet version of Captain America, but not as much as he longs for Melina. In a franchise notorious for being weirdly sex-averse, it’s almost relieving to know adults in this universe are not only familiar with the concept, but into it.
Johansson, Weisz, and Harbour are all having fun without relying on smirks or sarcasm, and Pugh is an absolute gem. All four seem relaxed and at ease in their characters. No one’s trying too hard to be “iconic” or GIF-able. The sisterly chemistry between Johansson and Pugh is delightful, but it’s in the foursome moments that the script really pops. Jokes that might seem obvious—mom says wear a seatbelt!—are just a little more delightful delivered with complete seriousness. Natasha has referred to the Avengers as her “family,” but I don’t think I’d want to do Christmas with all that testosterone and angst in one place. The Romanoff-Belova-Shostakov-Vostokoffs, though, I’d hang with.
There’s a hefty dose of Cold War oversimplification at work in the political motives of generic villain Dreykov (Ray Winstone). America equals freedom, Iron curtain equals control. But unlike the hemming and hawing and endless debates that plague the other Marvel movies, here it’s just a pretense for the fights. And the fights are good!
Harder and thornier, too, is what the movie is saying (if anything) about gender. An early montage of young girls being processed into assassins reminded me of the factories that churn out pop stars, gymnasts and, well, actresses. Yelena and Natasha make coarse jokes about their mutual inability to bear children, though the fact they are talking to their adoptive parents does give this moment a bit of perspective: There are other ways to make a family. (Still, it's hard not to think about Britney Spears telling a judge she can't have her IUD taken out without permission from her conservators. It isn’t only in fiction that a woman’s choices are taken away so that she can “perform” better.)
Amidst these ambitious themes are the requisite eye-roll moments you’ll find in any tentpole. Natasha comes of age via a montage set to a mopey cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teenage Spirit,” a choice only slightly less thuddingly obvious than Yelena’s favorite song being “American Pie." Two characters switch places for reasons I’m not sure track with their “plan”—and I have to point out for an international fugitive on the run, Nat makes absolutely no effort to disguise her appearance. Literally, while Yelena is badgering her for posing during her Avenger adventures (otherwise a great scene), Nat stands there, looking like herself in front of a cashier who, I dunno, could probably call Interpol and collect a reward if he wanted to? And a final little quibble: If hypothetically you thought you killed two people in one fell swoop and found out years later one secretly survived the attack, wouldn’t your very next move be to ask if the other also secretly survived? A reasonable person might start to wonder. I’m just saying.
So, why did Marvel make Black Widow, and why should you see it? One scene sums it up: Early in the movie, Natasha makes herself a simple meal and watches a James Bond movie—not to pick it apart for Easter eggs or analyze its themes, but just for fun. That's Black Widow in a nutshell. It's entertaining, and that's good enough for me.
Black Widow is now in theaters.
Lizzie Logan is a writer and comedian. Follow her on Twitter @lizzzzzielogan.
This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Condé Nast
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