SPOILER ALERT: While this review does not delve deeply into the plots of Black Widow and Loki, it does discuss plot details from previously released Marvel Studios films.
Hollywood works in phases. When a certain type of movie proves profitable, studios start churning them out for popular consumption. We associate the 1950s and 1960s with historical epics, the 70s with the work of auteurs, the 80s with teen dramas, the 90s with edgy indie fare. Yet after a decade or two, audiences and studios for whatever reason always seem to move on to something new and different, leaving behind a classic era of filmmaking for nostalgists to pine for.
With this pattern in mind, a lot of filmgoers believe the end of the comic book movie era is imminent. Setting aside Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) and their sequels, the beginning of the modern era of the comic book movie can be traced to the release of Blade (1998), X-Men (2000), and Spider-Man (2002). A smattering of superhero films ranging from the good (X2: X-Men United [2002] and Spider-Man 2 [2004]) to the bad (Spider-Man 3 [2007]) to the ugly (the two Fantastic Four films [2005 and 2007]) appeared over the next few years. The turning point, though, occurred in 2008, when Christopher Nolan’s Batman film The Dark Knight prompted audiences to start approaching comic book movies as serious works of art (Heath Ledger won a posthumous Academy Award for his portrayal of the Joker in that film) and Iron Man kicked off the expansive and now ubiquitous Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The characters of the MCU exist in a shared world and leap between films littered with Easter eggs and plot developments that foreshadow future installments. It all culminated in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), the latter of which claimed the title of highest-grossing film of all-time at the end of its theatrical run. (Avatar has since retaken the crown.)
It’s easy to regard Endgame as peak comic book movie. The film cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, and you can see every cent of it on-screen, along with all your favorite Marvel superheroes from Captain America to Black Panther to Spider-Man to Captain Marvel. Yes, it was spectacle and fan service, but that’s what the preceding twenty-one films in the series promised and that’s what directors Anthony and Joe Russo more than delivered. Yet with the glut of superhero films that have flooded cineplexes over the past decade, including many movies featuring DC Comics characters that have drawn mixed reactions from fans as well as non-MCU Marvel movies starring the X-Men, audiences may be getting comic book movie fatigue. Even some of the MCU’s fanbase is getting worn down, claiming Marvel is oversaturating the market with formulaic or unsurprising films that rely too much on obscure characters or plot devices (i.e., time travel) that negate the impact of the series’ movies. With Endgame marking the end of Marvel’s multi-movie “Infinity Saga,” maybe wayward audiences will be looking for something new to watch when they start returning to theaters after a pandemic-induced hiatus.
Marvel Studios, led by producer Kevin Feige, has big plans for the MCU’s future, though. They’ve got eleven films slated so far for the MCU’s “Phase Four,” which will pick up where Endgame left off. The first of those films—Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson (pictured above, right)—debuted in theaters and for a fee on Disney+ last week after a fourteen-month delay. They’ve also released three TV series on Disney+ and have at least ten more either wrapped up or in the works; each ties-in or is spun-off from the movies. The third of those shows—Loki starring Tom Hiddleston (pictured above, left)—wrapped up a couple days ago; the revelations of its final episode have upended the MCU and set in motion the series’ new overarching storyline. Feige is determined to reassert Marvel’s dominion over pop culture; this past week, then, was something like Bruce Banner going green and flexing.
Audiences have been waiting since May 2020—or maybe more accurately, since May 2010, when she stole Iron Man 2—to see Natasha Romanov/Black Widow in her solo big screen debut. They may end up disappointed; Black Widow, directed by Cate Shortland, isn’t a bad film, just an underwhelming one. Pitched as the first film of Phase Four, Black Widow is actually a missing chapter of Phase Three set way back in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War (2016), which found the Avengers battling each other over the merits of “superhero registration.” This movie finds Johansson’s Romanov living off the grid in Norway after helping Captain America’s faction of anti-registration superheroes. Trouble finds her, though, after she is ambushed by a mysterious villain named Taskmaster who is after a package in Romanov’s possession.
