Black Widow
Year: 2021
Rating: PG-13
Length: 134 minutes / 2.23 hours
After the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019), it was difficult to perceive where a Black Widow movie would fit in the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe. Fortunately, even though there are over 20 films in this cinematic juggernaut, there is still room to fill gaps in the overall story. Taking place after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016), Black Widow (2021) follows Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johannson) as she takes some “personal time” to put to bed the demons from her past. It’s a little weird to have such a standalone film in the MCU, but it’s the only way something like this could work.
Almost a decade after the “Budapest” incident was first mentioned in an offhand remark in The Avengers (2012), Black Widow finally shows us the details of this significant event—even if it was played as a joke in previous films. Natasha’s past was brought up in other parts of various MCU films, but this movie finally stitches them all together into a coherent narrative. Of course, while it does give some much-needed background to one of the franchise’s most secretive characters, it feels a little like a moot point by now.
Regardless of its relevance to the MCU as a whole, two performances stand out in my mind. David Harbour makes the film endlessly entertaining as he chews the scenery, but Florence Pugh nails it with the back-and-forth comedy between the two “sisters.” It’s no wonder that I have enjoyed her acting as of late (especially in Little Women (2019)). And while most of the MCU movies that bookend this film’s chronology explain what happens afterward, it’s the post-credits scene that made me roll my eyes as Disney tries to push more of their Disney+ programming into the greater MCU framework.
A fairly standard MCU film that stands by itself, I give Black Widow 3.5 stars out of 5.