As a fellow critic put it to me after our Black Widow screening, the movie is “too little, too late,” and that really is the perfect summation of this latest Marvel outing. Introduced in 2010’s Iron Man 2, Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) has been a consistent presence in the MCU, but while her contemporaries got solo movies, she was consistently relegated to a supporting player with Marvel constantly promising that she would get her own movie in due course. Then she died in Avengers: Endgame. Now we have an awkward prequel of sorts that claims to fill in Natasha’s backstory, but really is more of a showcase for her little sister (and likely future holder of the “Black Widow” mantle), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). Yes, we do learn about Natasha’s origins, but there’s a curious, Natasha-shaped hole in Black Widow. Her arc is painfully thin, and it makes Black Widow feel more interested in the character as a brand to be continued than a hero that people, and especially women (as the only female member of the original Avengers), could admire.

After a prologue recounting some of Natasha’s childhood (along with awkward opening credits that not only tip the film’s hand at a later reveal, but also use a cloyingly sad cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), the story picks up in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War. Natasha is on the run from General Ross (William Hurt, who has found the easiest paycheck of his career by showing up for five minutes and looking gruff) and looking to lay low when she gets a package from her long-lost sister Yelena. However, the package is also being tracked by the nefarious Taskmaster, a masked soldier whose moves can mimic anyone, but for the film’s purposes, mimics Avengers. The package puts the sisters in the crosshairs of the evil puppet master Dreykov (Ray Winstone sporting an accent that I think is supposed to be Russian but sounds more like he’s from the Bronx), so they call in the help of their former surrogate parents Melina (Rachel Weisz) and Alexei/Red Guardian (David Harbour), Russia’s super-soldier answer to Captain America, to bring down the infamous Red Room (the place where Dreykov makes his black widows), once and for all.

Image via Marvel Studios

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You can see the faintest outline of the character arc intended for Natasha with this movie in that it’s ostensibly about family. In the aftermath of Civil War, Natasha had lost the Avengers, the only family she had ever known, and that probably would have hit differently had this movie come out in 2016 or 2017 rather than in 2021 (or 2020, the film’s originally intended release year before COVID hit) when the character had already died in Endgame. But as a concept—Natasha loses her Avengers family and regains the family from her childhood—isn’t bad, especially when you’ve got such strong chemistry between the four actors, and especially between Johansson and Pugh with Pugh bringing perfect “bratty little sister” energy to the proceedings. For a film that looks to rely on this family dynamic, Black Widow is a fairly enjoyable experience.

The problem is that this family stuff, and especially Yelena, is largely crowding out Natasha taking a lead role in her own movie. The movie rarely takes a moment to even settle before Natasha is thrust back into a new mission and that mission involves Yelena, but we never really get to understand where Natasha is coming from. The film is filled with markers of Natasha facing herself (the arrival of her family, the involvement of other Black Widows, the fact that Taskmaster’s ability is basically a “mirror” of its enemy), but little introspection from the character. In this way, Black Widow creates more of the outline of Natasha than delving into her character and challenging her in such a way that it creates a kind of personal growth, albeit a growth that would feel somewhat underwhelming given that she’s now dead.

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Image via Marvel Studios

As a Marvel movie, Black Widow feels like it ranks near the bottom of the MCU. While it’s still funny (Marvel movies know how to do comedy) and has some okay action scenes (there’s nothing here that’s particularly memorable, including one climatic showdown that feels like it should be electric and instead feels rote and mechanical), the whole endeavor plays as largely perfunctory. Fans consistently demanded a Black Widow solo movie, Marvel dragged its feet, and now it’s finally here as some half-formed thing that’s part origin for Natasha but also an origin for Yelena. Imagine if they had never made any Captain America movies and then after Endgame they finally made one where it’s Cap handing the shield off to Bucky and you can see how rushed and shallow Black Widow plays.

The surprising thing is that Black Widow almost pulls it off because Yelena is so charming! If you can set aside any affinity towards Natasha and what the MCU owes her narrative, then you have a shiny new character that’s will likely establish herself as a new fan-favorite. Pugh has been crushing it in movies for years now, and she’s terrific as Yelena. At the very least, we know that when Yelena inevitably takes over the title of “Black Widow”, she’ll have a different spin on the hero than Johansson, which makes the future bright for the character even if this solo movie doesn’t have much interest in doing justice to the present.

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Image via Marvel Studios

While the family dynamic is fun and the mission is standard Marvel fare, Black Widow ultimately feels like it’s telling the wrong story, but it has no choice given where it falls in the MCU timeline. Had this movie come out in the mid-2010s, they still could have gone the prequel route but told the story about Budapest and her fateful meeting with Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). We know that’s an important turning point in her life, and it would have been cool to see how it unfolded and changed her direction from hired assassin to S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Instead, the story we’re getting is more of a backdoor pilot for the Yelena Belova show. I can only hope Marvel does better by Yelena than they did by Natasha.

Rating: C+

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