Method To Madness - Black Widow (2021)

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Method To Madness

Black Widow is a 2021 American superhero film based on Marvel Comics featuring the character of the same name. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the 24th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film was directed by Cate Shortland from a screenplay by Eric Pearson, and stars Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow alongside Florence Pugh, David Harbour, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz. Set after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016), the film sees Romanoff on the run and forced to confront a conspiracy tied to her past.

Development of a Black Widow film began in April 2004 by Lionsgate, with David Hayter attached to write and direct. The project did not move forward and the character's film rights reverted to Marvel Studios by June 2006. Johansson was cast in the role for several MCU films beginning with Iron Man 2 (2010), and began discussing a solo film with Marvel. Work began in late 2017, with Shortland hired in 2018. Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson contributed to the script before Pearson was hired. Filming took place from May to October 2019 in Norway, Budapest, Morocco, Pinewood Studios in England, and in Atlanta and Macon, Georgia.

Having been delayed three times from an original May 2020 release date due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Widow premiered on June 29, 2021 at various events around the world, and was released in the United States on July 9 simultaneously in theaters and through Disney+ with Premier Access. The first film in Phase Four of the MCU, the film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for the performances and action sequences.

Cast

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
Ever Anderson portrays a young Natasha Romanoff.
Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova / Black Widow
Violet McGraw portrays a young Yelena Belova.
David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian
O-T Fagbenle as Rick Mason
Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster
William Hurt as Thaddeus Ross: The United States Secretary of State and a former U.S. Army general.^[25]
Ray Winstone as General Dreykov:^[26]^:9 The head of the Red Room.^[19]^:62^[27]
Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff / Black Widow:
A seasoned spy trained in the Red Room as a Black Widow and a mother-figure to Romanoff and Belova who is now one of the Red Room's lead scientists.^[28][29][15]^:4

Additionally, Liani Samuel, Jaada Lawrence - Green , Michelle Lee, and Nanna Blondell as Anya, Oksana, and Ingrid, respectively, Red Room's assassins. Olivier Richters portray Ursa, a Gulag Inmate. Julia Louis-Dreyfus appears in the film's post-credits scene, uncredited, as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine,^[30] reprising her role from the Marvel Studios television series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). She was originally set to first appear in Black Widow before its delays pushed the film's release to after the series' premiere on Disney+.^[31] Jeremy Renner makes an uncredited voice cameo appearance as Clint Barton / Hawkeye.

PLOT

* Spoilers AHEAD *

In 1995, young Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova are whisked away by their surrogate parents, Alexei Shostakov, originally Russia's Captain America known as the Red Guardian, and former Black Widow Melina Vostokoff from their home in Ohio. As their mission ends, Romanoff and Belova are put through the Red Room for further training.

In 2016, following the battle between the Avengers at Leipzig/Halle Airport, Romanoff is a fugitive from the government for violating the Sokovia Accords. She escapes from U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross and flees to a safehouse in Norway where she reunites with her contact Rick Mason. Elsewhere, Belova is still working for the Red Room where she kills a former Black Widow, only to come in contact with a substance called Red Dust that removes the Red Room's control of her. She sends the antidote to Romanoff's safehouse in the hopes that she will return to help her.

As Romanoff unknowingly drives off with the antidote, she is attacked by Taskmaster, who is after the Red Dust. Romanoff manages to evade Taskmaster and learns that the Dust came from Belova. The two reunite in Budapest, but are then attacked by Black Widows. While escaping, Romanoff learns the Red Room is still active and that its leader, Dreykov, is still alive. In order for her to join S.H.I.E.L.D., her mission was to kill Dreykov. After detonating a building with him and his young daughter Antonia in it (an act that has haunted her), both were presumed dead. Romanoff and Belova evade Taskmaster and meet back up with Mason who supplies them an aircraft.

