The Black Widow Movie Kinda Sucked
But I still love you Nat (*Spoilers ahead)
It is 2010.
We meet Natasha for the first time in Iron Man 2. She is a young, sexy-looking…what does she do again, woman who is deceivingly a badass, but you did not get that at first glance. And until he was faceplanted on the ground, neither did Happy. Besides Pepper Potts and later on Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff is the only main character woman amongst the other five Avengers. But even then, she never really had a moment to shine as the main character since her beginning.
Here are the reasons why
Is she a mystery or just poor writing?
If you look past the brawns and the flying humans, Natasha has one of the most interesting character backgrounds that we don’t even get to see. I understand that she is an assassin and has this secret past. That makes sense to me and the mystery behind it was enchanting for a couple of movies.
But then we go into Phase 2 and later on in Phase 3 where we see this woman fight for her chosen family with all this baggage on her and we never get time to flush that out. The mystery isn’t exciting anymore when at this point we really just want to get to know the character. If you have someone be as main character as she was, then at some point you have to give us more reason to understand where she’s coming from.
It’s pretty basic screenwriting and story development. I understand she’s harbored in secrecy but even onions peel eventually after a certain period of time. We loved Nat regardless but we wish she had the attention to tell her story.
Telling Nat’s story sooner
Many fans would agree that the Black Widow movie came out 6 years too late. While we know it was to introduce some of the new characters in the mix, I feel as if it is way more important to give tribute to the characters who are there now.
The perfect placement could’ve been after Age of Ultron especially because that is where we actually got a glimpse of her time in The Red Room. That is where she finally opened up about her hysterectomy. Such pain and trauma should have been revealed then, to understand the actions and behaviors of what she does going forward. At this point, we’ve had plenty of movies to see her as this mysterious badass of a woman. It would've been a perfect time to know her as to how she came to be and why her sacrifice, in the end, was meaningful to rewrite her wrongs.
Times Up
I was watching an interview that said that the Black Widow movie would not have been possible for a number of reasons, including if it wasn’t for the Time’s Up movement.
I don’t have a lot of jurisdiction here to really go off on whether this case is true. I can see that there have been significant barriers taken down for women because of the movement since 2010. And perhaps it is the case that Cate Shortland and Scarlett Johansson wouldn’t have had much liberty or even the involvement they had here if not for the movement, but if anything I would like to blame it on the Man, and by the Man, I mean Kevin Feige. He hasn’t missed many times since his role in creating the global franchise, but having this movie come out now was one of them. You can’t tell me a good excuse as to why it wasn’t sooner.
I will say I am glad of the way she was portrayed here. As being the only woman, Nat was always sexualized and written for the male gaze, to say the least, but in this movie, you see her as a nuanced, flawed, 3-dimensional human being with an actual protective costume.
She’s Dead
Hate to be blunt but it’s true. But moreso, we’ve said our goodbye. We have moved on even though we know for plot and character it should’ve been Clint, but I digress.
Conclusion
The movie is honestly fine. The standouts were really the new people that are coming in. I think they did the best they could to have a movie for a character who is already dead, in a timeline that is already closed, into a 2 hour movie that gives her whole backstory we’ve gotten pieces of for the past 10 years, while somehow introducing her characters and letting Natasha go.
Yeah it sounds complicated, right? It didn’t have to be.
