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Black Widow 2020

I think it's because it's much easier to roll eyes and say "she's complaining about money I will never see in my lifetime!" When you see "millionaire sues for $20m!"
 
Eukie said:
This is probably tied with Captain America 2 for my second favourite MCU film.

It is, in fact, great. Well. It's great in the way superhero movies are, which means it has a really good first half to two thirds, and then the final third is a mess of overly complex plot revelations and setpiece battlegroups that ends up killing all the good mood in the first half of the movie. But given that, it's really, really good.

It also makes me, who's wanted to like Black Widow since Iron Man 2, really happy. It finally givers the character room to be characterized and actually do things and care about them, instead of being the second least important Avenger or whatever. Like how she's a huge Bond film aficionado, which is a really good piece of characterization because a) Nat's a spy and spies fucking love spy fiction, and b) it ties into the whole thing about how Nat wants to be a hero. She doesn't want to be the assassin of a nebulous secret organization, that's just what she does. She wants to be an Avenger, to be James Bond, saving the day and making quips. The film even has Yelena mock her three-point landing and hair-tossing, but it feels less mean-spirited than a lot of self-aware self-deprecation because it uses this not to say that the movies you're watching are stupid, but to say something about a character's internal life.

Florence Pugh's take on Yelena is also a treat. She plays the character basically as a slightly less impulsive and cruel version of Killing Eve's Villanelle, another Russian assassin with a heavy accent and weird thought processes. Pugh has the exact delivery down. This is an inspiration the film clearly acknowledges, as in the post-credit scene we see Yelena dress in the same off-beat fashion disaster way that was Villanelle's trademark on Killing Eve. And speaking of delivering in-your-face lines...

So Black Widow isn't exactly going to win any feminist awards, but it was so patently obvious that someone in the writing-directing process had involved women, which is always a joy. Like Yelena being super excited about getting to pick clothes for herself and finally getting something with pockets or the lengthy ad-lib she made during a script reading that ended up in the film, of responding to "Are you having your time of the month?" with extensive, shocking detail about how she's been sterilized. Which is exactly how some uterus-havers I know talk about periods, reproductive stuff, and being treated like objects by the medical establishment and society at large: shoving your face in the details, because they've dealt with this their whole lives and have come to terms with it even if they don't like it, and they're tired and want to just speak up for once, and know that it'll make annoying assholes supremely uncomfortable. Oh it's such a wonderful line.

Lethe I liked this movie. It does so much so well.

Also here's a fun little detail: Nat isn't "the" Black Widow in this movie. "The" Black Widow is the first Black Widow, who was married to Red Guardian, a Cold War operative, and all that stuff. That's not MCU's Nat, that's Rachel Weisz' character.

Oh, and this is like one of the best three Black Widow properties ever made across all media, because the Black Widow comics are mostly shit.

In fact, let me derail a bit by talking about how Black Widow comics are shiiiiiiiiiit.

Most of them just aren't that good. There are exceptions, like the 2014 and 2016 series, but most have dull stories with an overreliance on internal narration that mostly characterizes Natasha as a competent but terribly boring person, generic superhero stuff with no substance, and forgettable art. Some stories, however, manage to stand out:

Black Widow (1999)
One of the early first solo ventures for the character, this three-part story basically establishes about half of the modern Black Widow canon. It's where Yelena Bolova was first introduced, where the Red Room is introduced, where the idea that Black Widow is not merely a codename but a title for super-operatives of Russia originates, that establishes the antagonistic relationship Yelena has with Nat, all that stuff. It's also... like the story isn't the worst, I actually like the conflict between Yelena and Nat, but the art, oh god the art...


So this should tell you what the priorty of the art is. But that's the cover, I hear you say, they rarely have anything to do with the interior art, maybe the interior is better? Well...



OK that's not too bad--





It's traced from fucking porn!

Black Widow: Pale Little Spider
So superhero comics in general have never been great at writing stories about women and Black Widow especially has never really had a fair shake, so wouldn't it be great if Greg Rucka, one of the best people in the industry with a long career of writing strong female characters (seriously go check out Whiteout, Stumptown, or Queen And Country sometime!) got to write Black Widow?

