FanFare

Disney & Marvel Studios have been Mishandling Black Widow for Years

At this point it doesn’t really matter when they release the film

For those of us that begged for a solo Black Widow film, who patiently endured assurances it was going to happen soon, eventually, who then watched Natasha die in Endgame in such a way as to take resurrection completely off the table (a really hard thing to do in the world of comics), this will-they won’t-they footsie Disney has been playing with the release of the finished film for the last year(!) is basically par for the course.

It’s almost like they hate the character or something.

Let’s just get something out of the way right off the top: this film, whenever it is released, however it is released, is going to be a watered down version of what should’ve been. I say that with the full expectation that I will enjoy it. But I won’t be able to completely lose myself in it, because every time I see the character, I can only think of what should’ve been.

The core Avengers are a small team of 6. Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor are the headliners. They each have their own film trilogies. Hulk has two films, though the Ang Lee one doesn’t really count. There’s Hawkeye, who everyone likes to poke fun at (including the characters themselves – clench up Legolas). And then there’s Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow, played so ably by Scarlett Johansson.

Of all the Avengers, Nat is the most deserving of her own films (yes, plural). She has a singularly unique backstory, one obscured by a Soviet era steel curtain. She’s clever, and complicated, and extremely competent. Oh and she’s a woman who regularly beats up dudes twice her size — that should count for something.

That we’re getting a Black Widow film at all should be a cause for celebration. The problem, of course, is that she’s fucking dead. Which automatically makes the film a prequel, that bargain bin type of story lesser writers reach for because they think what makes a person interesting is what happened in the past, instead of exploring how the past shapes the present. It’s the difference between showing us a whiny, snotty-nosed Anakin and trusting us to know intuitively that Vader wasn’t always a madman with a leather fetish. At their best, prequels relitigate the past to better inform us of the present. At their worst, they lessen the entire enterprise by muddying what was already clear.

But this isn’t about Star Wars — George Lucas has nothing to do with Marvel. Surely the Black Widow film will be better than Episodes 1–3.

That’s a really low bar. The worst Marvel movie is still a good watch, and I expect Black Widow will be better than just okay. But at the end of the day, all the film can really accomplish is to show us what Natasha was doing at some point in the existing timeline, and perhaps give insight into her mindset during events we’ve already seen. It’s clumsy, but at this point, it’s all we’re gonna get. She will have no agency outside of the narrow confides of the film. We will get what we asked for – more Natasha – and that’s literally all we’ll get.

I guess we should’ve been more specific with what we were asking for.

What we really wanted was a more impactful Natasha, someone who directly impacted and carried the narrative. One given a smidge as much screen time as her hunky costars (who, again, have 10 solo films between them).

The absolute best time to release a Black Widow film was years ago, immediately following Captain America: Winter Soldier. That film was peak Natasha because it was one of the few films where she is allowed to carry some of the narrative load. It’s Nat, not Steve or Nick Fury, who decides to dump all of SHIELD’s secrets on the internet. Sacrificing her anonymity is an incredibly courageous and vulnerable decision to the lifelong spy. It would’ve been really interesting to see what she does after such a decision. And maybe some part of her past comes knocking. You know: consequences.

Alas.

Maybe even better than that would’ve been a world where Nat survived Endgame and took the mantle as the Avengers’ leader. Love Samuel L. Jackson, but its high time Marvel mothballed Fury already. Gimme a fresh team, with Nat as the shadowy head, and let’s see something completely different. Maybe she even takes Clint’s daughter under her wing, giving her a motherly type of role she’d not otherwise have.

Alas.

We can partly blame noted sexist and racist Ike Perlmutter, who presided over the development of the early MCU. But he was thrown off the films back in 2015 – during the MCU’s Phase Two. There was still a lot of time in which to develop and release a Nat film. Even accounting for the fact that these interrelated projects take years to schedule and produce and Marvel couldn’t turn on a dime just because they fired a dirt bag, there was time.

If they felt any misgivings about how they’d treated Natasha, they could’ve just not killed her. That’s like the least they could do, right? Just let her live long enough so she had a chance to shine. Especially when there was a more deserving character right there to sacrifice, one who’d earned the death and could be redeemed by it.

Alas.

So I will give Disney no brownie points for doing what everyone has been begging for when they finally, mercifully, announced that they’d be releasing the film in theater and Disney+ Premier on July 9 (2021, just to be clear). At long last, I can pay to watch this film. It’s all I’ve ever really wanted. But it all a little too-little, too-late.

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