Romanov is able to trace the package back to Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) a surrogate sister who, like Romanov, had been brainwashed and trained to be a “Black Widow” assassin as a girl in a nefarious Russian program called the Red Room. (This is Johansson’s last appearance as Romanov; Pugh’s character will take her place in the Avengers going forward.) Belova, who has just shaken control of the Red Room herself, informs Romanov that the program remains active despite Romanov’s belief that she had destroyed it years ago after killing its director General Dreykov (Ray Winstone). Now reunited, Romanov and Belova decide to take it down again and rescue the remaining brainwashed Widows from the man who groomed and controls them. (The movie’s themes reflect the influence of the MeToo Movement.) Their mission requires them to reunite with their surrogate mother (Rachel Weisz) and surrogate father, a Russian super-soldier played as comic relief by David Harbour.
Stylistically, Black Widow tries to channel the 70s conspiracy film feel of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), perhaps the most grounded of the MCU’s films and one that also revolves around heroes getting brainwashed in Russia. Winter Soldier is also the film where Johansson’s character fully comes into her own (even if she does get sidelined for much of the third act’s big fight.) To its detriment, however, Black Widow feels less like an MCU movie and more like a Jason Bourne film. After an engrossing opening scene set during Romanov’s childhood, a disruptive credits sequence is the first sign that Shortland is plunging us into an homage to the sort of bland and clinical action films studios made at the height of the War on Terror. Granted, Romanov doesn’t have super powers, but that has never kept her from doing cool super heroic things alongside her super powered partners. The film could definitely use more memorable and inventive action scenes.
The film could also use a lighter touch. Black Widow is the MCU’s least fun movie to date. Even if critics are inclined to view them as popcorn flicks, MCU films have always featured clever turns of plot, witty banter, and a sense of wonder. That’s mostly absent in this workmanlike film. A pair of uncharismatic villains doesn’t help remedy this problem, either. Black Widow is also surprisingly talky. There’s a scene in the middle of the movie in which a group of characters basically converse at length about their lack of chemistry. Not only does it fail to offer a convincing explanation for why these characters would ever expect to fall in with one another, but it brings the movie to a halt.
This is all a shame because it only adds to the sense that Johansson’s character has always been marginalized by the architects of the MCU. It really shouldn’t be this way. Romanov was an original cinematic Avenger and at first the only woman in the group; she was the character girls identified with, and the one my daughter dressed as for Halloween in the first grade. Johansson plays her as an unpredictable and enigmatic character, so she’s always been a delight to watch. By Endgame she was leading the Avengers. But that movie’s script also called on for the character to sacrifice her life before the film’s climactic battle, depriving her of a spot in the series’ grand finale. It also meant the MCU’s original female hero was not included in the memorable shot that saw the MCU’s female heroes come together to confront big bad Thanos. After Romanov’s death in Endgame, the Avengers were only given a few seconds to mourn her passing; when Iron Man died, viewers got to see his memorial service. It seemed to take all that for Feige and the MCU brain trust to realize Romanov deserved her own movie, but because it lacks the spark of the other movies in the series and doesn’t really deal with the sacrifice she made to help the heroes save the day two years ago, even her solo film feels like something of an afterthought to Marvel Studios, a loose end that needed to be tied up before moving on to other projects.
Black Widow is generic enough that someone unfamiliar with the MCU could watch it and get the gist of what’s going on. The same cannot be said for Loki, directed by Kate Herron, which is nestled deep inside the MCU’s mythology. Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, is the Norse god of mischief, the adopted son of Odin, and the brother of the superhero Thor. He’s the main villain in Thor (2011) and Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), with his appearance in the latter film endearing him to fans. Despite the character’s mischievous ways, Loki finds himself in an uneasy alliance with his brother in Thor: The Dark World (2013) and Thor: Ragnarok (2017).
The TV show picks up after a scene in Endgame that finds a trio of heroes traveling back in time just after Loki was captured in the first Avengers movie to acquire three powerful Infinity Stones. When their plan goes haywire, Loki manages to escape. Since this is not what was ordained to happen, Loki—or more accurately, a variant of Loki, since Loki’s escape has created a new stream of time distinct from the established timeline—draws the attention of the uber-bureaucratic Time Variance Authority (TVA) and its agent Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson), whose job is to prune alternate timelines before they become established and threaten the preeminence of the one Sacred Timeline. As it turns out, Lokii (is that the plural of Loki?) have a tendency to generate these sort of nexus events, but instead of terminating this Loki variant, Mobius instead enlists his help in hunting down another particularly wily Loki variant.