Romanoff and Belova break Shostakov out of prison to learn where Dreykov is and he tells them that they need to speak with Vostokoff who has been living on a farm in Russia using mind control on pigs. Belova reveals that while they were not a real family, she still wanted to believe that they were so, while Shostakov and Vostokoff admit that they too wished they were a real family. Vostokoff gives away their location to Dreykov whose agents arrive and take them away to the Red Room, which is located on an aerial base.

As Dreykov congratulates Vostokoff on finding them, it is revealed that Vostokoff and Romanoff used face mask technology to switch places at the farm, having planned their own capture. Romanoff learns that Taskmaster is Antonia, who had suffered damage so severe that Dreykov was forced to put a chip in her head to help her, turning her into the perfect soldier. Romanoff also discovers that she cannot harm Dreykov due to a pheromone lock he installed in every Widow, and that he has been controlling Widows all around the world via his control desk. After goading Dreykov into punching her in the face, Romanoff intentionally severs a nerve in her nasal passage to negate the pheromone and allow herself to attack Dreykov.

Vostokoff attempts to take out the ship's engine while Shostakov battles Antonia and Belova searches for the other Widows who are sent to protect Dreykov. Dreykov escapes as the Widows gang up on Romanoff, but Belova creates a Red Dust bomb that releases the Widows from mind control. Romanoff gets into the control desk and copies the locations of the other Widows worldwide to a portable drive just as the ship begins to explode and fall. Before leaving the control room, she picks up two vials of Red Dust that survived Belova's bomb. Vostokoff and Shostakov are forced to escape the ship via aircraft just as Belova takes out Dreykov's escape ship, killing him.

Romanoff gives Belova a parachute as she and Antonia have one final battle through the sky before safely landing on the ground. Romanoff uses one vial of Red Dust on Antonia, freeing her from servitude. The rest of the Widows arrive as Belova, Vostokoff, and Shostakov say goodbye to Romanoff, with Belova giving her her vest to remember her by and Romanoff giving Belova the last Red Dust vial and the portable drive, telling her to find and free the other Widows. As they leave along with a recovering Antonia, Romanoff awaits the arrival of Ross and his men. Two weeks later, Romanoff, now sporting blond hair, reunites with Mason who has supplied her with a quinjet. She rides off to free the detained Avengers from the Raft.

In a post-credits scene set after Romanoff's death, Belova encounters Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, now her employer, at Romanoff's grave and learns her next mission is to hunt the man "responsible" for Romanoff's death: Clint Barton.

The Verdict:

* SPOILERS DISCUSSION *

After all of the delays, namely with Disney/Marvel Studios being adamant about releasing this film in theaters instead of on various streaming platforms, namely Disney+, we finally got this film to release July 9, 2021. In the past year that it was set to release, I was already spoiled to a lot of the content in the film, no thanks to the multiple trailers, interviews, and even the toys (Marvel Legends specifically) that released months ahead of this film's release. I still wanted to see this in the theaters, despite the film being readily available on Disney+ as of this posting. I went to the local theater's "early" showing for the film at 5PM EST that Thursday evening with this being the second film I have seen in an actual movie theater following the COVID-19 pandemic. The first being F9 (Fast and Furious 9) about two weeks prior. The last film I saw in a movie theater before that was either Sonic the Hedgehog or Harley Quinn & the Birds of Prey or whatever the fuck that movie was relabeled to be called under the DC Extended Universe umbrella by Warner Bros.

After the flop that was Wonder Woman 1984, I went into this with a huge sense of dread, expecting that Marvel Studios would go all in on "girl power" and "women's empowerment" narrative and presentation with this film. To my pleasant surprise, that was not the case with this film. This film has the same vibe as Captain America: The Winter Soldier in terms of being a spy/espionage-thriller of sorts. I was thinking that we were going to get a fleshed out origin story for Natasha Romanoff but even that wasn't what we really got here. The film pretty much reaffirms what little bread crumbs that we have gathered from Natasha's past throughout her appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far while introducing the wider scope of the Red Room organization that trained her along with introducing her "family" that she had before joining SHIELD and the Avengers.

