We’re at a point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where when a film is set matters as much as where. Past MCU outings have planted flags in 1942, 1995, 2023, and everywhere in between. More to the point, who’s alive (not to mention who’s on speaking terms) varies with each jump across the timeline. So when an adventure is set can tell the audience plenty before the story’s even started.
Black Widow, then, is set very deliberately after the events of Captain America: Civil War (or most of them, anyway). The story seizes on a time when Natasha Romanoff had just witnessed the break-up of one found family, as the Avengers split over the Sokovia accords. Their divide makes it even harder for her to process the break-up of another — a group of undercover Russian spies she lived with as a child a la The Americans.
The juxtaposition is smart. Romanoff’s first solo flick (despite the character’s 2010 debut) centers more on her Eastern Bloc spy family than her superheroic one, but both are at issue here. When we catch up with Natasha in Black Widow, she’s sunken back into her old cynicism and rediscovered a certain loneliness and dissatisfaction after the breakdown of Shield and, eventually, the superhero group that gave her a sense of belonging. The sting of that loss makes it easier for her to reject her old family as invalid, a judgment aided by the fact that this one was originally forced on her by malevolent authorities.
Natasha must confront those feelings, though, when a piece of her past rears its ugly head. It turns out the villainous General Dreykov, who ran the Red Room program which abused Natasha and hundreds like her, is still at large. To find him and stop his machinations once and for all, Black Widow must reconnect with her sister, Yelena, a fellow “alumna” of the program, and seek out her parents: Alexei, a defamed former super soldier, and Milena, herself a seasoned spy in the mold Natasha would eventually fill.
"Did anyone remember to make paprikash?"
Along the way, Romanoff’s lingering issues with both families spill out. It feels funny to say when the other blockbuster du jour is the latest scrap of burnt rubber from The Fast and the Furious franchise, but Black Widow is genuinely about family, in whatever form it may take.
The movie accomplishes plenty otherwise: paying homage to spy flicks of old, using the chance for liberation to close a loop that began in Age of Ultron, and giving the title character a true swan song after her death in Endgame. But at its core, Black Widow is about navigating those kin relationships — mother, father, sister, brother-in-arms — and what makes them truly real.
The strongest element of Black Widow, and likewise the most enjoyable part of the movie, is how lived-in the relationships between Natasha and her would-be sister, mom, and dad seem. Yelena makes cracks about Black Widow’s “posing” while smarting at the way her sibling brushes off the best years of her life. Alexei tells amusing-yet-rambling dad stories and spins apocryphal tales of the good old days, while harboring genuine attachment to “his girls.” Milena has a grim matter-of-factness about her life and her work, but admires Natasha’s emotional strength despite the wringer of the Red Room.
The old spooks bicker. They joke. They cry. They fight. They hug. They fight some more. Amid all the superheroic happenings that comprise the standard block and tackle of Marvel movies, the four of them feel like a real family. The espionage-related hang-ups complicate their dynamic, but in a fashion that plays like an outsized version of true-to-life familial issues. Black Widow’s best moments aren’t when the film delivers its studio-mandated dose of action or ties into the broader MCU, but rather when it’s a funny yet sincere kitchen sink drama about parents and children reuniting amid the mingling of bad blood and warm memories.
"She broke it!" "No she did!"
Of course, this is still a Marvel movie, so director Cate Shortland doles out plenty of intense fight scenes, daring escapes, and fiery explosions. The style of combat will be familiar to anyone who saw Romanoff throw hands in The Winter Soldier, a movie which Black Widow takes plenty of cues from. To wit, there’s a mysterious masked super solider-type, named Taskmaster, haunting our hero. This brute, like Bucky before him, is also deployed by shadowy forces and hinted to be subject to the same dastardly abuse and conditioning that Natasha herself suffered, complicating the combat.
Along the way, though, the movie pulls as much from the outsized plots of old school James Bond flicks and the shaky-cam intensity of Jason Bourne movies as it does the MCU’s own past successes. The dust-ups suffer from the same rapid cut, random geography that most high-octane fight movies do these days. But Shortland and company do put together some exciting set pieces, suffused without enough humor and tension to punctuate the pugilism. The third act does become overstuffed with such fireworks, lessening the catharsis amid the umpteenth explosive set piece. Still, while not revolutionary, the head-bashing and bullet fire are ably sprinkled in and give Black Widow an appropriately ass-kicking exit from the uber-franchise.
Commendably, the script (penned by Eric Pearson based on a story by Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson) also gets the Black Widow character. The dialogue preserves her wry, laconic demeanor, which masks a deeper pain and guilt underneath. Her more subdued affect clicks nicely with strong performances from Florence Pugh, David Harbour, and Rachel Weisz, who are more direct and expressive than the traditionally close-to-the-vest Romanoff. Scarlett Johansson does get a chance to emote when it counts, and Natasha is able to wipe a little more red from her ledger. But those moments have more force given her the character’s reserved presence and reluctance to embrace her ersatz mother, father, and young sibling.
"Go! Bring me all the Halloween candy in the whole neighborhood!"
Along the way, Black Widow is still apt to keep nudniks talking until she hears what she needs. She still knows how to deploy a combat hurricanrana like nobody’s business. And by the end, she shows off the relentless determination mixed with unassuming empathy that made the character an indelible part of the Marvel family, and ultimately her own.
So much of Black Widow hinges on that notion. The mission at the center of the film is a familiar one: stop the latest evil goon, break his power over the vulnerable, right what went wrong in fiery splendor. But now, Natasha’s story is steeped in questions of whether this quest might allow her to repair her connection to one family, with the unspoken hope that it might help her to do the same for another.
The movie jumps back to before Black Widow’s grand sacrifice in Endgame because the character had unfinished business, both in-universe and in a more metatextual sense. The string of emotional notes she’d played to that point hadn’t quite coalesced into a melody. Her long-awaited solo outing rectifies that, giving Natasha Romanoff a satisfying last ride in the MCU, and in the process, resolves her place in more than one important family.
