Black Widow

After a delay lasting 19 months; the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has returned to the big screen with “Black Widow”. The film takes place between “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Infinity War”; audiences get more of the backstory of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), as we are introduced to her early life before the Red Room.

This is not to say that the film is an origin story as it uses her backstory through a clever introduction that establishes her “family” as sleeper agents in Ohio before they escape and she and her cover sister are tuned over for conditioning and training.

Since Natasha is on the run from the authorities; she finds a remote location in Norway to bide her time. This does not last as a dangerous adversary known as the Taskmaster arrives and sets a chain of events into motion.

Natasha has been sent a package from her cover sister Yelena (Florence Pugh) who also went through the Red Room and became a top assassin in the years since she and Natasha last saw one another.

Despite her mixed feelings; Natasha ventures to Budapest and confronts Yelena who in turn reveals the package she sent her contains a compound that can free the other Black Widows from the control of the Red Room which despite Natasha’s insistence is still very much alive as is the head of the institute which she is convinced she killed long ago.

With Taskmaster and other Widows hot on their trail, Natasha and Yelena are forced to seek the help of their former “Father” the imprisoned hero Red Guardian (David Harbour), and their cover Mother Melina (Rachel Weisz), to find the location of the new Red Room; free the Widows, and end the program once and for all.

What follows is an engaging story with solid action and effects that remains at its core a character story as Natasha attempts to reconcile her cover family with her new Avengers family and the pain of her upbringing and conditioning.

Marvel resisted calls from some to release the film on Di...

Rewatched for the Once Upon a Franchise podcast. Listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7i1gu7ICOTWQG3GFXTZli5?si=429741a57c354daf

Rating: A-

BLACK WIDOW is a satisfying, overdue send-off that finally treats Natasha Romanoff as a fully-realized lead rather than a supporting piece, anchored by a found-family dynamic that's as funny as it is quietly devastating. Florence Pugh's Yelena is the film's MVP and very nearly runs away with the whole movie, the hand-to-hand action is some of the most brutal and tactile the MCU has produced, and the choice to update the Red Room mythology with a sky base and a chemical mind-control agent feels like a genuinely clever evolution of the comics rather than a lazy shortcut. My real frustrations are less about what's on screen and more about timing and polish: this should have been Natasha's film a decade earlier, and the third act's green-screen work occasionally undercuts an otherwise grounded, Bourne-inspired thriller. But it all comes back together for that final shot — sun on Natasha's face, a warm, bittersweet goodbye that this character, and this actress, absolutely earned.

The first half of black widow was very strong and emotional. Florence Pugh was stellar in this movie. She was brilliant in action sequences and I like the fun elements in her character. Yelena and Natasha's chemistry was too good. David Harbour also performed very well.

The action sequences were good but CGI was too weak in the 3d act. Also, I didn't like the changes in Natasha's character. She has no superpowers like other avengers. Her strong brain and mind combine to make her a lethal weapon but they showed her over powerful in this movie.

The inner wounds of Natasha were beautifully delivered in this movie. I liked the movie but because of Florence only.

This Is A Thrilling , Beautiful &  VERY , VERY , VERY FUNNY Journey . . . BUT ALAS 😢 . . . It Will Of Course, -{ INEVITABLY }- Be A " Short-Lived " One For S.J⚘. Welcome To The Age Of The Super🦸‍♀️ ANACHRONISTIC , Er , " Prequel "

A "Good, Old Fashioned" -{ B I G }- Screen Full Length Review .

