Natasha Romanoff, the MCU’s first female hero, finally gets her solo movie over a decade after her first appearance. And it’s not enough. The movie is too little too late for most Marvel fans and it does Natasha the injustice of sidelining her in her first solo film. Black Widow's true purpose is not to look back at Natasha’s past, but to serve as a launchpad for Yelena. The name of the movie is Black Widow, but we aren’t talking about the Black Widow we all know -- this movie is truly Yelena’s debut as the MCU’s next Black Widow.
The most promising and intriguing part of the movie is the opening sequence. In Ohio, a young Natasha and her seemingly normal family must leave when her parents (truly Russian spies) steal important U.S. intelligence. After escaping the country, Natasha and her younger “sister” Yelena are forcibly separated and returned to Dreykov, founder of the Black Widow program. The opening credits parallel real-life human trafficking and are the most haunting, risky thing I’ve seen Marvel do. Little girls scream and cry as they are dragged out of shipping containments, juxtaposed with a coldly calculating Dreykov as he points at girls, choosing which ones will live and die. Then the girls are brainwashed and trained to become assassins.
After this opening sequence is over, the movie changes. I was hoping the rest of the movie would be like those first few minutes -- exploring the complex, hard-hitting reality of human trafficking. I expected too much. (This movie might have been better if it was in the same vein as the darker, grittier, more intimate Marvel Netflix shows). Instead, the movie returns to classic Marvel action sequences and spectacle that eclipse the nuanced topics it began to address. I had hoped we would see the gray moralities of the Black Widows. Instead, the movie gives them a copout: mind-controlling nanites. All of the new Widows are under mind control that Dreykov uses to remotely manipulate their bodies so they’re forced to do the things they don’t want to.
