There is a character in Black Widow nicknamed Red Guardian. Played with familiar enthusiasm by David Harbour, he is a proud Soviet super-soldier who believes in his country like Captain America believes in his. At one point, Red Guardian is a prisoner at a modern-day Gulag, covered in prison tattoos. You can read the letters “K A R L M A R X” on his knuckles. These letters are written in the Latin alphabet, not the Cyrillic alphabet, which tells you all you need to know. Black Widow wants to give Marvel Cinematic Universe fans the reward of understanding a reference without asking them to do the work. This is diluted fandom, a spectacle of strained narrative coherence that ignores pesky things like suspense and character.
If you have seen Avengers: Endgame, you might remember that Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, (Scarlett Johansson) does not survive. This film is a prequel, one with even more diminished stakes since Natasha’s survival is assured. We learn a little about her background: in a prologue that borrows liberally from the television drama The Americans, Natasha and her sister Yelena (Florence Pugh) are living undercover in the United States with their parents Alexei (Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz). They abandon Ohio for Cuba and Russia in dramatic fashion, then Natasha and Yelena’s lives take a terrible turn. They become assassins for Dreykov (Ray Winstone), a vulgar criminal kingpin who uses advanced mind control for his army of advanced female soldiers. Once adult Natasha realizes that Dreykov is still alive, despite her assassination attempt, she enlists Yelena to finally take him down.
Like many films in the MCU, there are flashes of brilliance. The Ohio prologue suggests danger because Natasha and Yelena do not grasp the situation that faces them. There is a car chase midway through the film that is brutally effective because Natasha and Yelena are unmatched by the aggressor’s power. All these moments are hollow, however, because the screenwriters and director Cate Shortland barely invest in the vulnerability of their characters, both physically and emotionally. There is a jarring throwaway scene where Yelena mentions that, as a part of her assassin regime, she and all the other assassins underwent a hysterectomy. This scene is played for macabre laughs, and the film makes little attempt to reckon with the loss of her and Natasha’s bodily autonomy. That kind of interrogation would be too icky, too challenging for a Marvel movie, a franchise that only operates on the facsimile of depth.
Shortland is best known for provocative European dramas. Her best is Lore, a World War 2 film about the daughter of Nazis who must contend with the immediate aftermath of Allied victory. There are superficial parallels between that film and Black Widow, so it is easy to see why MCU producer Kevin Feige thought Shortland would be a good fit for the material. The anxiety of programmed women – and indifferent institutions controlling them – is a central theme. That theme falls short because, well, there are no real stakes here. Natasha, Yelena, and the others have few discernable human qualities because the MCU would rather indulge meta-references. There is a protracted, borderline agonizing family reunion that goes through the motions of regret, resentment, and drama. The actors do their best to save the material, except they cannot get over how no relationship in this film is remotely believable. If the sibling love between Natasha and Yelena is meant to be the film’s heart, a perfunctory fight scene between them clogs it.
It is unclear when it happened, but the action in the MCU has become interminably mediocre. This is because Feige prefers to have the same second unit direct all the action scenes, rather than have the director take control. Lucrecia Martel, director of films like Zama, was offered Black Widow but ultimately turned it down: “They also told me, ‘Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that’… Companies are interested in female filmmakers but they still think action scenes are for male directors.” In terms of action, the low-effort consistency that defines late-stage MCU is in full display. There is a prison escape sequence with cheap-looking avalanche effects. There are many, many fight sequences, but none of the performers are given any heft. It is unintentionally hilarious that the climax takes place on a large hovercraft, since so many MCU movies center around them (Winter Soldier and the first Avengers come immediately to mind). This second unit focuses on spectacle, not coherence, which robs the action of any peril.
The best film in the MCU, Captain America: The First Avenger, is moving because it has the sincerity to answer a simple question: What does it mean to be good? Since then, there has been little attempt to instill these characters with similar vulnerability and values. Again, it is an issue of risk: there are no stakes when it is assured that the narrative will continue ad infinitum. You might argue that is the defining characteristic of superhero comic books, that the crossovers are the point. But that dilutes the specificity of each film, and besides, comics routinely rewrite the characters when they start getting stale. Black Widow is like that, a half-hearted exploration of worldwide sexist exploitation that ultimately serves as little more than a stepping stone to exciting new characters. This is a film where a cloying, choral cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” plays over the opening credits. It is an eye-rolling choice, one that will leave viewers of a certain age wondering if the movie will maybe get better. It doesn’t.
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