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Black Widow was playing at the nearest drive-in this past weekend, and I organized a group of friends to go, have a tailgate party at the drive-in, then watch the movie.
Unfortunately, Saturday afternoon and evening was a solid mass of hard, driving rain, so we cancelled our little drive-in party.
With COVID infections increasing due to the delta variant and people refusing vaccinations, we're not comfortable seeing it in theaters... so I ponied up 30 bucks and we watched it on Disney Plus.
I really, really liked Black Widow. I'll pretty much echo everything that DQ said upthread.
My biggest critique is that this movie should have been released before Infinity War. We all know that Natasha dies in Endgame.
I felt that going into this movie knowing her ultimate fate detracted from the emotional impact of the film. Natasha was given a LOT of emotional development as a character... but we know that it's not going to affect the next part of her story, because that's already been shown.
Maybe next time Marvel will do a better job on the release schedule to NOT spoil stuff before the end.
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Good points include better costume design for the ladies than most superhero movies - no wedge heels in sight and tight-fitting outfits that seem a tad more functional than revealing -, decent action choreography, and generally decent characters and motivations. And posing.
I really liked the white costumes particularly; possibly impractical outside of snowy situations but they looked cool.
Minor issues include like how Alexei knew about Melina and where she was after having been locked up for so long,
I assume she had that farm for a really long time and he just assumed she went back to it?
My nitpick moment was his "you both have so much red in your ledger!" comment. Yes, it's supposed to call back to Natasha's line in Avengers but it makes NO sense, and particularly not coming from Alexei. "Red in your ledger" means you are in debt (i.e., "in the red" versus "in the black"); when Natasha originally said, "I have red in my ledger; I want to wipe it out," it was in the context of explaining she wanted to help Hawkeye because she owed him. Loki was the one who equated the "red" with the blood Natasha spilled.
Alexei's exclamation of joy at how much blood Yelena and Natasha spilled--it doesn't make any sense to describe it with an expression associated with debt or owing someone, and he certainly wouldn't have been aware of Natasha and Loki's conversation.
and the excessive removal reproductive organs when simpler operations would have fewer side effects are available,
OMG I thought I'd be the only person bugged by that. Yes, my understanding is giving an 18 year old a hysterectomy comes with massive risk of short and long term side effects, some of which are potentially fatal (far more so than other surgeries, and yes, youth is a factor). There are plenty of ways to sterilize someone (tubal ligation, chemically, etc.) without taking the person who just survived 10-20 years of near fatal training to yet another near-fatal situation just so they can't have babies. I get they were going for the body horror, but isn't the fact that it's involuntary enough? I get that we're in a highly unrealistic film where people fall multiple stories and then walk away, but it just still doesn't feel right. But I blame Joss Whedon more than Cate Shortland and Jac Shaeffer over this; he's the one who made Natasha's surgery look like a hysterectomy in Age of Ultron so they worked with what they had.
and how the hell that big floating fortress remained aloft and unnoticed. I'm assuming the Wakandans knew about it but didn't do anything yet, but SHIELD and Tony at least should have found out about it.
There is a throwaway line about it staying above the radar--whereever it is and however it operates it seems to be difficult to detect. Is there likely some kind of signal-jamming or signal-masking technology that further helps it evade detection? It also moves around, I believe, so it could be if it's spotted one day by satellite it is gone the next and you'd have to figure out where to look again to find it. Given the high tech world fo the MCU it seems like it's possible it was overlooked (Wakanda may be high tech but I don't recall they have surveillance over the whole world, but I could be wrong). Anyway somehow that seems more believable than the hysterectomies, if only because the latter is a real life thing people have to deal with and the other has to do with fantasy devices powered by Plotonium.
The major bad point is s+*$ filming and editing of fight sequences. (this is a recurring problem in many Marvel movies - shaky cam and tons of cuts make things worse, not better. It really detracts from the experience.
American film editors don't know how to cut fight scenes. They think cutting on an impact enhances the feel of it, but really it lessens it. The old Hong Kong filmmakers would let it linger on the impact and even use a second angle closeup of the impact on a blow. But it's harder to hide how you cheat in a fight scene with that.
