Although it's a prequel that takes place prior to the events of the last two Avengers movies — two of the biggest, most crowd-pleasing films ever made — Black Widow feels like the right movie to follow them. Okay, sure, Spider-Man: Far From Home actually came first, but it released pre-pandemic just a few shorts months after Avengers: Endgame and was clearly meant to serve as an epilogue to the entire Infinity Saga, the multi-film story Marvel had been busy building since Iron Man first launched himself skyward. With Black Widow, regardless of when its story is set, the audience at least is firmly in the AFTER TIMES. Thanos is defeated. Tony Stark is dead. Steve Rogers is retired. Marvel side characters are busy having their own little adventures in TV shows on Disney+. Black Widow arrives with a newly erased slate, two years and one worldwide pandemic after that "Avengers Assemble!" buzz has worn off. So what is Marvel going to do now?
The answer is: We're still not sure. (It's likely going to involve multiverse shenanigans for a while.) But Black Widow posits that it's now okay for these movies to be smaller again, to tell a character-focused story that wears its non-Marvel Cinematic Universe influences on its sleeves, and that doesn't have to be the most exciting thing you've ever seen in your life. Black Widow does not raise any bars for Marvel. It recycles some of the franchise's most comic-booky storylines. (There's both a massive, flying headquarters and a plot involving mind control.) But it's an extremely competent action/spy thriller starring one old character we already like and a bunch of new ones who feel like they could have been in the MCU all along.
The character we already know, of course, is Scarlett Johannson's Natasha Romanoff, one-time Russian assassin and current Avenger. (At least until she sacrifices herself for the greater good in Endgame. Remember, this is a prequel!) Thanks to the events of Captain America: Civil War, Natasha is on the run and hoping to lay low for a while. That proves to be problematic though when she receives a package from her "sister," Yelena (Florence Pugh), a fellow operative from Russia's still-very-much-active Black Widow program, which abducts young girls and turns them into cold-blooded killers. Whereas in Natasha's day, the Black Widows would be honed into emotionless murder machines using old-fashioned persuasion techniques, the current batch are actually having their free will taken away thanks to scientific breakthroughs in re-hardwiring their brains. Natasha, who wrongly thought she had already killed Black Widow overlord General Dreykov (Ray Winstone), is disturbed to learn the program is still up and running. Thanks to a run-in with a dusty chemical agent that "cures" the brainwashing, Yelena is free to make her own choices for the first time in years. Together, they decide to team up to locate the mysterious Red Room (home to the Black Widow program) and take Dreykov down once and for all. They're just going to need some help doing it, which is why they attempt to recruit their "father," Alexei Shostakov, a.k.a. the Red Guardian (David Harbour), who was once Russia's answer to Captain America, and their "mother," Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), who's one of the Red Room's chief scientists. In an opening flashback sequence, we learned that the four of them lived together in Ohio when Natasha was a kid, posing as an American family to steal secrets vital to the Black Widow program.
If there's a theme here, it's "the power of family." (Vin Diesel would approve.) Natasha never thought she had a family, but then she found one with the Avengers. And here she finds another, as the fake family she left behind reassembles to discover the feelings they have for one another are quite real. It's fairly standard stuff, but it's extremely well-acted by a quartet of actors you'd expect nothing less from. (Johansson continues to properly convey that Natasha is a warm and level-headed person who could snap your neck any time she wanted. Harbour, as a past-his-prime hero who actually never really had a prime, is hilarious. Pugh kicks non-stop ass and is also hilarious. Weisz is wise and motherly and cunning.) Past that, the movie sets its sights no higher than being an MCU James Bond film, which is hammered home by the fact that, at one point in the movie, Natasha is giddily watching a Bond flick. This is a totally fine goal! Especially when you consider that Black Widow does a better job at being a Bond film than the last few Bond films do. Another trick the movie has up its sleeve is that it isn't afraid to take the piss out of previous MCU entries. Yelena takes great delight in mocking some of Natasha's most oft-used superhero moves, and director Cate Shortland, along with writers Eric Pearson, Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson, aren't afraid to borrow pre-existing bits of Black Widow lore that were (sometimes clumsily) inserted into the earlier movies and include them here into reconfigured and surprising ways. (Yelena gives Alexei a matter-of-fact rundown of the forced hysterectomy all Black Widows are subjected to, and her speech, along with Alexei's obvious discomfort in hearing it, is impressively horrifying and funny at the same time. These are women who are done with both running from their past and being defined by it.)
The action scenes aren't top shelf, but they're still a lot of fun. And their stripped-down nature (no wizard spells or alien weapons here) are a refreshing change of pace for the MCU, which hasn't really done this kind of thing since Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I like that Black Widow feels somewhat "old school," with its featured credits appearing at the beginning of the movie and its single post-credits stinger being a smallish look at things to come that's shoved to the very end of the closing credits. Intentionally or not, it all combines to make this movie feel like a big piece of the partial reset the MCU is getting right now. Take a breath. Enjoy a fun spy flick. There will be bigger, more monumental Marvel happenings coming down the road. But, for now, who could complain about an efficient, capably made action movie starring a character who's deserved her time in the spotlight for years now? Certainly not me.
