{"id":8955,"date":"2024-11-27T12:58:13","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T17:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8955"},"modified":"2024-11-27T12:58:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T17:58:13","slug":"black-widow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/27\/black-widow\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Widow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Black Widow<\/strong> (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Disney\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 134 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence\/action, some language, thematic material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Cate Shortland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Eric Pearson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lorne Balfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 9, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, Ray Winstone, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ever Anderson, Violet McGraw.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $183.7M (US)\/$379.8M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve long since learned not to set my expectations too high when it comes to movies I\u2019ve been waiting a long time to see. If I learned anything from The Phantom Menace and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it\u2019s to keep expectations at medium. Fans waited 16 and 19 years respectively for them to be realized. That\u2019s a long time for anticipation and excitement to build up. I doubt any movie could have lived up to the high, high hopes of fired-up filmgoers eagerly awaiting new chapters in their favorite franchises. It\u2019s just one of those things. It\u2019s best to go in hoping for a pretty good movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Black Widow<\/strong>, the first installment of Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was originally slated for release in May 2020. It was delayed due to COVID-19. It wouldn\u2019t see the inside of theaters for more than a year (fourteen months to be exact). That\u2019s long enough, but I\u2019ve been waiting for it for some time. Black Widow aka Natasha Romanoff, the character played by Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World), is the most overlooked Avenger of the bunch. I\u2019ve long felt she deserved her own movie, ever since her introduction in Iron Man 2. A former KGB assassin who defected to the West to join S.H.I.E.L.D., I knew there had to be an interesting backstory. ANYWAY, I was thrilled when Black Widow<\/strong> was announced. I also knew NOT to expect an epic along the lines of Avengers: Endgame. I mean, how do your surpass that? You don\u2019t! That being said, Black Widow<\/strong> is exactly what I expected, pretty good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Set just after the big airfield battle in Captain America: Civil War, Natasha is a fugitive for violating the Sokovia Accords. After successfully eluding S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, she goes to a safehouse in Norway where she unknowingly receives an important package from her \u201csister\u201d Yelena (Pugh, Midsommar). Perhaps I ought to backtrack a bit. As children circa 1995, Natasha and Yelena were part of a team of Russian spies sent to America to pose as a family so the \u201cfather\u201d (Harbour, Stranger Things) could steal intel from S.H.I.E.L.D. His name is Alexei, but he\u2019s better known in his home country as Red Guardian, Russia\u2019s answer to Captain America. Upon achieving his objective, they all flee the country. They\u2019re met in Cuba by his boss Dreykov (Winstone, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) who immediately recruits the children into the Black Widow training program. It\u2019s during this period that the \u201csisters\u201d go their separate ways. Natasha joined the Avengers while Yelena remained a Black Widow assassin.<\/p>\n

\u00a0During her final mission as a Black Widow, Yelena is exposed to Red Dust, a chemical substance that releases Widows from mind control. Having regained her senses, she sends vials of the Red Dust to Natasha hoping she will help end the program, free the other girls and take down the man in charge, Dreykov. What this means is an uneasy \u201cfamily\u201d reunion with each other and their \u201cparents\u201d. After breaking their \u201cfather\u201d out of prison, they hook up with their \u201cmother\u201d Melina (Weisz, The Mummy). Needless to say, their reuniting isn\u2019t cause for celebration. The girls have a few matters to hash out before they team up one more time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow<\/strong> is more like a spy movie than a superhero movie with elements of James Bond, Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible combined with big action set-pieces befitting the MCU. It even has a Talking Villain with an irresistible urge to explain his entire operation to Natasha\/Black Widow even though it\u2019s been the downfall of many a Bond baddie. He also has an unbeatable henchman named Taskmaster, a costumed killing machine with the ability to mimic the fighting styles of any and all opponents. Unfortunately, Dreykov isn\u2019t all that memorable a bad guy. He\u2019s like one of the lesser Bond villains, the ones that don\u2019t come up in conversations about the best Bond nemeses. He has an evil plan for world domination, but he never comes off as a real threat. There\u2019s no sense of urgency behind his plan. He\u2019s just too basic.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Johansson is great as usual, no surprise there. There\u2019s something innately bad ass about her. I can\u2019t think of an actress better suited to play Natasha\/Black Widow. HOWEVER, the real stand-out in Black Widow<\/strong> is Pugh. She absolutely crushes it as Yelena, the one bearing the biggest scars from her \u201cfamily\u2019s\u201d troubled history. She resents Natasha for leaving her behind after her defection to be used as a tool for a corrupt government organization.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In addition to telling the titular heroine\u2019s backstory, Black Widow<\/strong> is also a passing of the torch so to speak. Without giving too much away, we will be seeing plenty more of Pugh in future Marvel projects. Harbour adds comic relief as a braggart of a hero who finds himself at a loss when trying to bond with his angry daughters. Weisz is also good as the \u201cmother\u201d whose whereabouts were unknown to her \u201cdaughters\u201d for 21 years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll grant that Black Widow<\/strong> has a few pacing issues. It slows down when the attention shifts to family matters. It\u2019s talkier than the average Marvel movie. However, the action scenes really make up for the lost time. Although they\u2019re CGI, they rock. The finale on an airborne secret facility is especially cool. All in all, I have to say Black Widow<\/strong> is a nice way to kick off the next phase in the MCU. Be sure to stay through the credits for an end scene that won\u2019t make a lot of sense if you haven\u2019t yet watched The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+. Even so, Black Widow<\/strong> is a high-flying good time at the movies.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Widow (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Disney\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 134 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence\/action, some language, thematic material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Cate Shortland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Eric Pearson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Lorne Balfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 9, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, Ray Winstone, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ever Anderson, Violet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Black-Widow-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8955"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9289,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8955\/revisions\/9289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}