The other one that bothered me was the shot of her diving out the window with explosions. Those were poorly done.
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It's one of the reasons the Wick films were so good. I wouldn't put them on the technical skill level of Chan, but they're some of the best action produced in America. Long, wide shots of whole pieces of action. One of my favorite stunts in the first movie comes at the end of the nightclub fight where he's thrown down one story from a balcony. You get the full thing, and while they don't necessarily add in the extra frames before he's tossed, they still give it a long enough lead up to his landing that you can feel the distance and impact. I think it's low-key one of the best stunts of that decade. Sure, it's super simple overall, but the execution and filming of it I'd put up against any of the hyped-up stunts from Fast and Furious (which are impressive, like the car jump from building to building was actually done on a constructed set). It's still missing some key set up though (like a wide shot of them fighting from the dance floor would have been good), but the stunt itself is gorgeous IMO.
It took Marvel 12 years to get us a Black Widow movie, but the Honest Trailer is out just a few weeks after release. :)
It is a good take, that honest trailer thing.
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It's one of the reasons the Wick films were so good. I wouldn't put them on the technical skill level of Chan, but they're some of the best action produced in America. Long, wide shots of whole pieces of action.
Hey Irontruth,
What did you think when you saw Daredevil season 1 on Netflix? this felt really special to me, in terms of scene capture and length.
Cheers,
PDK
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It took Marvel 12 years to get us a Black Widow movie, but the Honest Trailer is out just a few weeks after release. :)
I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair.' and then that last joke about the most brutal murder in Black Widow's history and I laughed out loud. :)
Poor dude seemed to get cast and then played up pre-release so that everyone would speculate that he was Taskmaster.
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All I know is I'm glad the post credit scene ties back into Falcon and the Winter Soldier plus Hawkeye.
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Even less extreme training (here I'm thinking elite gymnastics with all their padded falls, tape, braces and constant / immediate medical care) will see successful practitioners fall out of contention before the age of 25.
I see your supposition and raise you 46year old olympic gymnast
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Shero? What a condescending and dismissive word that is. I mean I shouldn’t be shocked that you’ve said yet another condescending thing, but god you’d think a college student as successful as you claim to be would know the word heroine.
The bit about sterilization was surely gratuitous and might have been Whedon initiated many years ago but its presence in the current movie is fully on the current writer/director. No one else can be blamed as it's not a plot critical element that must be preserved. I mean, they clearly didn't give a tinkers darn about accents so why would the current deciders care about that bit of backstory trivia if they didn't also buy into it?
The whole let's abduct street urchins and make them into super-soldiers and super-spies is the harder thing to roll with from my POV. Apparently the BWs are under some sort of mind control but otherwise there is nothing magi-tech to make them "super". IRL special operators are too busted to hack the grind and are cycled out by 30-35 years old. Even less extreme training (here I'm thinking elite gymnastics with all their padded falls, tape, braces and constant / immediate medical care) will see successful practitioners fall out of contention before the age of 25. As presented in the movies the washout rate for BW training would be no less than 100%.
It's a superhero trope. Deal with it. Badass normals. There's dozens of prominent examples in comics. Some with gimmicks or minor powers, but who still rely on skill and training to fight - often against people with actual powers.
In reality? Sure it would be a stupid idea, but it's a comic book movies. That Black Widow exists is the premise.
Yes, you're right but for one thing:
They always present the hero (shero in this case) as struggling to succeed but then write plot armor around them so thick that even Thor* would struggle to keep up.
As for the middle aged gymnast:
You'll have a point only if she medals. And even then it'll be one point against the thousands who have dropped out. Hundreds if you only count Olympians.* Well, ok.... maybe 'Fat Thor'.
Bow down to Quark Blast!!!!!!! He's always right. He's won the internet.
It's one of the reasons the Wick films were so good. I wouldn't put them on the technical skill level of Chan, but they're some of the best action produced in America. Long, wide shots of whole pieces of action.Hey Irontruth,
What did you think when you saw Daredevil season 1 on Netflix? this felt really special to me, in terms of scene capture and length.