I thought the introduction of Natasha's "family" was a fun, yet troublesome idea. Right off the bat, the narrative reveals that Natasha and her "parents" (Red Guardian and Melina Vostokoff) were deep undercover and let their daughter know that it was all an act. Natasha's younger sister, Yelena, was left in the dark concerning all of this. She was left feeling abandoned after being taken into the Red Room program when her "family" never came back for her. This would have painted the perfect picture for her to be this film's true villain if they wanted to go that route, but instead, this film went into a weird direction where all of the Red Room's Black Widows were merely puppets, thanks to Melina's research. Yelena broke free from the control by chance and reunited with Natasha, looking for the Avengers to take the Red Room down. Unfortunately, this film takes place immediately following the events of Captain America: Civil War - meaning that the Avengers are all scattered and divided prior to the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Natasha found herself pulled into this ordeal to take down the Red Room and free the rest of the Black Widows under their control. The comparisons to Captain America: The Winter Soldier continue as Natasha is hunted by the mysterious Taskmaster. Natasha and Yelena quickly have their work cut out for them as this foe can copy any fighting style that he has seen, whether in person or via archived footage. The first few appearances of Taskmaster come off as threatening as the Winter Soldier in that film, but boy did this villain lose his luster by the time the finale came around. We'll get to that point later...

The big reveal concerning Taskmaster's identity was that he, or rather SHE, is the daughter (Antonia Dreykov) of the leader of the Red Room (General Dreykov) that Natasha thought she killed to defect over to S.H.I.E.L.D. on her last assignment. Antonia is merely a puppet that is being fed the combat data in her computerized brain to imitate her opponents' skills and techniques and use them against them. I felt this robbed the character of what made her comic book counterpart significant. If you can just feed/download powers/skills and powers into one person's brain like this is The Matrix, then it takes away what made Taskmaster cool and unique as a villain in the first place. If they didn't want to go with Taskmaster's comics origin, I totally would have bought the notion that he/she was training all of the Widows, thanks to his photographic reflexes. Her comic book counterpart works as a mercenary for hire for both heroes and villains, often training the underlings and henchmen of several villains in Marvel Comics. It would have been fun to incorporate that idea here, but we didn't get that. If the reveal wasn't bad enough, Natasha doesn't even really defeat Taskmaster in combat. Red Guardian fights her throughout most of the final battle with Natasha merely gassing her with the cure to the brainwashing to end their battle unceremoniously.

I felt that we were robbed of a clever solution of how to defeat Taskmaster that usually results in a lot of nonconventional means by heroes thinking outside of the box of their normal methods of defeating their adversaries. The combined forces of Red Guardian, Yelena, Melina, and Natasha all working together as a cohesive unit to defeat Taskmaster would have made for a fun moment during the climax in this film. It would have hit home the point that Yelena drove home at Melina's home about that to the rest of them that they were treating their family as just another job/undercover assignment but to her, their family was real. Natasha adds that Alexei/Red Guardian is an idiot and Melina is a coward; both undeniable truths to their situation. Red Guardian was an idiot to trust Dreykov and kept fooling himself that his "family" was all just a job and Melina, as brilliant as she is, was too much of a coward to destroy the Red Room from within years ago for the sake of her "family" - instead of providing Dreykov with the resources to continue enslaving the Widows - and her "daughters" - into the same life of servitude that she had been in her entire life. Each other them working together could have "overloaded" Taskmaster's ability to read and analyze all of their fighting styles at once since she was being overwhelmed by their constantly changing and adapting tandem attacks.

Don't get it misconstrued in the comments either that I was opposed to the gender-swapping of Taskmaster. That was a decision I didn't have a problem with. I have a problem with the radical changes to this character that was completely unnecessary that just came off as completely boring in the film's climax. Why did Natasha need to have an emotional connection to the key villain here? It was already enough that Dreykov was using other Widows to do his bidding, much like Yelena before she broke from his control. The whole idea of tying Natasha and Taskmaster's histories together felt like unnecessary emotional baggage when Natasha already had enough of that to navigate through in this film.

