Black Widow Review

Credit to: Disney and Marvel Studios

Was A Movie Really Needed?

Welcome back to The Wolf Den! This time around, we’re taking a look at Marvel’s Black Widow, which actually just came out today on July 9th! We won’t do too many spoilers, but we’ll go ahead and talk about a few moments that happened in the movie while critiquing the movie as a whole. Not too much to say about this one, but before we start, let me explain how this is gonna go. Just like the Resident Evil article, we’re gonna go over the pros, the cons, and then a roundup at the end with a final score as always. Mario Golf didn’t get sections dedicated to pros and cons, because that would’ve been waaay too much to read. Anyways, let’s just jump right into it!

Pros

As you probably already suspected, Scarlett Johansson killed it as Natasha Romanoff, otherwise known as Black Widow, but when doesn’t she? Her fight scenes are nice and gritty, and they’re just well choreographed as a whole. Her “sister”, Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, is also a fantastic character. She gives us a deep look into her emotions, and shows us how badly the Red Room impacted her. She takes the whole “I don’t have a real family” thing to heart, and it’s really sad when she shows just how much that hurts her. I enjoyed her quite a bit. Her fights were also cool, and she’s fairly funny, so she’s alright in my book. The Soviet super soldier, Alexei Shostakov, otherwise known as Red Guardian, is played by David Harbour, and is yet another great addition to the MCU. The humor that does work in this movie comes mostly from him, though they focus a bit too much on the humor with his character instead of giving him a more interesting backstory. Regardless, when we do see him, it’s usually a good scene. Usually. I do like the fact that he tries to engage with Natasha and Yelena in an attempt to apologize for his actions, and it’s pretty funny to see how quickly he turns his apology into a speech about his time as the Red Guardian. He’s severely underutilized, but when he’s on screen, it’s a pretty good time. The last character in the fake family of Russians, is Melina Vostokoff, played by Rachel Weisz. We don’t get a whole lot of her either unfortunately, but it’s cool when we do see her. I think it was interesting to see her struggle with the fact that she’s so deep in the Red Room program while still wanting to be the nurturing, false mother to Yelena and Natasha. In the comics, she’s known as the Iron Maiden, but there’s mention of that here. It’s also funny to see how sexually attracted both Melina and Alexei are to one another. Overall, this “family” of four works very well together, and I hope we see Red Guardian and Melina pop up again.

Another pro for me, is definitely the fighting. The character of Taskmaster… mm. Let me save that gripe for the next section, but anyways, Taskmaster’s fight scenes are very entertaining. All of the fight scenes- okay, most of the fight scenes are entertaining. There’s two or three fights I’m thinking of that are a little boring to me, but the fighting usually works pretty well in this film. Seeing Taskmaster imitate characters like Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Panther was super cool, and it’s always a surprise to see just how well Tasky can replicate their moves. The first Taskmaster vs. Black Widow fight scene was super fun to watch, and I really enjoyed seeing Black Widow struggle to get the upper hand against someone who can do exactly what she can. Taskmaster is very efficient with the bow, the shield, even the Black Panther claws, and the arsenal itself is really great. Unfortunately, Taskmaster doesn’t really use the sword and shield combo, instead opting to use just one or the other, which is kind of a miss, but regardless, Tasky was still a force to be reckoned with. I doubt we’ll see this character again, but it was pretty cool while it lasted. Mostly. Of course, Black Widow’s fighting was always top notch. She’s always fun to watch, so I don’t have much to say about her fight scenes. Yelena though, was also very fun to watch. Her fights were pretty entertaining, and she’s given a whole lot of screen time, so that’s really cool that her character was thoroughly used. That’s actually all I can say in terms of pros. The 4 main characters work well together, and they’re used pretty well for the most part, aaand this movie has good fights. Great. Now, the cons.

Cons

Ugh. Come on, Marvel. What happened here? You know, I had a bad feeling that with all the delayed release dates, this movie would suffer. Guess what? It did. It suffered terribly. The story is just so awful, I don’t even know what to say. Like, don’t get me wrong, I understand the whole “my past is coming back to haunt me” idea, but it’s executed so badly. I do enjoy the Red Room idea. It’s interesting that these women are kidnapped as children and are turned into these deadly mind controlled assassins, but the story that surrounds it just plain sucks. The overarching villain, the leader of the Red Room, Dreykov, is absolutely GARBAGE. Marvel is being classic Marvel with this movie. The villain is just terrible like almost all the other MCU villains, and he’s killed off predictably. The whole concept of the Red Room according to him, is to have these assassins that can create and topple governments, and he can have total power over them. In other words, Dreykov is the classic villain that wants world domination or whatever. That’s basically it. Natasha wants him dead to free his assassins and disband the Red Room, something I can understand, but the story surrounding it is just trash, man. Dreykov sucked. The Red Room sucked. The story sucked. I know these are two cons, but I just want to quickly talk about them both. I really don’t think this movie needed to be made. This should’ve been a series, honestly. Dreykov could’ve been more interesting if he had more time on the screen, and a series would’ve allowed that. Instead, he’s shown to be an unbeatable force who’s beaten in the corniest way possible. The Red Room program itself is severely underplayed, and the women who are shown to be so terribly dangerous, are freed in such a predictable fashion. It would’ve been really cool to see these Red Room assassins show up in maybe the Hawkeye series, or another project, but instead, the program is disbanded when Dreykov tries to flee but ends up dying. Goodbye, Red Room, hope to never see or hear any mentions of you again.

