Many years ago (before Infinity War) I read an article about why Black Widow’s solo book would never come out. Arguments were made that the character is not independent, not significant, not having powers, not able to influence events of the scale that Marvel tosses, and also not having his iconic villain. And then the movie came out, and there would be gloat, but suddenly - all the arguments are absolutely correct. Yes, the Widow fell in love with the audience and made an important act for the cinematic universe, the question of the film for many years stood as follows: you should give, because you deserve it. But the film is not an order, it is primarily a story, and it so happened that Natasha Romanova has no exciting personal story. The audience wanted to know three things about her: what happened to her childhood, what happened in Budapest, and what she had with Barton. The first and second questions were answered, but everything turned out to be too small and not spectacular at all. As for the rest of the story, there is not much to say, it almost does not exist. Two widows decide to kill the villain, meet with informants, get where they want and kill. I don't even consider it a spoiler, because it's the obvious scenario minimum, backbone. Attempts to build up some meat on this ended in dubious action and ridiculous empty dialogues. It doesn’t even look like a real movie you could make in a movie. This is a banal couple of episodes from some "Falcon and Winter Soldier". Speaking of Winter, Taskmaster is his ultimate copier. An equally mutilated Russian cyborg soldier, serving villains against his will, who must not be defeated but saved. The first time it was cool, but twice the number doesn't work.
Other shortcomings:
- In the film about the Russians, half of the characters once again do not know the Russian language and say some nonsense. Marvel has official dubbing studios for export. So why not just give the Russian department a few words?
- Previously, Clint and Natasha remembered Budapest as something bright in their fighting lives. Now it turns out that this is a bright - the murder of a girl.
The Red Guard is an absolutely disgusting repulsive character. He gave the girls to torture, they cut their uterus, and he says that everything is fine, they grew up with his pride. Yes, but they're crippled because of him. In prison, he brazenly lies to the Kents about victories that did not happen, mutilates a man for the truth. He is fat, ugly and disgusting, he has a beard like a bum, he tells a woman obscene. He envys Cap and calls him his counterpart, but they never even worked at the same time. During Cap's years of activity, Red was either not yet born or was already sitting. In the whole movie, he did nothing. He couldn't take down Taskmaster, but wait a minute, Tusk only has a tactical advantage, and Red has superpowers. What does it matter to him who can copy his movements if his blow is 10 times stronger? He could have just run over the enemy, but he couldn’t. A disgusting, unnecessary character that is inserted only to show how impossible a Russian superhero is. Thank you, but we know that from Andreasyan.
- Why does an older widow work with pigs? Such experiments are conducted before the technology is introduced to humans. And here controlled widows have existed for at least 20 years. So why the pigs?
- The real villain of the film appeared for 10 minutes! No one knows him, no one expected him. He was literally not involved in the story. He is as faceless and uninteresting as you have a boss at work. You can’t just take the villain out of your pocket so that the hero has someone to quickly defeat. This reminds me how in games there are dlc, in which you also need to beat some Petrovsky in half an hour, about which no one has ever heard in the main game.
- The scene after the credits makes sense only if the viewer is aware of the entire movie universe. If he watches only this film, it looks like black humor: here Natasha heroically flies away to free someone, but she lies in the grave. Like, you know, I couldn't.
The only plus of the film is that it was shot when the character was fully formed and took an adequate place in the cinematic universe. Once upon a time, a solo Widow was planned one of the first in Marvel and it was supposed to be a wildly cranberry film at the level of "Red Heat" and other nonsense about the Russian military. With Ushankas, icons, nuclear missiles, generals, balalaikas, etc. I mean, it would be a comedy of the absurd, kitsch. And so it turned out relatively smooth and at least did not become another cranberry, thank you for that.