You can find out some thoughts on Black Widow already over in the 10 Minute Marvel podcast. Because, of course I was going to talk about it there, but Marvel is back and that warrants writing up a review of the newest movie, Black Widow. I probably should have been doing this for the shows as well, but the podcasts covered that weekly for a long time.

Black Widow Spoilers Ahead

As that says, there are going to be spoilers ahead of this film. If you are interested in seeing, I suggest going to a theater to see it, if you can, or checking it out over on Disney+ with their premiere access. That should give you some idea if I like it, but you can make that determination yourself.

The Plot

The Black Widow, it has a pretty straight forward plot. In the movie, we start immediately after the events of Civil War and the battle at the German airport. Black Widow is on the run and using some of her contacts to find a place to lay low. She finds a spot, but a delivery of mail from her old safe house in Budapest brings unwanted attention from the Taskmaster and the Red Room. This is because Yelena, who was under a drug induced mind control by the Red Room was given a drug that caused her to break free.

Black Widow goes to Budapest where she teams up with Yelena. Natasha finds out that when she was there last time and she thought she took down the red room, she hadn’t. The man she’d been trying to kill, to prove her loyalty to SHIELD, Dreykov had survived. And he was still running the Red Room and the widow program.

Yelena and Natasha go to Siberia to break their “father”, who had played their father when they were undercover in the US, out of prison. Alexei, the Red Guardian, was the Soviet’s answer to Captain America. Their own super soldier. He, unfortunately doesn’t have any connection to the Red Room anymore. But he knows that their mother from their time undercover, Melina, likely does.

They go to her, she does indeed and that gets them into the Red Room. Though, not the way that they had planned, being captured, instead, by the agents of Dreykov. However, it turns out that Natasha and Melina had hatched out a plan. They swapped faces, and Natasha was able to get her revenge and take down the Red Room. Along the way finding out that Taskmaster was Dreykov’s daughter, whom she had used to find Dreykov and thought she’d killed originally in Budapest.

What I Didn’t Like

Now, that was a pretty long winded recap. Normally I sum this up better, especially for something that has a straight forward plot, but I wanted to explain things up there for the plot, versus down in what I did and didn’t like.

The main thing that I didn’t like was the use of Taskmaster. There is little to no reason that Taskmaster needed to be turned into a cyborg, basically, or that they even needed Taskmaster for the plot. Natasha has enough past trauma to go through with taking down the Red Room to get closure that you don’t need a notable villain besides Dreykov. And then Taskmaster ends up getting deprogrammed and set free. But what does that even look like? She isn’t going to behave like a normal person in the real world.

But, honestly, that’s about it that I didn’t like. Now, keep in mind, I am talking about likes and didn’t like, not good, bad and average. Average is going to be everything else.

What I Liked

I thought that Florence Pugh was amazing in this. Her portrayal of Yelena really worked and she was the main reason to watch this movie. And with the end credit scene, is the main reason to have watched this movie. She just worked really well as a jaded figure who was out of the Red Rooms control, but doesn’t know how to live. Yelena is a good counter point to Black Widow. She is fairly jaded with everything, and harbors resentment but now has new freedom.

And then that End Credits scene. Florence Pugh is going to be showing up in the Hawkeye TV show. So it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. Clearly going to be a continuation of that end credit scene. Also, this was supposed to be the first time we met Val. I actually think it works much better that we met Val in Falcon and the Winter Soldier before we met her here. It gives us more context for her and makes this scene play better.

I also like David Harbour as the Red Guardian. He was mainly there for comic relief and to do a bit of fighting. But that worked for the film. It needed someone who could help balance out what would have been a very serious and dark movie. Marvel does a good job of adding characters who help keep their films from diving too dark, which I like. A good superhero movie should have that balance, because the comics have that balance, at least from Marvel and DC.

Finally, I liked the balance that it got. This is the type of spy action film that I want. Now, I know I’m in the minority, but I felt like the previous Marvel attempt, Captain America: Winter Soldier, got caught being half a spy movie and half a superhero movie and not doing either amazingly well. This is more of the spy action movie that I like. Now, I know that people will disagree, but for me, that’s how I feel about it.

Black Widow Final Thoughts

Like I said before the spoilers started, this is a movie that is very much worth checking out. The action is really good throughout. I feel like it has some Bond elements to it. It actually has some direct parallels to Moonraker. A Bond Film that I haven’t seen in a long time, if ever. But now I want to watch it. The action is really good and it balances that level of humor and seriousness really well. I am excited to see more Yelena in the MCU.

This, isn’t a Top 10 Marvel movie for me, but probably Top 15. And I really only have a three or four that I don’t think are good movies. So Top 15 is a really enjoyable movie still. Where does it rank in the Marvel movies for you?

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