Film Review: Black Widow is Like Driving a Brand New Tesla

with The Two Front Tires Missing

It Will Leave You Empty

Well. It’s finally here, the much anticipated and long overdue film, by about four years, Black Widow. Was it worth the wait? Well, it all depends on who you ask, fans of the Black Widow, fans of The Avengers, or just the average consumer of comic book movies in general. For the die-hard fan, you probably will consume the film, warts and all, not question the shear flagrant plot holes, and will more than likely add it to your collection of Marvel films to complete the less than perfect set. They will see it as a perfect movie from start to finish even though it was not by a very wide margin. They will ignore or overlook certain aspects of the film because Natasha Romanoff played by Scarlett Johansson, can do no wrong. For the general consumer though, they will view it as just an okay film where there is no forward movement with the story and that it will either signals to them that The Avengers is definitely done or that this will definitely close out the chapter on the book of Marvel. But as the saying goes, Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. This movie is like buying a brand new Tesla, you love that new car smell but something is wrong. You get out and look around and find that that new Tesla is missing the front tires. You get back in and drive it anyway and find it difficult in steering and difficult watching it.

With a running time of two hours and thirteen minutes, this film was directed by Cate Shortland, whose resume is light on filming big-budget tent pole movies. In addition to Scarlett Johansson, we are also introduced to new characters, Yalena Belova, Natasha’s fake sister, played by Florence Pugh, Alexi, Natasha’s fake father, played by David Harbour, Melina, Natasha’s fake mother, played by Rachel Weisz and Dreykov played by Ray Winstone. He’s a characterization of a pseudo-Harvey Weinstein. There are other ancillaries characters, O-T Fagbenle as Mason who plays Natasha’s cuck friend who goes beyond the call of duty to satisfy her material need while stuck in a perpetual masturbatory state of denial, Violet McGraw as the younger version of Yalena, and Ever Anderson as the younger version of Natasha. Now if Ever Anderson looks strangely familiar to you, well, that is because she is the daughter of Resident Evil icon, Milla Jovovich.

What was this film about? It was supposed to be the back story of who Natasha Romanoff is or was. Following the death of Natasha in Avengers Endgame, we finally get to explore who this person was. In earlier iterations of The Avengers, we got to see the evolution into Natasha’s past life of how she became this precision killer drone as she was trained at a young age to become this agent of death who mindlessly followed orders. However, in this telling of Natasha’s back story, we see none of that early childhood indoctrination. In this iteration, there is a scene in the car as they were fleeing from their home to escape S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, a music selection is played in the car, Don McLean’s American Pie, that I predict would come back as a plot point later in the movie. Following their escape to Cuba, Dreykov is waiting for them. Alexi and Melina follow their orders and comply with Dreykov and watch as Natasha and Yelena are tranquilized and carried off unconscious by guards to be indoctrinated into the Black Widow program. We get a 20-year time jump from there.

In this timeline, it takes place right after Captain America: Civil War. Natasha is on the run after fleeing America to avoid getting arrested for violating the Sokovian Accords. She makes her way back to some nondescript Ukraine substitute country. There are lots of expositions in this film that are rather ho-hum in the telling. Melvin, the cuck friend, and supplier of goods and wares, is the requisite friend who can’t have any benefits from Natasha. He’s the eunuch of this film and not by choice. Scarlett Johansson talked about her role in the MCU as being a sexualization. Well, the way she used her sexuality to manipulate him seems to work in her favor when it’s convenient, and isn’t that’s just how the world works anyway?

After the marginal teasing ends with Melvin, Natasha heads into town to refill a gas can to refuel her generator. This is the moment we get to see Taskmaster in action and it really wasn’t worth the wait. Prior to this, we saw the family escaping from S.H.I.E.L.D. from a private runway by airplane and in another scene, we get to see Yelena doing some street fighting with a former Widow. The fight sequence between Natasha and Taskmaster can be best described as Captain America very light. Taskmaster throws a shield like Cap, flips it off the ground like Cap, and deflects bullets like Cap. By the way, that’s a guy in the outfit, not a woman. Guys move a certain way like women move a certain way and this is a guy doing the stunts. Natasha escapes and discovers a package from Yelena that was sent to her. Natasha has not bothered to open let alone look at what was left behind from Budapest. The fight with Taskmaster was about that package.

