REVIEW: Black Widow

There's a humorous irony to a quote offered by Scarlett Johansson's "Natasha Romanoff" early in the newest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Forlornly, she declares "I'm better off alone." In-universe, this character is on the run from the government and separated from the only people who have ever seen her as a good guy, and her confession speaks to a deep-rooted sense of aimlessness. For the audience that has been watching the film's trailers for the last year and a half, this line takes on a different meaning. After all, Natasha Romanoff has been a backup singer for many a superhero since her first appearance in the MCU in 2010, only stepping into center stage now. Is Black Widow better off alone, helming her own superhero movie than she is with her contemporaries?

One could make a case for better, the film admittedly has some competition, but either way Natasha Romanoff's first solo pic provides a worthwhile glimpse into the soul of a character whose psyche has revealed itself gradually over the last ten years.

Natasha's solo adventure finds her drifting after the division of the Avengers following the events of Captain America: Civil War. Maybe the family she found as a superhero was too good to last. She is called into action when her adoptive sister from another life sends a distress beacon. Turns out the regiment that made her into such a heartless creature is still active, still feeding on innocent girls that it retools into killing drones. Putting down old monsters has Natasha confront not only her own checkered past, but also healing old wounds.

The plot hinges on a system of literal mind-control, a system that is admittedly out of place here in a way it wouldn't be in the more fantasy-oriented chapters of the MCU. Just so, it does bring a specific focus in this film: Here it isn't just the faceless masses Natasha is fighting to save, but the other Black Widows who are kept subdued under the iron grip of the sadistic Dreykov. Natasha has tasted the hellish existence of a forced mercenary, and when she realizes that other girls are still victim to her prison, she takes it on herself to rescue them.

Again, this story takes place when her superhero team is scattered, and there's something genuinely unnerving the first time Natasha collides with evil and you realize that her Avenger allies won't be there to back her up. In lieu of Thor and Spiderman, the film offers us an original array of players to join Black Widow on her mission: Natasha's adoptive family from before she was inducted into the assassin army.

There's Natasha's sister, Florence Pugh's Yelena, whose sarcasm and cynicism recalls a 2010 portrait of Black Widow but who was perhaps even more invested in their makeshift family than Natasha was. There's Rachel Weisz's Malina, the family matriarch who will prepare her daughters for the real world at any cost, even their emotional well-being. The kingpin of this set is David Harbour's Alexei, "The Red Guardian," a sort of fusion between Mr. Incredible and your drunk uncle. Any one of these characters would be welcome faces in future MCU projects, and all of them are brought to life so vividly by their performers. Harbour's Alexei in particular gives off sparks that don't come as naturally to his more famous role, the somewhat curmudgeonly (but no less endearing) Chief Jim Hopper.

The heart of the film is the map of emotional scars that divide this family. After all, it was this same family that surrendered Natasha as a child to the maw of ruthless assassin life. Given how upstanding and righteous her superhero colleagues are, it's perhaps understandable that Natasha is so disappointed with this family.

The healing required by both the plot and Natasha herself comes from a sensitive performance by Scarlett Johansson. There's something like dignity in the swan song appearance of Johansson's superhero.

Natasha Romanoff has come a long way from the stonewall warrior who only feigns vulnerability to dupe Loki for information. Her strength is no longer in hoodwinking her enemy with clever displays of manufactured emotion. (This in and of itself is an interesting comment on how differently we've come to define female strength since Black Widow's first MCU appearance.) Her battle scars become lifelines right before our eyes. Her moral compass and compassion have become her most powerful weapons.

--The Professor

Comments

The Earthling: Some Observations on "Natural Masculinity"

I’ve talked quite a bit about “toxic masculinity” across his blog, but I want to talk for a moment about a companion subject–“natural masculinity.” I’ve heard several other names and labels assigned to the idea, but the general concept is this idea that men are disposed to behave a certain way and that sOciETy forces them to subjugate this part of themselves. Maybe some of us were raised by someone, or currently live with someone, who buys into these attitudes. Maybe they’re perfectly fine most of the time, but once they meet up with Brian from sophomore year and go out into the mountains for a “weekend with the guys,” a sort of metamorphosis takes place. Jokes that were unacceptable to them become hilarious. Certain transgressions lose their penalty. Gentle Joe kinda mutates into a jerk. This is all propelled and reinforced by the idea that this is how men just are , and that entitles them to certain actions. And who are these women to infringe upon that God-given right? Gladiator (2...

"When Did Disney Get So Woke?!" pt. 1 The Disney of Your Childhood

So, I’m going to put out a somewhat controversial idea here today: The Walt Disney Company has had a tremendous amount of influence in the pop culture landscape, both in recent times and across film history. Further controversy: a lot of people really resent Disney for this. I’ve spent a greater part of this blog’s lifetime tracking this kind of thing. I have only a dozen or so pieces deconstructing the mechanics of these arguments and exposing how baseless these claims tend to be. This sort of thing is never that far from my mind. But my general thoughts on the stigmatization of the Disney fandom have taken a very specific turn in recent times against recent headlines. The Walt Disney Company has had some rather embarrassing box office flops in the last two or three years, and a lot of voices have been eager to link Disney’s recent financial woes to certain choices. Specifically, this idea that Disney has all the sudden “gone woke.” Now,...

"When Did Disney Get So Woke?!" pt. 2 Disney vs the 21st Century

In the first half of this series , we looked at this construction of the Disney image that the company has sold itself on for several decades now. Walt himself saw the purpose of his entertainment enterprise as depiction a happier world than that which he and the audience emerged from, and that formed the basis of his formidable fanbase. But because the larger culture only knows how to discuss these things in the context of consumerism, a lot of intricacies get obscured in the conversation about The Walt Disney Company, its interaction with larger culture, and the people who happily participate in this fandom. Basically, critics spent something like fifty years daring The Walt Disney Company to start being more proactive in how they participated in the multi-culture. And when Disney finally showed up in court to prove its case, the world just did not know what to do ... The 21st Century With the development of the inter...