Cheers,
PDK
It really didn't grab me the way it did a lot of people. I enjoyed it well enough, but the characterization, writing, and acting was very distracting for me. I'd have to rewatch it to give a critique of the action, which I barely remember. My gut tells me that it had some highlights, but still all of the normal problems with American tv/movie action.
American editing and filming of action really has a problem with being geared towards reducing costs. Good action is time consuming and difficult.
I was just listening to an interview with Matt Damon where he talked about a conversation he had with Tom Cruise. In the MI movie where Cruise does the rope stunt on the Bhurj Khalifa, he went to their stunt safety guy and said "I have an idea I want to do for this." The safety guy said that it couldn't be done, that it wasn't safe. So Cruise fired him and got a new safety guy. Not because Cruise didn't want to be safe, but if the guy couldn't do the job to figure out how to do it... he was of no value to Cruise. Its one reason Cruise's movies stand out for the stunts, is that he takes them extremely seriously (and he's probably one of the most experienced stunt performers in the business now).
Daredevil was a lot more ambitious than most tv series, but it still didn't feel that competent to me. It was good enough that the action wasn't a detraction though. (again... to me)
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Anyone have any idea if ScarJo's lawsuit has any chance of succeeding?
One would think the bean counters and lawyers at Disney would know what they're doing. I mean, they screw people for a living.... and it's a very good living, even under COVID-19.
I think it likely depends on if she's getting a cut of the D+$30 premium as if it were theatrical release revenue. If not, then she likely has merit. If she's getting a cut of that as well, then she likely doesn't since she'd have to prove that it would have made more in a theatrical release only without streaming, which would be a very high burden of proof. Sure, some people would have seen it in the theater who otherwise would have streamed, but I know for a fact I wouldn't have, and while I'm often in the minority, I doubt I was that rare of a use case. Also, it would be hard to prove even if everyone who paid the premium had instead bought tickets it would have made more in a theater only release, since it would have needed to sell 3-4 times as many tickets in theaters vs. D+ premium purchasers to have the same revenue.
I think it likely depends on if she's getting a cut of the D+$30 premium as if it were theatrical release revenue. If not, then she likely has merit. If she's getting a cut of that as well, then she likely doesn't since she'd have to prove that it would have made more in a theatrical release only without streaming, which would be a very high burden of proof. Sure, some people would have seen it in the theater who otherwise would have streamed, but I know for a fact I wouldn't have, and while I'm often in the minority, I doubt I was that rare of a use case. Also, it would be hard to prove even if everyone who paid the premium had instead bought tickets it would have made more in a theater only release, since it would have needed to sell 3-4 times as many tickets in theaters vs. D+ premium purchasers to have the same revenue.Anyone have any idea if ScarJo's lawsuit has any chance of succeeding?
One would think the bean counters and lawyers at Disney would know what they're doing. I mean, they screw people for a living.... and it's a very good living, even under COVID-19.
It's not the difference in revenue between theater and streaming, its about who has access to the revenue. Essentially, the actors are saying that the monetizing of the release of the movie through streaming is part of the revenue of the movie they should have access to.
Regardless of success, contracts for big name actors are going to see a change (and probably directors and producers).
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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It's not the difference in revenue between theater and streaming, its about who has access to the revenue.I think it likely depends on if she's getting a cut of the D+$30 premium as if it were theatrical release revenue. If not, then she likely has merit. If she's getting a cut of that as well, then she likely doesn't since she'd have to prove that it would have made more in a theatrical release only without streaming, which would be a very high burden of proof. Sure, some people would have seen it in the theater who otherwise would have streamed, but I know for a fact I wouldn't have, and while I'm often in the minority, I doubt I was that rare of a use case. Also, it would be hard to prove even if everyone who paid the premium had instead bought tickets it would have made more in a theater only release, since it would have needed to sell 3-4 times as many tickets in theaters vs. D+ premium purchasers to have the same revenue.Anyone have any idea if ScarJo's lawsuit has any chance of succeeding?
One would think the bean counters and lawyers at Disney would know what they're doing. I mean, they screw people for a living.... and it's a very good living, even under COVID-19.
That was literally the first thing I said.
