Black Widow

“Natasha Romanoff – aka Black Widow – confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.”

Black Widow may be one of the biggest casualties of the Pandemic. Delayed multiple times from its original release date of May 2020, and finally released this year in theaters and on Disney+, the film sparked controversy by filmmakers and actors on the future of theatrical releases. While the window from theatrical release to home video release has continuously become smaller over the years, this was a direction many studios had envisioned for quite a while, with the Pandemic making it possible to pull the trigger for simultaneous streaming and theatrical runs. It’s an interesting time to be a movie fan, as the theater landscape may forever change because of this.

Despite studio streaming policy, Black Widow wasn’t a smash success that everyone thought, nor brought people back to the theaters in droves like it was believed to have done. Was this a result of it being available on Disney+? People better equipped to answer that than myself tend to believe that it wasn’t, and after seeing the film, I tend to agree.

My first impression of Black Widow while watching it was that it didn’t feel like a Marvel movie. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The same formula used over and over is bound to get tiresome, as well as endless action and explosions, with otherworldly beings with super-human abilities. Black Widow is more of a character driven film. While there is still plenty of action, the story revolves around Natasha Romanoff and her background, beginning with her time in America as she and the family she was placed with, were deep undercover Russian spies. Through the course of the film, we learn about her relationships with this family, although fake, was the closest thing she had. Her sister, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is introduced, and needs her help to take down the person and place responsible for raising girls, like them, to become ruthless, mindless assassins.

Taking place after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Natasha is on the run, and in essence, estranged from the Avengers family she had grown to care for. This isn’t the same Natasha we’ve seen before, and since these events. She’s lost, alone, reaching for a past where she felt that connection once before, albeit a fake family that has radically changed since their time together in Ohio. In this character exploration, I applaud the film. While Marvel films can often do this fairly well balanced with over-the-top action sequences designed to get the blood pumping, it’s a lot more subtle in Black Widow. Natasha is able to face some of the darkest moments of her past, and deal with them, allowing her to find herself again.

While this character study of Natasha Romanoff is indeed compelling, there’s the argument to be made that audiences just don’t feel connected to this character after her fate in Avengers: Endgame. The absolute point of films is to watch characters change, but as this story is being smashed in between films, can’t really see any change in the character between Civil War and Infinity War. As much as I dislike saying it, I found myself having no real connection to the character because of this. I don’t see that this changed her character in any way knowing the timeline of events that transpire after this, and knowing her fate (unless it’s changed somehow), there’s nothing to go back and appreciate about this new knowledge moving forward. It seems that it was solely a vehicle to introduce new characters into the MCU, namely, Yelena Belova, and that’s a disservice to the Natasha Romanov character. The biggest mistake with Black Widow wasn’t that they released it on Disney+, it was that they didn’t release it sooner, in between Civil War and Infinity War, where it should have been.

Video

Black Widow is presented in 1080p High Definition Widescreen 2.39:1. The film has locations set all over the world, with color playing a big part in these. These locations look brilliant on this Blu-ray transfer, which I imagine look even better on the 4k set. The transfer is clear and detailed, looking very impressive in the daylight sequences. The night sequences look good as well, with some very deep blacks that are well contrasted with some of the colorful set pieces.

Audio

The audio is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1. Oddly enough, this Blu-ray set only contains a 7.1 track instead of an Atmos track like its 4k counterpart. As much as it is a character-driven film, it also contains quite a bit of action, which would have been so much better in Atmos, especially the helicopter sequence. The 7.1 track has some good moments to it, but overall, I found it to be mixed much too low for other similar films.  There were times I had to really turn up the volume to hear dialogue, or to adequately enjoy, let alone hear the surrounds in the action sequences. If you’re on the fence on which format to choose, this alone should warrant the 4k choice.

Special Features

• Deleted Scenes
• Gag Reel
• Sisters Gonna Work It Out – Watch as Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh train, fight and bond to become a fearsome sister duo.
• Go Big If You’re Going Home – The cast and crew reveal the intricacies of stunts that made the film so action-packed.
• Filmmaker Introduction

Black Widow may be a wake-up call for Disney. It’s not an entirely bad movie, just poorly executed in almost every way. Overall, I enjoyed how different it seemed from typical MCU films, and hope that doesn’t get blamed as the reason for its less than stellar success. This may become one of those films to watch in the real-time sequence where it should have been, to better appreciate the character moving forward, instead of looking back.