At this point, this is shaping up to be an unremarkable film. It’s a by the numbers movie. Yelena and Natasha finally met up, they spar for a moment for some reason only known to them but the audience is left out. The other mind-controlled Black Widows, also known as Disney+ assassins, rain down on them, they get away and it’s more by the numbers stuff. One Black Widow Disney+ assassin is injured but she kills herself before Yelena can administer the antidote to reverse Dreykov’s mind control hold on them. Ugh, this is laborious.

We now do the prison scene where we find Alexi being incarcerated. They sneak in a communication device through a toy. Alexi places it in his ear and they instruct him where he needs to go to escape. Here is the thing though, Alexi is a super-soldier. He has the strength to knock down concrete walls. So why hadn’t he just break out earlier and why hadn’t the prison system do a better job of restraining him with external devices? When you start to ask questions while you’re watching a film, other questions start to rise. Why were the helicopter windows appear to be bulletproof but the fuselage was not? Judging by the size of the caliber of weapon that the prison system was using, shouldn’t there have been more damage to the helicopter window by showing the windows being shattered? Yelena or at least the writer steals a joke from Deadpool when he talks about the hackneyed derivative superhero landing as she criticizes Natasha’s superhero landing, a landing by the way that was criticized in an article leading up to the movie release as also being sexualized. How do you sexualize a superhero landing when both men and women did it?

Fast forward and Natasha and company reunite with Melina, who by the way, is the architect of the Black Widow Disney+ assassin mind control program. Nothing detrimental happens to Melina. She pays no consequences for creating a program that enslaves women. Are we going to just overlook this bit of criminality because she’s female? There is a lot more exposition in this section as well as past history is explored and it comes off like a starving man being fed empty calories. The Tesla rear wheels are starting to wobble a bit now. Feelings are hurt, Yelena runs off to a bedroom followed by Alexi leaving Natasha and Melina to continue with, alas, more talk about their feelings and the whereabouts of the Red Room and Dreykov. In the bedroom, as predicted, the American Pie song is brought back up by Alexi who sings it for sentimental reasons for fake dad to reconnect with fake daughter and for Yelena to reconnect to happier moments as a child. In a routine plot turn, a team of mind-controlled Black Widows Disney+ assassins are on their way to capture them per Melina’s notifying the Red Room of their arrival.

Fast forward a few scenes later and Natasha is face to face with Dreykov and Taskmaster. Taskmaster is revealed to be a woman even though Taskmaster in the previous scenes is a man. You can really tell the difference between to two after they do the reveal as the actress's physique doesn’t fill out the suit like the stunt actor and her walk is lacking any confidence in the strides. This Taskmaster is Dreykov’s daughter played by Olga Kurylenko who looks like an opioid user. Taskmaster is a defined character in the comics. Dreykov’s daughter, Antonio, was a missed opportunity to make her character unique as a survivor of a failed assassin bent on revenge. Do you then have to ask yourself why was she here in the first place if this was all the screen time they were going to give her? But she’s only there for the plot point for Natasha to feel guilty for maiming her after a failed attempt at killing Dreykov as she too is a Disney+ assassin. Black Widow Disney+ assassins don’t really kill as they really maim you and are forgiven for their transgressions and Machiavellian approach to world domination and mind-controlling dolls.

Every man in this production falls into one category, he’s either a cuck, stupid, or a bad guy. Alexi, for the most part, is stupid. His prison inmates are stupid. His guards are bad. The men who guard over the Black Widow Disney+ assassins are bad and why are they needed if the Black Widow Disney+ assassins are supposed to be such badasses? Ross is technically bad and used sparingly. Dreykov is the ultimate bad being in that he kidnaps little girls and places them in indentured servitude. Men with any worth about them have become fiction and an endangered species in Hollywood these days as the agenda takes over more and more.