Speaking of which, Red Guardian has a great line to his "daughters" following their reunion, citing how proud of the fine assassins that they have grown up to be. Natasha is downright disgusted with the notion of praise from him while Yelena completely rains on Natasha's parade of trying to turn it around saying that she's been on a path of redemption for everything that she did prior to leaving the Red Room, only to remind Natasha that at the end of the day, she's still a killer that's praised and idolized by little girls. Completely savage and brutally honest though.

Dreykov, the man behind the Red Room and the plot to enslave all of the Black Widows under his control, with Taskmaster.

Taskmaster, or rather Antonia Dreykov, unmasked.

How could I not mention Dreykov himself? He is introduced as the lackluster head honcho of the Red Room in this film. I want to know who was the woman shown training the Widows in the flashback/vision(s) that Natasha saw back in Avengers: Age of Ultron. A part of me wants to speculate that it was Dottie Underwood from Agent Carter, but given the fact that one of the writers from that show worked on the screenplay for this film, I found it pretty lazy writing that they failed to mention her in passing.

The face-to-face with Dreykov was a little anticlimactic in a sense. Natasha and Melina worked out an elaborate plan to swap places and get close enough to assassinate him, but thanks to his pheromones, all Widows that breathe it in are unable to perform any hostilities against him. Natasha works around this handicap by having him slap her around his office, but he doesn't deal enough damage to sever her nerve - namely the nerves in her nose. Natasha does it herself by intentionally breaking her nose on his desk and knocking him out after he laid out his entire master plan like a Saturday morning cartoon supervillain. I was half-expecting for him to hang Natasha's stingers and the rest of her weapons on the wall and leave the room like the typical villain in Batman '66 when Batman and Robin are left tied up on some conveyor belt at the end of one of those infamous two-parters.

Natasha's means of "defeating" him was a little extreme when his pheromones should only have a short range of functionality since they are limited to the sense of smell. This fact is magnified when Yelena got on top of the aircraft that he was planning to escape in and sabotaged it without any issue to send him to a fiery demise merely left more questions than answers.

Speaking of Yelena, Florence Pugh really won me over with her performance as Yelena Belova in this film though. The last thing I saw her in was as her portrayal as WWE Superstar Saraya "Paige" Knight in that Fighting With My Family film that The Rock/Dwayne Johnson produced. A lot of that film was cringe-worthy, even for me being a wrestling fan and fan of that particular female wrestler that it was based off of. Here, she comes off a much more rounded character and able to show more range in her acting.

In my humble opinion, I found Yelena's story was much more interesting than Natasha's backstory. Natasha constantly refers back to what happened between her and Hawkeye back in Budapest, but we never actually get to see it as some sort of a cruel ongoing joke between those two characters. If they don't fill in the gaps on that story in Hawkeye's upcoming Disney+ series, then I don't see what's the point in even bringing it up again and again. At least with Yelena's past, she's essentially a blank slate, much like Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier, who was a puppet forced to do all sorts of horrible things against her own free will. Then the only thing that she considered "real" - that family that she shared with Natasha, Melina, and Red Guardian - was a lie too. This film was more of an origin story for her than Natasha if we want to be honest about it. Yelena was a bigger piece of Natasha's life that she left behind in favor of a fresh start as part of S.H.I.E.L.D. and later the Avengers. It was this reunion that showed her that she had two families - one with the Avengers and another with her cohorts from the Red Room - that led to Natasha realizing how valuable a family is to have. Yelena's best moment was during and after their dinner table reunion scene. Natasha was ready to disregard all of this and focus entirely on the mission while Yelena was caught up in the moment, reminiscing back to that life that she left behind and was forcefully stripped from her childhood. It wasn't "real" per say, but to her it was the only genuine thing in her life that wasn't programmed into unwillingly like every other part of her mental and physical conditioning from the Red Room.

