Black Widow

Details: MPAA Rating: PG-13

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz

Release Date: July 9, 2021

Pros: It's been almost 2 years since our last Marvel movie and so needless to say, I had high expectations for Black Widow. After almost 20 years of Marvel content being rolled out, there are certain things that an average movie-goer expects. Similar to most Marvel movies, Black Widow has solid action sequences, chuckle-worthy humor (although sometimes too much humor), and a decent enough pace for the movie. In terms of acting, with the star-studded cast presented, the acting was expected to be good and luckily it delivered on this. The stand-out role was by far Florence Pugh's character Yelena who is a welcome addition to the Marvel universe. Unfortunately, that's about where the pros end.

Cons: As mentioned before, Marvel movies have a certain standard to live up to. When it comes to any Marvel movie nowadays I expect something fresh and original. Unfortunately, Black Widow is ultimately a cliche spy-thriller. The plot is fairly predictable which is uncommon for Marvel movies. In terms of the script, while humor has always been a strong point of the MCU, Black Widow takes it too far and overshadows the important emotional moments needed in the film. The heartfelt moments need to be balanced out with the humor and Black Widow fails to find that balance. This leads to the other big problem with the film which is its characters. While the acting was solid throughout the movie, I truly did not care about any of the characters. I felt no danger for Black Widow as we have already seen her die in Endgame so we know nothing bad is going to happen to her in the movie. As for the other members of Black Widow's family, as an audience, there is not enough time spent with these family members to care about them. Anytime a potentially emotional connection is brought up, it is undercut by a bad joke or David Harbour singing a song (which does actually happen a few times in the film.) Don't even get me started on the villain. While normally I try not to compare movies to their source material, I can't help but fall back on the comics in which these characters are their best. Taskmaster in the comics is a formidable, brutal villain, able to memorize anybody's fighting technique and use it against them. In the movie, Taskmaster is more of a lame servant of the actual villain in the movie, a fat Russian. Both of these villains are not scary, have honestly no real motivation, and are huge letdowns. Finally, the CGI in this film can be downright atrocious in some of the shots in Black Widow. This is extremely disappointing especially when comparing the terrible CGI in this film to the phenomenal CGI in films like Guardians of the Galaxy or Infinity War. Ultimately, I was waiting for the film to be over and was relieved when it was.

Star Rating: 5/10

Final Thoughts: On its own, Black Widow is a decent movie, but comparing it to the rest of the MCU, Black Widow proves to be painfully mediocre with un-compelling characters, weak villains, no real emotional connections, and shoddy CGI. The rest of Phase 4 in the MCU can honestly only go up from here.