Review of Black Widow (2021) by Htgamer — 11 Jul 2021

Black Widow is a good enough MCU film, but doesn't reach the heights it should. This is no spy thriller film, instead it's just an action-filled movie from start to finish like Fast & Furious. And just like that film series, Black Widow introduces us to another, ehm, family.

Let's keep in mind that this film was designed more like to quickly make a female-led MCU film because the Black Widow character is dead and Scarlett Johansson wants out, than making a film that would really highlight Scarlett Johansson's character of Natasha Romanoff. As a result it doesn't work nearly as well as DC's Wonder Woman in that regard.

The action though is very good. Hard to complain.

The plot is about Soviet spies planted in the 1990s USA and what it means for kids to have a fake family and losing it by force. This idea makes for some great moments between Romanoff, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and the fake parents of Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Iron Maiden (Rachel Weisz) when they reunite.

But the most disappointing element of this film is the Taskmaster brute. It's just like Ben Kingsley's fake Mandarin in Iron Man 3, only 100X worse. If they had left this brute unnamed, or if it was a mindless robot, it would have been so much better and more fitting, because Taskmaster is speechless until the very end. But no, it's a random girl (not even a female version of Tony Masters) who got buffed, got a male suit and was renamed Taskmaster (and was revealed to have photographic memory thanks to an implant instead of an ability of her own). Why? I don't understand who makes these moronic decisions that deviate so much from the source material and for what purpose.

Overall, Black Widow is an enjoyable but forgettable MCU movie. It's a pity that Scarlett Johansson will never play the role of Black Widow again, but her character deserved a better swansong.