A lot of time has passed since this movie was in the popular imagination. (We’re talking in Sept 9, a month after opening weekend.) We’ve had Loki and the gator Loki variants. We’ve had Ted Lasso and a whole host of Friday Night Lights bingeing. We’ve had time for ScarJo to wage war on behalf (?) of the actors’ guild in order to protect actors’ rights to their cut from the initial release to theaters. We’ve had time to reflect on how awesome David Harbor is and how stupid the fake out of Mission Impossible-style face masks is. We’ve had time to reflect on whether or not the pheromone scene with Black Widow’s Big Bad is stupid or sexy or a twist on a misogynist fantasy or just my broken brain misfiring after too much time away from real people.
I think ultimately what can be said for Black Widow is that it has little to nothing to do with the rest of the films and doesn’t really advance the ball very far, beyond the following: (1) Florence Pugh and ScarJo are able to correct some pretty fucked up writing from an Avenger’s movie where Black Widow sympathizes with the Hulk over being monstrous because she’s been forcibly sterilized like so many people of color and/or folks with disabilities in the US; (2) Florence Pugh and ScarJo fight, which is awesome and no other movie in the Marvel universe will ever have that claim; (3) it’s only the second film with a female superhero on the letterhead. Too many Friends have said this movie came five years too late for it to be a worthwhile comment at this point, so I have little to add beyond the fact that this is certainly better than Lucy in terms of movies that star ScarJo and are about spy rings. I give it 2 out of 5 Babadooks.