If Marvel Studios wants to slot Pugh in to replace Scarlett Johansson as the token Black Widow on the Avengers, then I'm all for it. Then again, after the post-credits teaser, I wouldn't be surprised that the MCU is gearing up for an Avengers vs. Dark Avengers clash down the road. I guess we won't find out until after Hawkeye's series drops this fall on Disney+.

That whole setup is rather silly on its own too as we - the audience - are led to believe that the Avengers didn't tell the entire world the full circumstances that Natasha Romanoff gave her life willingly to bring everyone else back? I guess I can buy into the idea that Natasha didn't let them know that she still had another family out there outside of the Avengers. Given her emotional state post-Snap at the start of Endgame, I wouldn't be surprised if they were gone too. Once again, that's another string of issues that will need to be addressed in Hawkeye's upcoming Disney+ series.

I've seen this film twice in the past week and still didn't know what was O-T Fagbenie's character name until I started reading up the casting information for this review. Rick Mason was apparently an ally from Romanoff's history in S.H.I.E.L.D. who is obviously romantically interested in her. When he was first introduced by being seen sleeping in Romanoff's bed in her safehouse, I thought they were going to hook up then and there, but boy, was I wrong. A part of me BRIEFLY thought that he could have been Taskmaster under the mask from a clever twist of sorts, but that would have required much more creative writing skills than the plot that was presented here did in actuality. Mason could have been a mercenary for hire that was presented with the opportunity to capture Natasha Romanoff since he's grown bitter from her turning down his advances all of these years (some guys can only taking no for an answer for so long before they lose their shit...), so he takes up the job from the Red Room to eliminate her and Yelena for good after he studied their techniques and/or fighting styles.

David Harbour's Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian gave me the same vibes as Hopper from Netflix's Stranger Things, where he is the father-figure for El. I think I'm one of the few people that didn't shit all over and flat out hate him in the recent Hellboy reboot from 2019 either. Much like that role, I thought he excelled in this costumed superhero persona. Harbour's Alexei tries to act larger than life to make up for his shortcomings, but he's definitely a loveable loser here. I hope the MCU doesn't pass up on the chance to do a film or some filler content chronicling what him, Melina, and Yelena do with the freed Widows in the time between this film and present day post-Blip in the MCU. I found it odd that the MCU decided to go with an amalgamation of sorts for his iteration in their continuity as roughly six different people in the comics have carried the mantle of Red Guardian, including Natasha Romanoff's husband. In a bit of irony, he's still "married" to a Black Widow in this continuity regardless, but it's to Melina Vostokoff instead of Romanoff. Truth be told, Alexei wouldn't even have any purpose being in this film at all if Natasha and Yelena didn't need to ask him for the location of the Red Room since he was close friends to Dreykov, but even that plan was a dead end as he didn't know anything. Alexei's reintroduction only served the purpose of leading his "daughters" to reunite with their "mother", Melina, who was still working directly under Dreykov and could get them to the Red Room.

I was a little disappointed that Red Guardian's inclusion didn't warrant the introduction of the Winter Guard being introduced into the MCU since they are gaining traction in the comics continuity as of late. Oh well, maybe next time.

I didn't realize it until my second viewing when my older sister (who I was watching the film with for the second go-round) pointed it out that Melina Vostokoff was played by the same Rachel Weisz from The Mummy (Evelyn Carnahan) films. I must admit that she has aged gracefully. She was almost unrecognizable until I put the pieces together. Melina was the Black Widow who was assigned with Alexei to serve as the mother-figure to Romanoff and Belova, but now serves as one of the Red Room's lead scientists. She was unaware that she was refining the same mind-control technology that enslaved Yelena Belova following Natasha Romanoff's departure from the Red Room to join S.H.I.E.L.D.. Her and Harbour played off each other well in all of their scenes together as the unlikely "fake" parents of Romanoff and Belova. My biggest complaint was that we didn't get to see more of them together as both her and Harbour's inclusions felt rushed in the last half of the film. Admittedly, she was my second guess at Taskmaster's true identity in this film.