Oh, he already did? Wait... Rucka what are you doing... Rucka... why is this comic about Yelena trying to uncover a murder at a Moscow BDSM club and being mentored by a dominatrix and ending by saying that her skingtight latex bare midriff catsuit is actually empowering because it's the uniform of a Black Widow? Rucka no!

Greg Rucka would also write Black Widow (2001), which is a story about Yelena and Nat going Face/Off so Nat can psychologically abuse Yelena to teach her a lesson about how cruel the world is, or something. It wasn't very good. Thankfully Greg Rucka was not tapped for any more Black Widow stories and would go on to write actually good things instead, like Stumptown and that Punisher arc about the Punisher's female ex-USMC sidekick (Rucka has a type).

Black Widow (2004-2005)
Aside from all the work the 1999 comic did in establishing the now core elements of the Black Widow canon, this comic series probably had the most influence on the film. It's where the plot point about the pheromonal lock that keeps Nat from attacking her superiors comes from, which writer and transphobe Richard K. Morgan established for this comic. In it, there's lots of pheromonal commands, and it's revealed that Nick Fury stole the formula from Russia and used it to engineer Nat's defection to the United States, because women don't make decisions, decisions are made for them by men.

Did I mention Richard K. Morgan is trying to write this as a feminist story? It's about how Black Widow is bitter and tired of always being pigeonholed because she's a woman and sexism, how men always give her perfume as a gift instead of getting to know her and giving her climbing ropes and Russian literature, the evils of cosmetics companies, blah blah blah. Which is... like it's not per se invalid to make these complaints, but they lack a bit of nuance in how the portray femininity and feminine pursuits like makeup and fashion as unavoidably patriarchal, and well... Richard K. Morgan is a man and probably shouldn't be speaking over actual women's voices like that.

Oh, and in one scene Nat kidnaps a waitress, strips her to her underwear, and ties her up to a bed, so she can hold the waitress hostage and make her lesbian girlfriend from a rival agency comply. Then she strips the lesbian rival agent half-naked and and ties her to the bed too, leaving them to be found by hotel staff and have the story told on national television, which the comic treats as a joke because ha-ha, sexually humiliating lesbian woman is so empowering, right! #Girlboss

In the second half of the story Nat executes the lesbian when she goes after Nat for revenge, and Yelena appears as a Cuba-based fetish underwear model because Richard K. Morgan can write two kinds of women, and if they're not icy bitches like Nat they're turbosluts.

Did you like those wrist things that have been integral to the character's design since the 70s? Well fuck you, they're stupid and heavy and Nat never liked them. She hates fun.

The climax of Nat breaking her own nose to overcome the pheromonal lock comes from this comic, though I really prefer the comic book version. The movie version is overly complicated with the whole severing the olfactory nerve bit, while the comic settles on a very simple "can't smell when bleeding because your nose is broken". Also unlike the movie, it's willing to show just how fucking messed up having your nose broken looks, which adds to this vicious emotional edge of Nat. The film is too tied down by how Nat has to be this unshakable character and is unwilling to properly mar her beauty, which reduces the impact a lot:


Black Widow: Deadly Origin
This one's where the white snow outfit in the film comes from, and it's potentially not a bad story (dealing with the resentment of Natasha's KGB handler as she grows from out under him), though the execution left a lot to be desired and there's just something about framing a female character's story mostly in terms of how a man wants to possess her. The art's also not that good, the production design is annoying in places (1950s KGB operatives running around with MP5s and looking like the SAS during Operation Nimrod!), and it kind of gets caught up in a mess of Black Widow's incredibly long and convoluted superhero serial background, while rewriting key scenes to show that the KGB handler was actually there all along!

And then there's the plot point about the villain having injected Nat with a virus that makes it so that all of her lovers' other lovers will all go homicidally crazy when exposed to a signal, the antidote to which is in Black Widow's lips, a plot point that seems to exist solely to make this sequence of panels happen:



Black Widow (2010)
This one... I didn't really care for it, it has some cool scenes but it's a dumb mess about somebody threatening Nat's secret child or something. What really makes it stand out is that it was clearly co-written by the artist's dick:
A completely normal way of shutting someone up:


I know when I capture a spy I make sure to drag incredibly heavy custom-made bondage gear into a meat locker before interrogating them:


This is not so much mistaking one's femdom fetish for respect as it's just straight-up deciding every reader of the comic needs to know you want a cartoon character to sexually humiliate you:

All that said, I still really like this panel:


More badass characters being determined please.
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Thanks for the rundown of recent comic inspirations for the movie. I'd read the 2014 and 2016 ones a while back, but from what I remember they didn't seem to have much influence on the film. Apparently the new 2020 series just won the Eisner for best new series though. I'll have to check it out when it hits Marvel Unlimited.
 
