Black Widow Review!

Alright! Black Widow came out this weekend, and, as usual, I have some thoughts about it. But to know what we're working with, here's a quick summary that I wrote at 8:13 AM on July 9th, 2021. I haven't seen the movie yet. These are the reservations I'm walking in with: 

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Back when it was announced, combined with Natasha's death in Endgame, Black Widow was always going to serve as a fairly inconsequential palate cleanser after Endgame, with everyone's big criticism, the one you'll hear in literally every review, is that it should have come out in 2016. 

I'm expecting typical court-ordered MCU content, a generic gray action movie to tide us over until we get to the good stuff like Doctor Strange and Eternals. Now that it's the first MCU movie in about two years, it's even more so that. 

Another thing working against it is the Disney+ shows. WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki, while not perfect, have been doing the following things:

• Having awesome musical scores
• Being really diverse in their style and subjects (WandaVision appropriating all of television and Falcon and the Winter Soldier touching on the backlash of a black Captain America)
• Being, all things considered, fairly light on comedy. I can't recall a single serious moment being ruined by a lame joke.
• Having excellent cinematography (Especially Loki)

I'm expecting Black Widow to completely fail on all of those aspects. I'm expecting a grey, rather standard actioneer that everyone sees but no one really loves, with a bland musical theme and every emotional beat being drowned out by a lame throwaway gag or quip.

Under normal times, it would have done stupidly well, far better than the truly "good" movies of the summer like In the Heights. And if it were any other studio, it likely wouldn't have done very well, but slap the Marvel logo on it and you're already at $500 million. Black Widow doing so stupidly well would be another example where even the die-hard Marvel fans have to admit that they'll watch anything with superheroes, which is why rather unremarkable movies like Captain Marvel, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Aquaman make $1 billion, a medal once reserved for movies like Return of the King and Jurassic Park. 

Another thing I'm afraid of is that it, like the Disney+ shows, will only serve to set up some future Phase 4 project. I mean, we have WandaVision/Doctor Strange in the Multiverse in Madness, Falcon and the Winter Soldier/Captain America 4, and Ms. Marvel/The Marvels. I'm worried Black Widow will only exist to set up Yelena Belova as the next Black Widow. 

Okay, that was a lot to write about my preconceived reservations, but I'm really, really expecting them all to be true and applicable. 

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>Insert me actually watching the movie<

Okay! And now I've actually seen the movie! And, well, my predictions were overly pessimistic (But ultimately correct). It's a rather unspecial gray blur that I'll forget in two days. It's another MCU movie to join the ranks of "No rewatch required," which makes it feel more like a Phase 2 or Phase 3 movie, which, ironically, is when it should've come out.

Because that's honestly the biggest problem with the movie - it came out 5 years too late. Shoot, just switching it with Captain Marvel would've been much, much better. Because Natasha has already died, there's really no reason for this movie to exist. There are no stakes. It does, ultimately, just serve as a Yelena Belova origin story. 

Yelena Belova was the best part of the movie, by far. Actually, the supporting cast, including David Harbour's Red Guardian and Rachel Weisz's Mother Widow or whoever she was, were all excellent. In fact, most of them were a lot more interesting than Natasha herself. It's always a bad sign when the protagonist is the least interesting character in their own movie (Like Solo).

And, while those may be excellent compliments, it makes it even more infuriating that the movie didn't come out five or two years ago. I would have loved to see Yelena and Red Guardian in the Endgame final battle. You could've had banter between Red Guardian and Captain America about their legendary fight! It would've been awesome! 

Alas, we have what we have. Which is apparently Yelena showing up in Hawkeye. We don't need a Black Widow sequel... please don't give us one... this one was rather standard and lackluster. 

Okay, basically, this movie is a completely average movie. It's not an action thriller though, because all of the set pieces are rather lame. It's also not a dark and twisted Batman-type story, even though it could have been (The first 12 minutes or so were absolutely excellent and better than the rest of the movie in that regard). The music is lame and the villains are even more so. 

And, before I get to the villains, and I will get to the villains, I'd like to hit the action pieces again. They are honestly some of the lamest action set pieces in a Marvel movie yet. Nothing trippy, nothing big, nothing that'll have you on the edge of your seat. On one hand, it's unremarkable. On the other hand, it was a fairly pleasant way to kill two hours. 

On the other other hand, the CGI was pretty good. Nothing really jumped out as fake except for one shot of Yelena at the tail end of the movie on top of a helicopter. That looked bad. Everything else looked excellent. And the production design and cinematography! It looked like a bonafide drama movie! If it weren't for the name drops of Captain America and Clint Barton, you'd barely know this was an MCU movie. It's not even funny! There's, like, two laughs! So it definitely broke the MCU mold, even if the ultimate results weren't that good. 

He was trying to be funny, but he wasn't. 

But now I want to get to the absolute worst part of the movie - Taskmaster. Taskmaster is one of the lamest villain I've ever seen. And "Taskmaster" and "lame" shouldn't be in the same sentence! This movie could have had the saving grace of awesome fight scenes where Taskmaster was an unstoppable monster! He could've been like the Winter Soldier! But no, he's a she who is some lame deformed drone lady.

It doesn't even feel right to call them Taskmaster. The suit looks pretty excellent and the mask is cool, but the character is so nerfed. It's by far the most disappointing aspect of the movie. Like, when I saw the trailers, I kept thinking to myself "I don't really care for it, but as long as Taskmaster is cool the movie will be alright." 

Taskmaster wasn't cool. She gets 0 cool set pieces. Eww, it even feels wrong to call Taskmaster "She!" It's... ahh...just the worst. It's by far the worst twist on a villain the MCU's ever done by a long shot. If you thought Mandarin in Iron Man 3 was lame, well... might want to skip out on Black Widow... 

That might be good advice for everyone, really. I can't in good conscience recommend it, nor can I say it was a bad movie. It's an average movie, with the single best part being Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova. Glad that the movie's passed so we can move on to Shang-Chi and Eternals. 

I recommend, if you are interested in seeing it, that you do it as cheaply as possible. If that's a $15 movie ticket, do that. If that's a $30 Disney+ gimmick for your family, do that. Otherwise, I'd actually recommend skipping this one... you're not missing anything. Go see In the Heights instead. 

Overall, I give Black Widow a 4/10. "Plus 10 points for Florence Pugh, and minus about 1000 for Taskmaster. While not really bland, Black Widow isn't anything special." 

Black Widow: The thing that occupied my time between episodes of Loki