Truth be told, I went into this film under the assumption that she would betray her "daughters" and be the primary antagonist that both Yelena and Natasha would have to defeat at the end of this film, given their connection as faux family. I was thinking under the assumption that Melina would reveal herself as the Iron Maiden (FYI the costume is in her weapons closet if you look closely in that scene in the screenshot above), a notable Black Widow comics villain.

Taskmaster, or rather Antonia Dreykov (portrayed by Olga Kurylenko) as she's revealed to be in a lackluster manner during the film's last act, is the primary antagonist that fans are left to assume to be the main villain for Black Widow in this film thanks to the marketing leading up to its release in theaters and Disney+ Premium streaming, but that fact was painfully wrong when you finally sit down and see this film for yourself. I thought Kurylenko's talents were criminally wasted in this role when she was only given 1-2 lines tops and merely reduced to being a stoic, silent (or rather wooden, robotic) predator for the entire film. I mentioned earlier that this film has a painfully obvious template to pick-up that it was copying narrative and visual beats from Marvel Studios' best film (in my eyes anyway...), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but didn't have the Russo Brothers' talents for writing behind it.

Taskmaster's best fight sequence was his first appearance after he blew Natasha's car off the road. His, rather her fight with Red Guardian during the film's climax was okay, but we didn't get to see nearly enough of their skills on display to enjoy that. That was at least the 2nd (or maybe third) time in the film where Taskmaster used T'Challa's fighting skills while mixing in a bit of the Winter Soldier's knife play into that skirmish too. Ugh, I just can't stress enough about how much Natasha's last battle with Taskmaster disappointed me. She didn't even change up her tactics at all. She did the same finesse and gymnastics she uses against everyone under the sun and merely unlocked her helmet to feed her the antidote gas.

However, I should be relieved that Antonia Dreykov wasn't killed off like a lot of other MCU villains. She survives this film, much like Ava Starr/Ghost in Ant-Man and The Wasp. It makes you wonder if they are going to bring these minor villains back in some capacity down the road. Ava's condition has been stabilized by the Pym family, so that should end her villainous ways, but we don't know how the events between The Snap and The Blip may have affected her. She may have regressed back into her old methods given the fact that the Pyms were all dusted and went right back to being an assassin for hire. As for Antonia, there's the big question of who else could have had their hands on the technology that was feeding and analyzing all of the combat data that she had accumulated and mimicking in battle. There's a lot of great theories that point to someone - possibly HYDRA - getting ahold of that technology and developing it further into an even more formidable foe - the Super-Adaptoid. Now, that would make for some great battles too if it was allowed to analyze all of the Avengers' battles to date. Fingers crossed on that villain making his appearance in the MCU sooner more than later.

Fun fact: During my first viewing of the film, I was saying Taskmaster's lines from Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in my head while he was doing specific moves...

Every time he used his shield or threw it in tandem like Captain America... "Just like Cap!"
During the car chase, when he showed up with the bow and arrow... "Aim like Hawkeye!"
Whenever he pulled out his sword... "Sword of Black Knight!"

Closing Thoughts

After my first viewing of the film on its premiere on Thursday night (July 8, 2021), I was left feeling really underwhelmed when I got home and started piecing my thoughts for this review and got to chatting with a few friends about it. I knew I was going to see the film again the following night (July 9) again with my older sister, so I made a point to look at it from another perspective, namely one that a good friend of mine brought up on Twitter during that day.

"Women helping women out of the cycle of abuse, apologizing for their part in it, and destroying the systems that oppressed others."

If you look at this entire film as a symbolic metaphor for highlighting the cycle of women helping other women out of the cycle of abuse and trauma, apologizing for their parts in it, and destroying the systems that oppressed others, then it's a stroke of genius, despite it's plot holes and inconsistencies with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to this point.