Taskmaster, a special Red Room project, is also affected unfortunately. I’ll probably get flak for this, but I want it to be known that I do not care. I have no biases against anyone, and I support all things, but this? This was a no no. Marvel decided to take the classic Marvel Comics character, Tony Masters, AKA the Taskmaster, and gender-bend him into a female. Come on, man. Why? I could understand them gender-bending the Ant-Man and the Wasp villain, Ghost, because Ghost is a much lesser known character in the comics, so that was fine in my opinion. But Taskmaster? Seriously? Taskmaster is a CLASSIC villain with such potential, but they just couldn’t resist making him female for literally no good reason. I won’t explain who she is under the mask, but it’s absolutely stupid. If you don’t like that I’m complaining about that, it’s whatever. Just imagine if Black Panther’s sister Shuri was turned into his brother, or imagine if Spider-Man’s uncle Ben was the one who survived instead of his aunt May. It would be a problem. This is a problem. It’s an annoying problem that needs to be talked about. Stop doing this and pretending it’s okay. Peter Parker doesn’t need to be, I don’t know, Penny Parker. Natasha Romanoff doesn’t need to be Nathan Romanoff. Stop gender-bending classic characters. It’s pointless and annoying. Taskmaster is closely related to Dreykov in a fashion that again, I won’t say just to give you all time to watch the movie yourselves, but my GOD is it corny. I can’t believe how little they cared for this character. The only thing that mattered was the fighting. Taskmaster is a classic character, and the gender-bending was honestly enough to make me take a break from watching this movie. Just honor the character’s comic origins. That applies to all Marvel characters. I don’t want a male Black Widow. I don’t want this female Taskmaster. I don’t want a male Gamora, a male Mantis, a male Shuri, I don’t want any of that. Respect the character’s origin and history. They already messed up by gender-bending and whitewashing the Ancient One into a white woman instead of having the character be an Asian man, so to gender-bend yet another important character after receiving flak for the Ancient One, it really shows that Marvel clearly didn’t learn their lesson. Just stop already.

My final gripe with this movie, is the pace. It’s so all over the place. It starts off so slow, then things move WAY too fast when the “family” gets back together, and then it slows waaay down when the finally reach the Red Room. The whole Red Room sequence itself is a disappointment. You would think that they’d show us some really crazy action here, but no, not really. Taskmaster and Red Guardian have a brief fight, but that was pretty boring. Natasha confronts Dreykov and they have a suuuper long and played out interaction. Literally, this whole scene with these two, is just, “Look how powerful I am! Look how strong the Red Room is! Look what I created! Haha you can’t beat me!” The way Natasha beats Dreykov, is probably one of the most garbage endings I have ever seen. I seriously don’t understand how Marvel Studios let this movie release this way. The only spoiler I’ll give is this. Natasha literally CAN’T hit Dreykov, because she has some mental lock that prevents her from attacking him when she smells his pheromones. In other words, when she’s near him and smells him, she freezes. I just… I just can’t. I wanted this movie to be good SO badly, and it was just so awful. Everything beyond the fighting, the family, and maybe some of the jokes, is terrible. Taskmaster was disrespected not even by the gender-bending, but the way she’s defeated. Dreykov is a forgettable villain. The Red Room story is awful. This movie isn’t good. My final gripe with this movie, should just be the movie itself.

Final Thoughts

I wish I could un-watch this movie. I really wish I could. Don’t take my opinions as me hating this movie just because Taskmaster’s female. I hate this movie because Black Widow deserved more. She deserved so much more. I’ve been wanting to see this Red Room idea explored ever since I first saw this character. I love Black Widow. She’s such a badass, and she deserved more. The Red Room is just gone now. Taskmaster was defeated even though she’s studied Black Widow’s fighting, but alright, I guess she’s defeated. Had this movie been a series, it could’ve been given more time to explore these ideas. Honestly, even if Taskmaster just HAD to be female, I wish we could’ve at least seen her get a better ending. We’ll see Yelena again, and I’m excited to see her return, but the way she’s going to return already has me worried. No spoilers for that, but ugh. Please don’t ruin Yelena. Please give more time to Melina and Alexei. Please let there be another Taskmaster who’s a defected SHIELD agent like the comics. Please stop gender-bending. What a shame. That’s gonna do it from me. Let me know if you share these opinions. This has been The Wolf Den.

1.5 out of 5.