Yelena Belova : { about Natasha Rommanoff.. and in -JEST- } " ... You're such a Poser❗" ⬜⬜⬜⬜

1. " I Absolutely, Positively Loved It " : And I'm going to say that right off the bat. For what it's worth, I actually had to go see Black Widow, ( 'B.W' for short ), -twice- as I wasn't able to catch the beginning the first time around . . & ended up appreciating it -{ So }- much more the second time ; because, being a person with a difficult past myself . . the -Superb- , Intricate, ( and often super - Hilarious 🤣🤣🤣 - ) drama between the lead characters -{ Really }- hit home for me. So much so . . . That inasmuch as ( - I - ) was concerned atleast, just about the -{ Only }- flaw with this film for me, if any, was the altogether "glaring" fact that it is now all but -Certain- . . . That we -{ Won't }- see Scarlett Johansson ( 'S.J' for short ) . . . Reprise her fascinatingly complex, and truly "Glorious" role as -{ THE }- Black Widow. No spoiler here b.t.w ...this "Prequel"-movie's place in the overall 'M.C.U' ( Marvel Cinematic Universe ) timeline has always been made -{ CRYSTAL 💎 }- clear by 'MARVEL STUDIOS'... from the very Get-go. I invite you in earnest, { -Especially- if you're somewhat new to the whole "M.C.U-thing" }, to view one particular -Official- trailer by them, the one -still- entitled "New Trailer", ( YouTube, Apr.03, 2021 ), where the, 'rationale' ( -if you will- ) for B.W is explained, um, "Super"-well . . and is narrated by -none- other than, you guessed it, the "Hopelessly-Vivacious and yes, genuinely-Affable ....

Subpar Bond that believes it has emotional stakes isn't exactly a very winning formula. Far too much bad MCU banter to go with something that wants to be grounded and quite frankly none of the actors are quite adapt at those sitcomy whedonisms that these movies made mainstream (Pugh in particular is terrible at those bits). Some of the mid section action is better than average as far as those movies goes but anything with Taskmasker is very bad and the big end is terrible. Winstone villain made me miss when people like Lonsdale and Lee made lousy Moore Bond plots half watchable. The major limitation is that far too much of the emotional beats depend on what characters talk about their time together when they were a pretend family and altough Johansson and Pugh have good chemistry and Weisz and Harbour do as good job as possible under the circunstances of selling their regrets, there just isn't enough downtime between plot needs to anything of it truly land. I can get what Shortland was hoping to import into one of those but little actually works even with the benefit of a far more standalone movie than most of them. Also, strange how after a decade of postponing giving Johansson her movie, they did one in which she so often feels like a witness/connective MCU tissue for the main supporting characters family drama that they had to give her an extra subplot with her guilty over "killing" Winstone's daughter so it can feel like she has more material to work with. She is both the lead and the most extraneous part of her own movie

Honestly, if Black Widow opened Marvel’s Phase 4, I would have been even more impressed. However, after seeing the deep dives into characters that had been on the sidelines for years, this movie felt very surface level of the complexity of Natasha Romanoff. She was taken as a child to learn how to be an assassin, she had to sacrifice her morals to leave her past behind, she basically remained an assassin for a different organization that turned out to be run by similarly bad people as those she left, and she is now on the run from the government that once hailed her a hero because she didn’t fall in line. Oh, and she is reconnecting with her past fake family that gave her and Yelena back to the Red Room as soon as the mission was over. The trauma this character endured would’ve been better explored as a mini series, rather than a movie that’s trying to simultaneously remind us of where Natasha was five years ago and also trying not to acknowledge that Natasha has no risk posed to her in this movie because we know she lives on past these events. However, very excited to see where Yelena goes in the future.

It was okay

It's crap, really. Nothing works in this movie.

Black Widow is worth seeing for Florence Pugh, the free-fall action sequence, and anything involving Taskmaster before it’s revealed who is under the mask. Everything else about Black Widow feels like it was done better by the films it was supposedly influenced by and mostly feels like a diluted imitation of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It’s fantastic that women are getting more opportunities in big summer blockbusters like this one, but it’s also disheartening since their filmmaking skills are shackled to formulaic superfluity that obviously stands in the way of creating extraordinary cinema.

Full review: https://geekshavegame.com/black-widow-review-espionage-exhaustion/

Waited so long for this movie to come out and I was loaded with anticipation. When it finally landed I was so excited to watch it! I must say, it didn't go in the direction that I was expecting (based on the on the other solo movies)... but I was very pleasantly surprised, and it was way better than I was expecting it to be. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and it was a fitting tribute yo one of my favourite Marvel Universe characters.