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It's pretty shameful of Disney to 1) reveal the amount she was paid and imply it should have been sufficient, and 2) try to shift blame to her for disregarding the pandemic risks, especially since their theme parks were open during the pandemic and no doubt contributed to worsening it.
Just another reason for me to not get Disney+.
That was literally the first thing I said.It's not the difference in revenue between theater and streaming, its about who has access to the revenue.I think it likely depends on if she's getting a cut of the D+$30 premium as if it were theatrical release revenue. If not, then she likely has merit. If she's getting a cut of that as well, then she likely doesn't since she'd have to prove that it would have made more in a theatrical release only without streaming, which would be a very high burden of proof. Sure, some people would have seen it in the theater who otherwise would have streamed, but I know for a fact I wouldn't have, and while I'm often in the minority, I doubt I was that rare of a use case. Also, it would be hard to prove even if everyone who paid the premium had instead bought tickets it would have made more in a theater only release, since it would have needed to sell 3-4 times as many tickets in theaters vs. D+ premium purchasers to have the same revenue.Anyone have any idea if ScarJo's lawsuit has any chance of succeeding?
One would think the bean counters and lawyers at Disney would know what they're doing. I mean, they screw people for a living.... and it's a very good living, even under COVID-19.
Sure. Do you think we should change the thread topic to who was more right between our two posts? Or should we keep the topic more about the movie and it's related news?
I'll let you pick.
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Black Widow is now free on Disney+, so my wife and I watched this last night. We both really enjoyed it! The inter-personal character moments were great. I thought that 95% of the action scenes were up the MCU's usual quality, meaning they were good, but they were what I was expecting, which is probably a problematic bar the MCU has set for itself.
The other 5% of the action scenes, however, excelled my expectations. They took the form of a standard action scene, and then just when you think the scene or part of the scene is over, they add just a little bit extra to check that "that was unexpected" box, which they used to good effect.
I've long since stopped trying to rank MCU movies, but if I were to try, I'd probably put Black Widow somewhere in the second-highest quarter.
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I mean if I can find two hours or so when I'm at someone else's house....
Do it do it Jooooiiinnnnn usssssssss....
Look I want to...but I don't think my clients would enjoy me staying that long. Nor would my dogs. I mean MAYBE this coming Saturday since my best friend is going out of town and I have to pet sit for him...
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For me, BLACK WIDOW is comfortably in the lower tier of Marvel movies. Maybe not among the very weakest, like DARK WORLD or IRON MAN 2/3, but I wouldn't rank it much higher than that (although I'd also note I don't think Marvel has ever made a truly awful movie, even DARK WORLD and the lesser IRON MEN are still somewhat entertaining).
The key weakness is a very weak villain, with Ray Winstone being badly miscast and underused. Make him some sort of Cockney crime lord and you're golden. Give him an awful Russian accent and he's going to struggle. It also doesn't help that the plot is the typical knock-about, putting pieces together and then have a massive CGI shoot-out at the end. That's most Marvel movies, but some do it really well and some do it very mechanically, and this was more in that vein. I also found Scarlett Johansson a bit anonymous in her own movie, when she's often stolen scenes and moments in earlier movies where she's a supporting character, which was a surprise.
The best bit of the movie was Florence Pugh, who came in, kicked backside, provided all of the best laughs and set up a pretty good character arc (which should continue in the HAWKEYE TV show). Beyond that it was only okay for me.
I'm sure I liked BW better than I will Tower of Terror (if it gets made). What turned me off of this movie was the total lack of verisimilitude for the main character. In a matter of hours, or at most three days, she was literally blown-up and not only walked away but battled away from the wrecked carnage each time. She suffered no hearing loss from being blown up.... noth'n.
Do you have these criticisms for similar spy/action movies?
I mean we might (for Yelena and Clint) in the upcoming Hawkeye TV show....
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The best bit of the movie was Florence Pugh, who came in, kicked backside, provided all of the best laughs and set up a pretty good character arc (which should continue in the HAWKEYE TV show). Beyond that it was only okay for me.
Agreed. Florence was the real star of this movie. She makes Scarlet look like a tired actor at the end of her career.