Black Widow: weirdly, now the best Marvel movie to use nostalgic classic rock to tell a story about resolving issues from your...
Black Widow: weirdly, now the best Marvel movie to use nostalgic classic rock to tell a story about resolving issues from your Gen X upbringing
Marvel movies have like 4 slots they have to fill - an action movie, an advancement of the universe, emotional resonance, and an aesthetic.
The first two are action scenes and plot bits. We learn how and why Natasha goes from the Avengers breakup to wanting to reassemble (she learns lessons about the importance of [found] family!)
The aesthetic is “gee, the aesthetic of the early 90s was more 80s than you remember!”
The resonance is about like, Boomer parents of early 80s children who had a come-up into the middle class over their lives who saw feeding their children into that same system as providing for them but ultimately inhabited a moral world of humans as suitable to purpose and not their self-fulfillment.
And how that like, set up #MeToo systems of powerful men controlling things using women as disposable objects? Like they drape that one lightly because I think it’d tear if wrapped that tight but it was definitely there.
Like I’m not totally sure it was a better movie than GOTG, but it told those themes better.
Also the aesthetic draws attention to the fact that while Scarlett Johansson might still be fresh and attractive, she’s not youthful anymore
Given the character most action scenes are 1v1 or 2v2 fights, it’s solid fight choreography and direction but nothing to write Hong Kong about. There’s a scene with an onrushing avalanche that’s cool theme and meh execution and a scene falling from a disintegrating flying fort that like, you can’t be like “woah, this is unreal” cause obviously it’s unreal, and as animation it’s like mid-80s feature anime-level?
The supporting cast banter is fun and not irritating. They do seem to be doing a thing of one character repeating a line someone else used a half-scene ago that is maybe supposed to illustrate their changing interpersonal dynamic but mostly just checks off one-liner slots
Also there’s a bit where Black Widow and her “mom” pull off a double Mission: Impossible thing where they pull of facemasks to reveal they were faking as each other, and like it should reframe the previous 10 minutes of character development but it happens too fast and then on to other things to process
Also lol and applause for all the people who put all that effort into making the blue-haired 1995 flashback Natasha look like the last stage of a girl you can tell is gonna be totally fuckable before she is, in fact, fuckable