Hello!
This time I’m writing about Black Widow, which opened on Thursday 8 July — the points worth flagging, the theories, and on top of that my predictions for where all of this goes next.
In this post I’ll write up, briefly, the things that caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then go into the theories.
Spoilers ahead
The WandaVision episode reviews, from back when it aired, are here!
Click the image below for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode reviews!
Check the image below for the Loki episode reviews!
I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun recently. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
This time I shot the Toppan museum and the Setagaya Art Museum.
So much fun!
Felt like the MCU’s answer to Mission: Impossible, and I think it was pitched at an older audience than the other films. But the links to the rest of it are properly there as well — Hawkeye, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and it even makes sense of why she chose to die in Endgame.
One thing to note: Black Widow was originally meant to open before The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so the hints about another Captain America and the appearance of Valentina Allegra apparently ended up out of order. Also, it feels like Phase 4 has been using more blood and slightly nastier imagery since it started. I think that gives it a sense of reality, which is good.
The fake family of Red Room operatives turning into a real family at the end hit me right in the chest. And on top of that, so glad every single one of them is alive…
The story was fun too — things like fooling Dreykov together with the mother. The daft-couple energy between Alexei and Melina is my favourite bit. Looking forward to seeing more of them~
The song choices in this film were so good! First up, the opening.
Malia J — Smells Like Teen Spirit
That one.
An absurdly serious version of the song and it works beautifully, very 007. Next, the song Alexei and Yelena remember together.
Don McLean — American Pie
That one.
Alexei singing the song they remember to cheer Yelena up was lovely
Say what you like about him, you can tell those three years were a real family for Alexei too
Wiping out the Red Room with Hawkeye as her final S.H.I.E.L.D. test, which she hadn’t actually managed at all, and killing a little girl as collateral while doing it (though the girl was alive after all) — there was real darkness in there
Watching this, I think maybe she made that choice in Endgame because she had nothing left undone. The Widows scattered around the world must all have been brought back to their senses by the time of Infinity War. And in the years between the end of this film and Endgame, it’d be nice if Yelena, Alexei and Melina had been taking the odd job and the odd meal together~
Great to finally see Natasha doing actual spy work, which none of the MCU films had shown before.
The action is so coooooooool!!! The shield, the sword, the claws, the bow — the way all of it moves fired me up. And the gadgets opening and closing to stow and draw them, too. The display on the mask shifting in red looked great as well.
The nasty feeling that Taskmaster would turn out to be the girl Natasha caught in that explosion ended up being right… The device on the neck seems to be nothing more than a life-support unit, the photographic reflexes an after-effect of the explosion, and the trick used to control her that chemical agent. I’m planning to watch it again and get my head around the neck device properly, though
She survived this time, so maybe she turns up in the Hawkeye series along with the other Widows? In the comics Taskmaster is a first-rate instructor, so that side of the character would be great to see too
A man born with the ability of “photographic reflexes.” Simply by watching pro basketball and pro football on TV and copying the movements, he could perform at the level of a super athlete, and by watching Westerns he learned to use a lasso.
As an adult he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and became an agent. On one occasion, when a doctor was about to die in front of him, it turned out the man was carrying a Nazi version of the super-soldier serum. Since the serum was expected to enhance Tony’s abilities, Tony injected himself with it. The serum did raise his powers, but it came with a side effect that “overwrote” his past memories, and he even forgot his wife Mercedes Masters (also a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent).
He stole S.H.I.E.L.D. assets and opened a “school that sells skills,” which came to be known among criminals as the Taskmaster Academy, and ended up “selling” his skills to a great many villains and heroes. Tony took his cue from Santa Muerte (in Catholic carnivals, a skull mask symbolising death is worn) and started wearing a skull mask himself (he apparently uses an image inducer from time to time).
As a hired instructor he takes the side of villains and heroes alike. He has no firm convictions, but there is a great deal that is human about him.
https://w.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/495.html
She’s played by Florence Pugh, best known for Little Women and Midsommar! Little Women is a film I genuinely love, so I recommend it to all of you
Telling Alexei about a hysterectomy and other pretty brutal things in a completely flat voice, she’s a bit broken in places, but a great character. She thinks Clint Barton is the reason her sister died, so surely her showing up in the Hawkeye series is a certainty
Her taking the mickey out of the pose Natasha strikes when she lands was funny.
Alexei is played by David Harbour, best known for Stranger Things! Here he’s a paunchy, bearded, useless dad, and he works as a lovely lubricant in a film with such a serious theme.
In this film he’s the Soviet Union’s first super soldier, and he says he actually fought Captain America back in the ’80s — except Captain America should have been frozen in the ice at that point…
I’ll come back to this later, but this Captain America looks like it’s probably Isaiah Bradley from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, or one of the men who came after him! Also, someone pointed this out in the comments — Cap does travel back through time to return the Infinity Stones, so that possibility looks live as well!
Melina is played by Rachel Weisz, best known for The Favourite. Haven’t seen that one yet, so I need to. Melina in this film is gorgeous! She talks flatly, like a robot, but there’s a cute side to her too — reporting that she’d taken out one of the engines, the flirting with Alexei.
Then there’s suffocating the pig, and calling the enemy in (she has a change of heart afterwards) — a character who keeps your pulse going.
Would love a Melina, Yelena and Alexei spy film down the line~~
Not an exaggeration to call him the biggest piece of scum in Marvel history. What makes him so vile is the bottomless appetite behind it — he does evil purely because he wants to control people — and the fact that he can only act tough around fragile young girls. A truly horrible man.
About the Red Room floating up in the sky, I did wonder whether the Helicarriers wouldn’t have found its location during Project Insight in The Winter Soldier lol
Pretty sure he showed up in the PS5 game Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales as well. Rick Mason is apparently the mechanic type of character. Thought he might end up with Natasha, but being someone’s partner isn’t what happiness means for Natasha, so he gets turned down indirectly
Secretary Ross, who has been turning up more and more since Civil War. I have a feeling somebody else held the post in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so it’d be nice to have that side of things cleared up later on. He clears Natasha in light of the Dreykov business, but then immediately has his prisoners broken out by her and Cap — you almost feel sorry for him
Going by the dates in Alexei’s war story, Captain America should have been frozen in the ice. But as anyone who has seen The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will know, Isaiah was in fact being run secretly by the government as the second Captain America, so Alexei’s opponent was probably Isaiah. The shield would have been a different one, obviously, since the original was frozen along with him lol
Sadly, given that Alexei never worked out that Captain America was Black, Isaiah’s Captain America costume must have had no exposed skin on it at all…
Val is the evil-Nick-Fury figure who first appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but I did not expect her to turn up at the very end lol
Looks like she has already worked with Yelena a few times, but even though she’d finally been freed from the Red Room, Yelena, why… that’s the feeling…
For what it’s worth, I argued here that Val is setup for Secret Invasion
The film ends with Yelena’s next target being Clint Barton. Wow, that was a shock. Knowing how Natasha actually died, Barton isn’t the one at fault, so I’d like to see them make peace. Great that the shows and the films are properly linking up now.
On July 24, 202…