Eukie said:
The overall plot of rescuing and deprogramming a new batch of Widows was probably taken from the 2016 comic.
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Looking back I'm not sure what series I was thinking of that I did actually read, none of these covers look familiar maybe it was a miniseries from the same time period or something? Or maybe I just forgot alot more of the run than I thought.

Off to read (reread?) some Black Widow comics. :V
 
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Saw it today in cinema, I really liked it! Like I can nitpick stuff where the MCU runs into hard limits of what mainstream media curated by an uncaring corporation will allow. But for what it was allowed to be, it's the best it can be and worth the eleven fucking years we had to wait to get a BW solo film. I will now most likely eject from consuming MCU material again.
 
Who here suspects that Disney will try to Blacklist ScarJo? Because at this point they ARE Hollywood and could try to use her to deter other efforts.
 
Mithras said:
Who here suspects that Disney will try to Blacklist ScarJo? Because at this point they ARE Hollywood and could try to use her to deter other efforts.
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They might well do, though with Blunt and Stone jumping on, it might prove unviable - you can only blacklist so many big names. That said, to my understanding, this was going to be her last appearance in MCU stuff anyway, so I suspect to a degree that's partly why Johansson is particularly willing to contest this particular violation. Way easier to take your employers to court when you're leaving and no longer have the sword of damocles hanging over you.
 
Mithras said:
Who here suspects that Disney will try to Blacklist ScarJo? Because at this point they ARE Hollywood and could try to use her to deter other efforts.
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She's too high profile to blacklist in the fullest sense; she was already massively successful before the MCU, and has enough clout to fight back against a true blacklist. What's more likely is that if things aren't amicably settled between her and Disney, Disney simply soft blacklists her from their properties. After all, the reason they were willing to do this in the first place is likely because she'll no longer be working in the MCU anyway. But that's not meaningful, since despite Disney's power there are still genuine competing studios out there; I'm sure Warner Bros. or Netflix or whoever would be willing to snap her up for their franchises.
 
So... it was a solid movie. Not marvel's best, but not their worst either. One of their better ones even, even though I don't think I'll ever say it was my favorite. I do think I enjoyed these characters the most out of any marvel movie characters though. They were all really fun, especially Florence Pew Pew who managed to do a great job of being sarcastic to hide her vulnerability in a way that wasn't like, in your face. When she got upset she didn't like break down, but you could hear the slight wetness of her eyes in her voice.


Eukie said:
Like how she's a huge Bond film aficionado, which is a really good piece of characterization because a) Nat's a spy and spies fucking love spy fiction, and b) it ties into the whole thing about how Nat wants to be a hero. She doesn't want to be the assassin of a nebulous secret organization, that's just what she does. She wants to be an Avenger, to be James Bond, saving the day and making quips.
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Did I miss something? When do we learn she liked James Bond movies?
 
Renewal said:
She's too high profile to blacklist in the fullest sense; she was already massively successful before the MCU, and has enough clout to fight back against a true blacklist. What's more likely is that if things aren't amicably settled between her and Disney, Disney simply soft blacklists her from their properties. After all, the reason they were willing to do this in the first place is likely because she'll no longer be working in the MCU anyway. But that's not meaningful, since despite Disney's power there are still genuine competing studios out there; I'm sure Warner Bros. or Netflix or whoever would be willing to snap her up for their franchises.
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And even then, everything I have heard about this lawsuit is that it is kind of the tip of the spear. The shape of the industry is changing, with a lot more companies embracing streaming. Actors like ScarJo are going to need to throw down the gauntlet if they don't want to get screwed over.
 
serra2 said:
And even then, everything I have heard about this lawsuit is that it is kind of the tip of the spear. The shape of the industry is changing, with a lot more companies embracing streaming. Actors like ScarJo are going to need to throw down the gauntlet if they don't want to get screwed over.
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Honestly it's fairly irrelevant long term. This is an issue caused by the sudden adoption of simultaneous streaming release, going forward all vaguely competent contracts would take it into account regardless of whether this suit happened or not.
 
