Mac on Movies: Marvel's "Black Widow" decent, but standard fare

I have been a fan of comic books and their movie adaptations since the first “Spider-Man” film featuring Tobey Maguire came out in 2002

I was roughly 7 or 8 years old then, so I understandably lost my mind. Fast-forward to the release of 2008’s “Iron Man” — the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

As a fan of comic books in general, I was excited for the MCU. Then, even as a child, I started to notice the trend of quantity over quality with blockbuster superhero movies.

“Black Widow” is a mix of both of those things for me.

First, here’s a brief summary. Eventual Avenger Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is taken from her biological parents early in life and placed in a pseudo-family unit with two Russian undercover agents Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Black Widow Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz,) posing as her parents.

Shostakov and Vostokoff steal S.H.I.E.L.D (Marvel’s fictional undercover U.S. government agency) intel and escape to Cuba. They are eventually tracked down and Romanoff and her “sister” Yelena Belova are “taken.”

SPOILER: It’s a set-up Shostakov and Vostokoff are in on.

Romanoff and Belova are taken to a place known as the Red Room and put into the Black Widow program, led by a Gen. Dreykov, which turns abandoned girls into highly-skilled assassins.

If you know the Marvel cinematic formula, I don’t even have to tell you to use your imagination to guess how things go down. Mostly, I want to avoid giving more spoilers for those that do choose to see the film.

I agree with RogerEbert.com’s review, which points out the film keeps things moving from action sequence to action sequence and doesn’t slow down beyond a family reunion scene in the third act. For me it lacks a lot of depth as a result, which also seems to be the general consensus of other critics. This lack of depth isn’t exclusively a problem with this film, but the formula.

I also appreciate the film being led by a majority female-cast with the exception of Shostakov (Harbour) and Dreykov (Ray Winstone.) As a person with cerebral palsy, I believe representation matters and I got that through the character of Walter White Jr. in “Breaking Bad” because you can’t fake CP.

Representation matters and I want female audience members to feel empowered by women being front and center in “Black Widow,” but I also appreciate that it feels natural by sticking to the source material from the comics.

I hadn’t even noticed the cast was majority-female until the plot climax.

It doesn’t feel forced like with the all-female 2016 remake of “Ghostbusters” for example or “Ocean’s 8” that spins off the George Clooney heist movie trilogy, suddenly giving his character of Danny Ocean a sister named Debbie in order to make the 2018 film make sense.

As a man, I shouldn’t go on much more about this other than to say if this kind of thing had been done for the disabled, I’d feel patronized.

My main issues with “Black Widow,” though, are, again, this is formulaic. So if you want to go see this, you’ll know what you’re paying for before you head out your front door.

A final issue is timing. Even without COVID-19 stopping the world, this movie coming out now makes zero sense. Black Widow’s origin film has come out after the character has already died in the main MCU timeline.

“Avengers: Endgame” came out in 2019. To me, that fact makes this film feel like not just another cash-grabbing instance of quality, but it makes the “Black Widow” film feel like an afterthought altogether.

In short, if you didn’t grow up reading comics, or specifically this comic series, the “Black Widow” movie gets the job done.

I give ‘Black Widow’ a 3 out of 5. Mac says, “This will make for a nice time out.”