REVIEW: Mufasa - The Lion King

To get to the point, Disney's new origin story for The Lion King 's Mufasa fails at the ultimate directive of all prequels. By the end of the adventure, you don't actually feel like you know these guys any better. Such has been the curse for nearly Disney's live-action spin-offs/remakes of the 2010s on. Disney supposes it's enough to learn more facts or anecdotes about your favorite characters, but the interview has always been more intricate than all that. There is no catharsis nor identification for the audience during Mufasa's culminating moment of uniting the animals of The Pridelands because the momentum pushing us here has been carried by cliche, not archetype. Director Barry Jenkins' not-so-secret weapon has always been his ability to derive pathos from lyrical imagery, and he does great things with the African landscape without stepping into literal fantasy. This is much more aesthetically interestin...

REVIEW: ONWARD

The Walt Disney Company as a whole seems to be in constant danger of being overtaken by its own cannibalistic tendency--cashing in on the successes of their past hits at the expense of creating the kinds of stories that merited these reimaginings to begin with. Pixar, coming fresh off a decade marked by a deluge of sequels, is certainly susceptible to this pattern as well. Though movies like Inside Out and Coco have helped breathe necessary life into the studio, audiences invested in the creative lifeblood of the studio should take note when an opportunity comes for either Disney or Pixar animation to flex their creative muscles. This year we'll have three such opportunities between the two studios. [EDIT: Okay, maybe not. Thanks, Corona.] The first of these, ONWARD directed by Dan Scanlon, opens this weekend and paints a hopeful picture of a future where Pixar allows empathetic and novel storytelling to gui...

Meet Me in St. Louis: The Melancholy Window of Nostalgia

I don’t usually post reviews for television shows, but it feels appropriate to start today’s discussion with my reaction to Apple TV+’s series, Schmigadoon! If you’re not familiar with the series, it follows a couple who are looking to reclaim the spark of their fading romance. While hiking in the mountains, they get lost and stumble upon a cozy village, Schmigadoon, where everyone lives like they’re in the middle of an old school musical film. She’s kinda into it, he hates it, but neither of them can leave until they find true love like that in the classic movie musicals. I appreciated the series’ many homages to classical musical films. And I really loved the show rounding up musical celebrities like Aaron Tveit and Ariana Debose. Just so, I had an overall muddled response to the show. Schmigadoon! takes it as a given that this town inherits the social mores of the era in which the musicals that inspired this series were made, and that becomes the basis of not only the show...

Investigating Nostalgia - Featuring "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Pokemon: Detective Pikachu"

The 1700’s and the age of exploration saw a massive swell of people leaving their homelands for an extended period or even for life. From this explosion of displacement emerged a new medical phenomenon. Travelers were diagnosed with excessive irritability, loss of productivity, and even hallucinations. The common denominator among those afflicted was an overwhelming homesickness. Swiss physician Johannes Hofer gave a name to this condition. The name combines the Latin words algos , meaning “pain” or “distress,” and nostos , meaning “homecoming,” to create the word nostalgia . Appleton's Journal, 23 May 1874, describes the affliction: Sunset Boulevard (1950) “The nostalgic loses his gayety, his energy, and seeks isolation in order to give himself up to the one idea that pursues him, that of his country. He embellishes the memories attached to places where he was brought up, and creates an ideal world where his imagination revels with an obstinate persistence.” Contempora...

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

Recall with me, if you will, the scene in Hollywood December 2016. We were less than a year away from #MeToo, and the internet was keenly aware of Hollywood’s suffocating influence on its females on and off screen but not yet sure what to do about it. Enter Morten Tyldum’s film Passengers , a movie which, despite featuring the two hottest stars in Hollywood at the apex of their fame, was mangled by internet critics immediately after take-off. A key piece of Passengers ’ plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who prematurely awakens from a century-long hibernation and faces a lifetime of solitude adrift in outer space; rather than suffer through a life of loneliness, he eventually decides to deliberately awaken another passenger, Aurora Lane, condemning her to his same fate. So this is obviously a film with a moral dilemma at its center. Morten Tyldum, direc...

REVIEW: Encanto

It was around Disney's 50th animated feature, Tangled , that this critic first came into film discourse. A lot has changed within the House of Mouse in the years since, and we now find ourselves the recipient of the Disney canon's 60th feature film, Encanto , directed by Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Charise Castro Smith. What does this latest entry contribute to the library? Turns out, quite a bit. Nestled in their enchanted house, Casita, the Madrigal family dazzles their community with their fantastical gifts. Elegant Isabella makes flowers grow in her footsteps, young Antonio chats it up with the local wildlife, and Mirabel ... wishes she had a gift like the rest of her family. It's hard to feel important when you're the only one in your family without a superpower, especially with your grandmother constantly shoving you into the corner. But all is not right in paradise. The magic is fading from Casita, and Mirabel is the only one who can keep her f...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Do Clementine and Joel Stay Together or Not?

Maybe. The answer is maybe. Not wanting to be that guy who teases a definitive answer to a difficult question and forces you to read a ten-page essay only to cop-out with a non-committal excuse of an answer, I’m telling you up and front the answer is maybe. Though nations have long warred over this matter of great importance, the film itself does not answer once and for all whether or not Joel Barrish and Clementine Krychinzki find lasting happiness together at conclusion of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Min d. I cannot give a definitive answer as to whether Joel and Clementine’s love will last until the stars turn cold or just through the weekend. This essay cannot do that. What this essay can do is explore the in-text evidence the film gives for either ...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog