MCUniverse: Into the Spider-Thread

[sifth]

I also wasn’t a fan of some of the CGI in this film

 

the car crashing into the subway station and the use of fire during the climax, stood out to me in particular, when it came to looking fake. [/spoiler]

[Rhom]

I will say that I did like Alexi as the Red Guardian.  He probably could be one of my favorite side characters in the MCU.

Spoiler

I like how he was straight up lying about his interactions with Captain America and the one big dude called him on it.

But on the same note, made no sense that he was legit asking Nat if Steve ever talked about him.

 

[sifth]

11 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I will say that I did like Alexi as the Red Guardian.  He probably could be one of my favorite side characters in the MCU.

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I like how he was straight up lying about his interactions with Captain America and the one big dude called him on it.

But on the same note, made no sense that he was legit asking Nat if Steve ever talked about him.

 

Yea that confused me as well. It made no sense.

[JGP]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

 

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On that post credits tease…

So JLD is assembling a team to include the new Widow and US Agent their first target is… Hawkeye?!!?

Are they using a post credits scene to set up a Disney+ show???

Like I said above.  Shame that the release schedule right as the pandemic was shutting things down forced a shuffle.  Sitting in a theater and going “Oh shit!  That’s Elaine!” would have really given some more weight.

 

Spoiler

I mulled on this as well, then realized [of course, thanks covid] that the bugging-while-on-holiday credit scene likely happened between Endgame and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so-- no USAgent [yet] but definitely setting up a parallel of Hawkeye and Widow's first encounter.   

 

[IlyaP]

13 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

The Black Widow movie isn't bad. It's just not great or whatever. :/

I spent two hours being *constantly* annoyed by a multitude of frustrating decisions.

This has quickly become my least-favourite Marvel movie. 

That said, Florence Pugh undeniably outclassed everyone in this movie. She is the movie's saving grace.

[Jaxom 1974]

So...having not seen it yet, and based on reviews and commentary from places like Twitter...it would seem the best way to describe Black Widow is: polarizing?

[DaveSumm]

16 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

So...having not seen it yet, and based on reviews and commentary from places like Twitter...it would seem the best way to describe Black Widow is: polarizing?

Personally, I haven’t seen anyone who loves it or hates it. So not really. It’s just not particular great at anything. For me the most glaring problem is that it doesn’t set up who the villain is or how much Black Widow dislikes him and for what reason, and so when he finally shows up properly (a good way through the runtime) we just don’t care that much. The stakes are surprisingly low; if none of these events happened, nothing would actually change all that much.

Also, I’m seeing so many comments that it’s just an intro to Pugh taking over as BW: I think you’d have a skewed expectation if you went in thinking this. It kinda … isn’t. Unless you mean ‘be the good-at-fighting female for the franchise’. But character wise, job wise, nah.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

So...having not seen it yet, and based on reviews and commentary from places like Twitter...it would seem the best way to describe Black Widow is: polarizing?

You're saying the discussion on Twitter is polarizing?  Well I never...

[sifth]

This is such a weird movie for me, because I can actually pin point exactly when I started not liking the direction things were going. I honestly really enjoy the first half hour of the movie.

 

The flash back was really good and I sort of wish was even longer, but even past that, seeing Natasha live off the grid was interesting to me and the bridge fight was really cool, but everything after that just starts to feel really messy. The knife fight between Yelena and Natasha makes no sense at all to me and feels like a complete waste of time (I'd rather those minutes be added to the opening flashback, to be honest), which is followed by another action sequence, that almost feels like it comes out of nowhere. The car chase that follows the already two in a row actions sequences, I actually did like, but the ending with the CGI car crash, into the subway station stood out to me as looking really fake. The prison break didn't make a whole lot of sense to me and it sort of stood out to me, that Natasha didn't seem to care that she killed an entire prisons worth of people (many of whom were just guards doing their jobs), just to save her fake dad.  I mean that to me is just Man of Steel level of collateral damage. The Task Master twist was beyond predictable for me, and I saw it coming a mile away; it almost feels like a stupid version of the Bucky twist to be honest.

[DaveSumm]

6 minutes ago, sifth said:

This is such a weird movie for me, because I can actually pin point exactly when I started not liking the direction things were going. I honestly really liked enjoy the first half hour of the movie.

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The flash back was really good and I sort of wish was even longer, but even past that, seeing Natasha live off the grid was interesting to me and the bridge fight was really cool, but everything after that just starts to feel really messy. The knife fight between Yelena and Natasha makes no sense at all to me and feels like a complete waste of time (I'd rather those minutes be added to the opening flashback, to be honest), which is followed by another action sequence, that almost feels like it comes out of nowhere. The car chase that follows the already two in a row actions sequences, I actually did like, but the ending with the CGI car crash, into the subway station stood out to me as looking really fake. The prison break didn't make a whole lot of sense to me and it sort of stood out to me, that Natasha didn't seem to care that she killed an entire prisons worth of people (many of whom were just guards doing their jobs), just to save her fake dad.  I mean that to me is just Man of Steel level of collateral damage. The Task Master twist was beyond predictable for me, and I saw it coming a mile away; it almost feels like a stupid version of the Bucky twist to be honest.

Spoiler

Yea I was gonna mention that prison scene, that was just a regular prison right? They weren’t hired goons? 

It goes back to my villain problem again; we see Ray Winstone and Red Guardian basically doing different jobs in the exact same organisation, we’re given no good reason to root for one and not the other. Then the movie asks us to sympathise with Red Guardian, but not Dreykov, who we haven’t seen at all since the opener. We see BW and sis kill a lot of people at the prison, and we learn that BW blew up his daughter. Why the fuck should we be rooting for her at this point? OK, it turns out later he’s a dick (but again, not markedly more so than everyone else working for the same goal) but the movie fails to demonstrate that early enough.

We needed to see BW reveal a real hatred for the whole Widow program, to see how it affected her, THEN have her dramatically reveal she’s going to find the Red Room knowing why. I think, fundamentally, the gap between CW and IW just doesn’t provide a window for BW to have any kind of arc, she doesn’t seem that affected by any of it. She kinda mentions, by the by, I’m gonna find the red room just to give this movie a plot but never sells that it means much to her.

 

[polishgenius]

I liked it personally. It's a bit messy but it's got a lot going for it.

With the prison thing, it's stretching suspension of disbelief but I'm pretty sure the idea is that everyone who got inside survived and that Tasha's going off that in her lack of reaction. 

The Taskmaster 'twist' was  meh but I also haven't got enough of a connection to comic taskmaster to care. If it was Greg Davies then I'd have cared. 

The twist that Natasha killed (well, tried to) Dreykov's daughter not under instruction or when working for the baddies but after she'd already broken the condition as part of her plan to leave was good though, I thought that worked well. The movies have always been a bit shy about leaning into her being the more morally ambiguous character she can be, so I was glad to see it. I also don't really get the 'who are we supposed to root for here' complaint- the reason we're rooting for Widow and Alexei and not Dreykov is he's controlling and seeking to perpetuate the evil scheme and they've stopped doing that. The good person who used to be bad and has done bad things and wants redemption is hardly a rare trope in spy movies.

I also liked that Melissa and Alexei never really 'turned' in the sense that they were always, like, pro-Russia, bit Commie on Crimson Tornado's part. Not that I support being pro-Russia but it all about their clumsy attempts to be real family rather than making propaganda part of it. And that was the strong point of the movie, the characters' attempts to relate to each other.

The other strong point was the infiltration. It got a bit silly after the explosion and it turned into a big, averagely staged action sequence, but the whole bit with setting him up, playing him for information etc was right on point for this kind of thing.

 

The post-credit sequence is just kind of daffy though. Why the hell are they sending her after Hawkeye? 

 

 

 

 

 

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I liked it personally. It's a bit messy but it's got a lot going for it.
 

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The post-credit sequence is just kind of daffy though. Why the hell are they sending her after Hawkeye? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In universe, I have no idea. Real world-wise because she's set to appear in the Hawkeye show and now she has a reason to seek him out.

 

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

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I also don't really get the 'who are we supposed to root for here' complaint- the reason we're rooting for Widow and Alexei and not Dreykov is he's controlling and seeking to perpetuate the evil scheme and they've stopped doing that. The good person who used to be bad and has done bad things and wants redemption is hardly a rare trope in spy movies.

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

You don’t think ‘controlling and perpetuating’ are a bit thin? Red Guardian was annoyed he got sent to prison, but he didn’t really express any regret about his life. Her mother was still actively working for Dreykov right up until the end of the movie. And Natasha didn’t care enough to do anything about it until her sister’s antics dragged her into this, by sending her the red mist. 

So essentially, Dreykov has kept at it and got promoted. That’s his crime as far as we know. It’s an evil program, but it always was and nobody did shit about it. Meanwhile, Natasha tried to kill him and his young daughter.

I think the germ of the ideas you talk about are in there, but it’s all so half baked. In the opener, her mother says she doesn’t want to go, implying she’s happier in Ohio. But that thread is left dangling like so many, it feels like the movie never settles on what it is it’s trying to do.

 

[DaveSumm]

I wasn’t sure if there’d be enough interest to merit a spoiler thread but man I hate quoting spoilers… 

[GallowKnight]

Black Widow was mediocre at best.

Spoiler

The plot was boringly predicable and seemed to actively avoid any kind of interesting character development. Natasha killing a child would have been more interesting if she had actually killed the child. The Taskmaster twist just seemed like a cop-out. And it followed the Marvel standard of having a shitty one-dimensional villain. And I though there was some really shoddy cgi in some of the action scenes.

As a fan of the comic-book character I feel they did Taskmaster dirty.

Oh yeah, the slow-version-cover-of-a-popular-song-trend needs to die.

 

[JGP]

Apropos of... something lol

Black Widow is a great character, but honestly won't miss Scarlet much.

[IlyaP]

Alongside the thematic inconsistencies and typical MCU problems with its villains, it's also *incredibly fucking annoying* that for a movie about "Russians", they couldn't be bothered to cast a single fucking native Russophone or teach the cast how to speak Russian in a way that sounds authentic. Every time someone spoke Russian in this movie, I raged a little on the inside. 

[Leofric]

5 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

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You don’t think ‘controlling and perpetuating’ are a bit thin? Red Guardian was annoyed he got sent to prison, but he didn’t really express any regret about his life. Her mother was still actively working for Dreykov right up until the end of the movie. And Natasha didn’t care enough to do anything about it until her sister’s antics dragged her into this, by sending her the red mist. 

So essentially, Dreykov has kept at it and got promoted. That’s his crime as far as we know. It’s an evil program, but it always was and nobody did shit about it. Meanwhile, Natasha tried to kill him and his young daughter.

I think the germ of the ideas you talk about are in there, but it’s all so half baked. In the opener, her mother says she doesn’t want to go, implying she’s happier in Ohio. But that thread is left dangling like so many, it feels like the movie never settles on what it is it’s trying to do.

 

Spoiler

To be fair, Natasha thought she had already succeeded and killed Dreykhov with the bomb in Budapest and had put an end to the Red Room program when she was recruited by Hawkeye.    As soon as she learned he was still alive and the program still active, she moved to end it, which was the rest of movie.

 

[Corvinus85]

 My Black Widow review: meh; a movie that should have come out before Infinity War, and now it just felt like the equivalent of doing a video game DLC in a massive game that was added as an afterthought. Because of all the Mass Effect talk in the video game thread, I was even comparing it to the Shadow Broker DLC. Not bad, but not absolutely necessary.

Spoiler

My biggest annoyance is that this movie decided to treat Natasha et al as superhuman, and that's partially a fault of the Avengers movies. Yes, she is skilled and tough, but come on. She should have died a hundred times already. This movie shouldn't have had the big effects ending, and could have stayed with more 'down to earth' fight scenes and more practical effects. And they throw a funny line about Thor and painkillers, and call it good.

The villain was weak and not interesting. I did enjoy the moment, though, when Nat taunted him in his office. It was clear as day what they were going for, but it was still one of the better moments.

Florence Pough was the standout for me. She was great and made the best of what she had. David Harbour was fun in his role.

 

10 hours ago, sifth said:

This is such a weird movie for me, because I can actually pin point exactly when I started not liking the direction things were going. I honestly really enjoy the first half hour of the movie.

  Reveal hidden contents

The flash back was really good and I sort of wish was even longer, but even past that, seeing Natasha live off the grid was interesting to me and the bridge fight was really cool, but everything after that just starts to feel really messy. The knife fight between Yelena and Natasha makes no sense at all to me and feels like a complete waste of time (I'd rather those minutes be added to the opening flashback, to be honest), which is followed by another action sequence, that almost feels like it comes out of nowhere. The car chase that follows the already two in a row actions sequences, I actually did like, but the ending with the CGI car crash, into the subway station stood out to me as looking really fake. The prison break didn't make a whole lot of sense to me and it sort of stood out to me, that Natasha didn't seem to care that she killed an entire prisons worth of people (many of whom were just guards doing their jobs), just to save her fake dad.  I mean that to me is just Man of Steel level of collateral damage. The Task Master twist was beyond predictable for me, and I saw it coming a mile away; it almost feels like a stupid version of the Bucky twist to be honest.

Same. It reminded me of the last Mission Impossible movie which also had the same issue.

[DaveSumm]

4 hours ago, Leofric said:

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To be fair, Natasha thought she had already succeeded and killed Dreykhov with the bomb in Budapest and had put an end to the Red Room program when she was recruited by Hawkeye.    As soon as she learned he was still alive and the program still active, she moved to end it, which was the rest of movie.

 

Ah, fair point. Although it’s telling that I forgot that - I don’t think Johansson really sells it that this is a huge deal to her. She seems locked into playing BW as cool as a cucumber about everything, and this should have been a movie that really rattled the character as it dealt with her family. Possibly a weird comparison but Picard was usually cool and professional, which made it awesome in First Contact when he clearly loses perspective and smashes up his model ships. The events went right to the core for him and it broke him; Natasha treats all this as just another professional job she has to do. We needed to see her visibly disturbed and out of character on that revelation. But she doesn’t seem to care that much, so why should we?