Think about it in this manner:

Yelena and Natasha escape the Red Room's oppression and the adventure takes them on a journey that has them not only come to terms to the abuse that they suffered, but apologize for the roles that they had to play in said abuse. Yelena wants to make amends for not only for the fellow Widow that she killed in cold blood, but to ensure no one else has to suffer what she had to since childhood. Natasha's reasoning is a similar but a little more complicated. Natasha left the Red Room and never looked back, when she could have easily come back for Yelena, but she didn't. Helping her sister now is a means for Natasha to come to peace with what was done to her in the past.
Melina, Red Guardian, and Natasha all apologize for what the parts that they played in Yelena's mental anguish and turmoil from her "fake" memories of their family. Natasha stopped Taskmaster/Antonia's path of destruction in a pacifist manner to end her own journey of abuse and to repent for the destruction of her life that brought her down that path. Don't forget that Natasha admits that she aimed to kill Antonia Dreykov willingly to sever ties with the Red Room and to ensure that she killed Dreykov as collateral damage. Saving Antonia in this film's finale was her act of repentance. If she had killed her (again), then she wouldn't have been any different than Dreykov in regard of stripping another woman of free will and choice to live out her own life. That would have only continued the endless cycle of abuse for women in the Red Room, despite Dreykov being dead and buried.
Last but not least, Melina, Red Guardian, Yelena, and Natasha all had a hand in destroying the Red Room facility and executing its leader to ensure that no one else has to be robbed of their families, their childhood, and their entire lives, thanks to Dreykov and the Red Room, by destroying the entire network and everyone within it after freeing the other Widows from their control.

This film is a complete success if you want to picture it in that regard. Once again, I have to credit fellow blogger Carla Hoffman for her insight in terms of looking at this film from that unique angle.

In a strange way, I makes me wonder that maybe this film should have been called Black Widows (plural) since it chronicles not one Widow's journey but multiple women on the converging on the same path with the same goal...

The featured key players of Black Widow with their comic book counterparts.

Watch It or Don't Bother?

For many people who have been stuck in their homes for the past year throughout the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been itching for their Marvel fix with a proper return to the theaters. Disney and Marvel Studios have been adamant about pushing this movie back until it was safe for fans to return to theaters, almost to the point of this film's detriment in an extent. Over the past year, we have seen the entire toyline and marketing milked to death to the point where there were little to no surprises left in this film to discover, except for Taskmaster's true identity, thanks to multiple trailers for this film. At the same time, the film is readily accessible on both the Disney+ streaming platform for viewing at home and in theaters at viewers' own preferences. Following the all-time highs that the end of the Infinity Saga brought the MCU, Black Widow is merely a whimper in the dark instead of the deafening shot out of a cannon that was needed to kick start Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This definitely wasn't Marvel Studios' worse outing, but it's definitely not one of their best showings either, especially when this film does so much to model itself after Captain America: The Winter Soldier; thus making it far too easy to point out it's shortcomings in comparison to that masterpiece. On top of that, I can't help feeling this film was positioned at a point where the final impression from a lot of people will be "too little, too late" in regard of this character. Long-time Marvel Cinematic Universe fans already know Natasha Romanoff's fate from Avengers: Endgame going into this film with the hopes that this will be the proper send-off that she deserved back in that film, but may be disappointed that not really that strong of a film to end on for this character's journey.

Scarlett Johannsen has expressed that she is happy to formally bow out from the MCU following her performance in this film as she feels that this film brought Natasha Romanoff's story full circle. I can't help feeling underwhelmed with this in a lot of ways, but if she's fine with the decision to walk away, who am I to frown on her decision? I can look past this film's shortcomings and praise what it does do right - providing a narrative detailing and dismantling several women's circles of abuse while simultaneously setting the stage for Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova to step up as Natasha Romanoff's successor as the new Black Widow of the MCU going forward. In that aspect, I can humbly recommend to watch this film. For everyone else who really aren't too enthusiastic about the gaps in Natasha's journey, I don't think that you would be missing out on much if you didn't see this film if you're not particularly fond of this character.

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