Black Widow Movie: My Thoughts/Review

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, being under Disney and being known as the most successful Comic Book Cinematic Universe ever laid out, has made its impact on the world with its well layered world of fictional heroes by releasing high quality hit movies in satisfying numbers every year.

Due to the pandemic conditions of 2020, we the fans have been left with no movie release from the MCU in a long time, and after a solid year and a half of nothing from the MCU in the Movie sector, they finally blessed us with Black Widow which was originally scheduled to be released last year.

Was it a blessing though?. With such a long span of time without any movies from the MCU, and with the extremely appealing trailers, there was a lot of room for hype for the next big MCU movie from the fans.

I particularly was extremely hyped for this movie, being a huge MCU fan myself as well as the biggest fan of Scarlett Johansson ever, and of course the fact that Black Widow was a really relevant and pivotal part of the Infinity Saga, yet barely any light had been shed on her story and journey as a heroine and an Avenger.

So of course, my expectations were right up there and after 18+ months of waiting, I finally got to see the MCU heroine Solo movie I've been waiting for, and here's my review of it.

First of all, in terms of production values, this movie was Explosive Dynamite. The MCU being the MCU didn't fail to deliver top quality aesthetics with visual effects that feel like they were editted by God himself, great music, competent acting from all actors, impressive costume designs and most importantly the stunt choreography in fight scenes that were just beautiful and satisfying to watch. So to someone who just watched this movie with expectations of a fun, visually engaging action movie to entertain them, Black Widow would probably be a perfect fit. But there's so much more to a movie than just the visually appealing aspects.

Although the fights were extremely well done, I didn't at all appreciate the frequency of the fight scenes. Almost every couple of minutes characters engage in combat and while I do know it's an Action-Spy movie bound to be action packed, it didn't have to be too packed with fights because some just felt unnecessary and forced and this pretty much made it comparable to any fun mediocre action movie. This is the problem with Modern Day Action movies and why the genre has gotten a lot less appealing than it used to be, dangling Eye Candy in the faces of the viewers in contrast to more meaningful dialogues and it was really disappointing to see an MCU movie follow this format.

And don't even get me started on the Realism factor in the whole thing because at one point, I even forgot Natasha was a human being. The MCU has shown us Gods, Inhumans, Super Soldiers, Witches, Mutants, Aliens and even Celestials, but the hero in this movie is a HUMAN BEING, So when I see the unrealistic phenomena of Natasha surviving things that would've killed a normal human being, I'm being forced to cringe. Black Widow falls from a Sky high building colliding with several heavy metals on her way down and still lands on her feat because of course she can, Black Widow gets blown in a car that tumbles and collides severally with the ground and she steps out like it was nothing, these scenes are just few examples of the ridiculous scenes you'll encounter in this movie. It was like everytime Natasha got in a near death scenario, plot convenience and plot armor had a baby and these glaring flaws can only be ignored by someone whom like I said, turned off their brain and came just for the entertainment.

In terms of the direction and the actual plot progression, it wasn't bad, except for the few problems I had with it. 

Firstly, the movie was set right after the events of Captain America: Civil War and released after the Infinity Saga.

I'm going to quote one of my personal YouTuber friends, Tu Jays in saying that the movie wasn't needed. 

This was an action-thriller movie and pretty much all of the thrill is taken away when the stakes aren't real. We've already seen Natasha die in Endgame so we were sure that no matter how deadly the circumstances got for her, the main character wasn't going to die or suffer any permanent physical or emotional damage. Knowing that made most of the death battles in this movie while being extremely entertaining to be very anti-climactic.

In terms of characters and themes, it was good, not horrible, though I expected more. This is the only Solo movie Black Widow will ever get in the MCU, so what I expected was to see her actual character development and evolution into the Avenger we all know and love. I expected to see more of her past with at least glances of her stories that have only been told and not shown up to this point. A Former Assassin turned  Shield Agent turned Avenger, they could've at least given us an insight on her earlier days on the battlefield but instead we only got a brief flashback of her and her family at a young age. 

It's not just her though, while Florence Pugh did a great job in making her character Yelena as captivating as she could, it still wasn't as captivating as aimed to be because you don't just make a character compelling by giving random Emo moments and teary dialogues, you actually have to show us what she's been through. It's called Character Development, and it's really important.

Aside from that I appreciated the effort put into representing the theme of Family in this movie and the other Characters were adapted pretty satisfiably.

That brings me to the Elephant in the room in the crisis of the alleged adapted antagonist of this movie, Taskmaster. If you've been to any geek review of this movie on social media, blogs or YouTube, you've probably seen the stones cast at this movie for "wasting the potential" of Taskmaster.

To everyone who seriously supports this as one of the major flaws in this movie, I'm sorry to say, I completely disagree. I actually see the different unexpected direction of Taskmaster to be one of this movie's redeeming aspects. I know we're all used to the version of this villain we see in comics and Spiderman animations as one big baddie bad powerful and skilled villain, but in this movie, Taskmaster is an actually vulnerable character who was made that way and manipulated by the actual antagonist of this movie, Dreykov (played by Ray Winstone) into doing his bidding and acting as a live lethal weapon.

In my opinion, Dreykov was a far better choice for an antagonist, given his already established connection to Natasha's past and the fact that a manipulative rich entitled power-hound feels like a more ideal villain to this sort of movie. It would've been fun to have the OG Taskmaster and watch the cunning battles between him and Natasha, but drawing out an antagonist plot that actually makes sense and connects to Black Widow would've been just stressful and unnecessary. And besides, this is the MCU, and the "Taskmaster Protocol" wasn't stated to be limited to just one Taskmaster, in other words, there's still hope for Comic Taskmaster fans. So on that note, Dreykov was a well played antagonist and Taskmaster served well as his weapon against the main characters

So All in All, it was a really visually stunning and entertaining movie as expected, but it wasn't the masterclass solo hero movie I'd hoped for, and it's safe to say it has its good and bad aspects on a scale that varies based on individual tastes of the reviewers.

In from my point of view, It wasn't as bad as fans on the internet are demonizing it to be, the fact that hardcore disappointments like Wonder Woman 1984 still exist should make the critique of this movie a bit lighter.

If I were to give it a score it'd be a 7/10 as I can attest for its enjoyability and engagingness but it's definitely not a perfect movie

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It's Been Great Guys

I'll See You All Next Time!.