king208 said:
Honestly it's fairly irrelevant long term. This is an issue caused by the sudden adoption of simultaneous streaming release, going forward all vaguely competent contracts would take it into account regardless of whether this suit happened or not.
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I could see a lot of companies making contracts with only the clauses for theaters, but keeping the option to just release it to streaming. While this is the high profile example, I could see this being a major issue with low budget horror movies where the largely unknow actors pay is almost entirely dependent on the gross of the film.
 
king208 said:
Honestly it's fairly irrelevant long term. This is an issue caused by the sudden adoption of simultaneous streaming release, going forward all vaguely competent contracts would take it into account regardless of whether this suit happened or not.
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This is basically saying "I don't care if the new kids get screwed" judging from how the music industry has continued to work if allowed to.
 
Night said:
This is basically saying "I don't care if the new kids get screwed" judging from how the music industry has continued to work if allowed to.
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My point was the exact opposite actually. But if you see a similar unresolved situation in the music industry then this suit won't help anyone. After all Eminiem successful sued over a similar issue regarding streaming royalties a while back, and if things haven't improved since then, this suit doesn't have much chance of improving the situation on the film side long term.
 
Renewal said:
She's too high profile to blacklist in the fullest sense; she was already massively successful before the MCU, and has enough clout to fight back against a true blacklist. What's more likely is that if things aren't amicably settled between her and Disney, Disney simply soft blacklists her from their properties. After all, the reason they were willing to do this in the first place is likely because she'll no longer be working in the MCU anyway. But that's not meaningful, since despite Disney's power there are still genuine competing studios out there; I'm sure Warner Bros. or Netflix or whoever would be willing to snap her up for their franchises.
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Doesn't Disney own like some time 40-50% of all media properties now days? That's a lot of properties to be soft blacklisted from.
 
The counterpoint is that outside of Marvel, ScarJo is not, like, some renowned blockbuster actress. A lot of her other films are kinda artsy projects, which is how she built a lot of her reputation to begin with, so being blocked off from Franchise work isn't exactly as huge a blow to her prospects as it seems. I fully expect her to gladly go back to the weird pseudo indie stuff .
 
The_Reptile_ said:
The counterpoint is that outside of Marvel, ScarJo is not, like, some renowned blockbuster actress. A lot of her other films are kinda artsy projects, which is how she built a lot of her reputation to begin with, so being blocked off from Franchise work isn't exactly as huge a blow to her prospects as it seems. I fully expect her to gladly go back to the weird pseudo indie stuff .
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Ah yes, who can forget such pseudo-indie drama's like *checks notes* uh Ghost In The Shell, JoJo Rabbit, and Isle of Dogs?
 
Yeah, the MCU may have turned her into a superstar because the MCU is a behemoth, but she already had legitimate hits before it, unlike basically all the core six Avengers except RDJ. Like, this is similar to the fight Disney had with Sony over Spider-man: Disney may be a megacorp, but they're not exactly pushing around a nobody here.
 
Renewal said:
Yeah, the MCU may have turned her into a superstar because the MCU is a behemoth, but she already had legitimate hits before it, unlike basically all the core six Avengers except RDJ. Like, this is similar to the fight Disney had with Sony over Spider-man: Disney may be a megacorp, but they're not exactly pushing around a nobody here.
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She's a two-time Oscar nominee (in the same year!) who was already an established star before she put on the catsuit. Even if, somehow, Disney put the screws to her and (somehow) stopped her from getting any more acting gigs (exceedingly unlikely), there'd be nothing stopping her from founding a production company and going into business for herself.
 
let us also not forget that she has a tom waits covers album where david bowie does backing vocals on two tracks

 
Renewal said:
Yeah, the MCU may have turned her into a superstar because the MCU is a behemoth, but she already had legitimate hits before it, unlike basically all the core six Avengers except RDJ. Like, this is similar to the fight Disney had with Sony over Spider-man: Disney may be a megacorp, but they're not exactly pushing around a nobody here.
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Actually, I would argue this most closely resembles the whole star wars writer thing where they didn't want to pay them because "They bought the assets and not the liabilities." Disney is having something of a problem when it comes to contracts and paying people.
 
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