That Tesla is about to lose that left rear tire as we get the double-double cross orchestrated by Melina. This was not a surprise. The mind-controlled Black Widows Disney+ assassins of nine women attack a solitary Natasha with difficulty until they finally get the upper hand by surrounding her and beating her up. Yelena comes to the rescue by using a small explosive charge to set off the antidote to reverse the mind control effects. Dreykov is killed off, Taskmaster gets the antidote treatment, everything is tied up in a neat bow but with questions. What happened with Ross and Natasha after everybody scattered? Fade to credits and the end credit scene where Yelena is at Natasha’s grave. Here is the problem with that. Is there a body in the grave? We never saw anyone recover Natasha’s BODY. We saw Tony Stark’s funeral but nothing with Natasha. We also see the return of Valentina played by Julia-Louis Dreyfuss, last seen in The Falcon and Winter Soldier. It was at that point that this movie felt like a TV show. This scene felt like it was added on like yesterday. It felt so out of place. It may have been a bad move to end the movie on that note.

The marketing for this film has been horrendous. There have been articles on the topic with Scarlett Johansson of sexualization, being underpaid, undervalued, and just being a victim with some of the comments coming from her. What she said came like a punch to the gut to her fans who have always supported her character. It was her fans who wanted to see her in her own standalone film long before the atrocious ill-received Captain Marvel. What they got instead was an actress whose perspective was from journalist who had agendas and woke points to fill and she politely obliged them. She talked about her role in Iron Man 2 that introduced the character. She misquoted what Tony had said about her. As she put it, she stated that Tony said “I want some”. She was in the film, how could she get it so wrong? What he said was “I want one.” Because she got it wrong, now it’s out there when a quick YouTube search would have found what was said. But that is the pattern, burn down the legacy, set all the goodwill ablaze that was established.

I’m still, trying to wrap my head around how she felt like the character was sexualized? There is footage of her walking back in forth in her outfit on the set of Iron Man 2 in front of the crew. There was nobody holding any weapon on her as she flaunted herself back and forth. Didn’t she study who the character was? Natasha Romanoff was a femme fatale. In all of the MCU films where Natasha was presented, she never showed any significant cleavage or was placed in any compromising position that would warrant any type of scrutiny. As far as being underpaid, she was paid $15 million dollars with another $6 million bonus should the film reach $900 million. Everyone is talking about white male privilege but she is an elitist with white female privilege. Her media blitz has very little to do about promoting her film but more about pushing an agenda. When asked about those divisive issues, she could have easily punted those topics down the field and only talk about the film.

These agenda-driven journalists don’t remember film history when it comes to female roles. Jennifer Garner was the first woman in the MCU with the role of Elektra. They don’t talk about Sara Conner, Ellen Ripley, Buffy Summers, or even Jessica Jones, a well-written character with plenty of flaws just like Buffy. Black Widow Disney+ assassin supposedly passed the so-called Bechdel Test, a made-up test derived from a cartoon dealing with feminism. All of these agendas is starting to ruin the quality of films and what can and cannot be represented. Maybe someone should create another test on how men are treated in films these days? Are they more stupid than the Three Stooges? Are they eviler than Charles Manson kicking puppies? How sexless is the man when he’s the lone man on an island full of Tik Thots? What about some negative points when a man gets called out for “man-splaining”, having the “male gaze”, “man-spreading”, “toxic man-baby”, “toxic masculinity”, or any other made-up tags feminists have made up to put down men? In fact, why don’t I just call it the Bantha-Fodder Test because it will mean that the film has no value in the depiction of men on a 1–10 scale. It’s time for some push-back, this has gone on for far too long.

Whoops, all the tires have fallen off the Tesla. Call the tow truck, I think this is a lemon. 2 stars out of 5