I won’t go any further since every episode ends with a cliffhanger that either raises the stakes or challenges our understanding of everything that’s already happened in the show. I suspect one has to be pretty invested in the MCU to enjoy this ride, although I would recommend it to connoisseurs of time travel stories. Hiddleston’s Loki is a supporting character in the MCU even though he almost always ends up stealing his scenes, so he’s earned his turn in the spotlight. And this isn’t just Loki mugging for the camera in a series of escapades, either, or maturing into a hero. In this show, Loki comes to terms with the high price of mischief and learns that free will in the hands of a devil like himself is a bad thing. This is contrasted with another character played by Sophia Di Martino who has been a victim of mischief her entire life and has never enjoyed the free will Loki abuses. These two points of view are pit against each other in the final episode during a scene casual viewers will regard as too expositional and technical but that Marvel Comics fans know has ominous consequences for the future of the MCU. It’s a fun series, and the first MCU show on Disney+ to stick its landing.
A couple years ago, Martin Scorsese caused a bit of a kerfuffle when he said Marvel’s movies were not “cinema.” I get where he’s coming from; if by cinema he means “art films” bearing the imprint of an auteur—and that’s pretty much what he means—then yeah, sure, of course. But well-crafted popcorn films can also transcend their strictly commercial origins with clever stories, compelling characters, and action scenes that revel in their inventiveness. Marvel’s films and TV shows have their limitations, but their blend of humor, adventure, and audaciousness distinguishes them from nearly all comers. Even when their films come up short (like Iron Man 2, Thor, and Black Widow) the final result isn’t necessarily bad and, unlike many other comic book movies, definitely not cringe-worthy; if anything, they’re disappointing by their own relatively high standards.
In light of that, though, it’s worth a moment to take stock of what Marvel Studios under Feige’s leadership has accomplished over the past thirteen years ago: They’ve produced twenty-four comic book films of consistently high quality that all tie-in to one another to form a larger overarching storyline that concludes in a highly satisfying fashion. That’s something the Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Harry Potter, and DC Comics franchises never came close to pulling off. It’s also worth remembering Feige was making up a lot of this as he was going along, since there was no guarantee the movie kicking off this endeavor—Iron Man, based on a second-tier hero played by Robert Downey, Jr., an actor many assumed was washed-up—would fly. What they’re doing now as a follow-up to the Infinity Saga seems much more ambitious by comparison: Tell another multi-production epic but with a more intricate and carefully plotted storyline and across different media platforms while incorporating an even broader range of characters. This sort of storytelling—and the financial commitment that goes with it—has never been attempted before, and it’s all running up against a sense that comic book movies are due to peak as a cultural phenomenon.
Feige has a knack for this, though, so I’m not betting against him. He’ll have to find a way to make sure casual viewers don’t get lost in the series’ grand narrative and drift away from the films while at the same time please a die-hard fanbase obsessed and personally invested in Marvel’s comic book mythology. (If you want to see how upset comic book geeks can get when a studio botches a superhero movie, just look at the furor that led to the release of the so-called “Snyder Cut” of the 2017 DC film Justice League.) There is the possibility superhero fatigue will set in, or that the price of attending these films and subscribing to Disney+ for the TV shows grows too prohibitive for the average fan. In cineplexes around the world, though, the Marvel Studios logo represents quality. People know what they’re getting when they see that on a movie poster, and if they’re going to shell out their money for a few hours of entertainment, that’s a pretty good indication to them that it won’t be going to waste. As much as some may anticipate the demise of comic book movies, we also may be on the cusp of its golden age.
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Column of the Week
“The Spiritual Bankruptcy of Bottled Water” by Marina Bolotnikova (Vox, July 12, 2021)
After reading this article, I encourage you to view this clip from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO, March 22, 2021).
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Exit music: “Corduroy” by Pearl Jam (1994, Vitalogy)