David Harbour Makes Every Scene He’s In A Little Better

“Black Widow” Tells the story of what Natasha Romanoff was busy with between the events of “Civil War” and “Infinity War”. After successfully escaping from Thaddeus Ross she heads to Norway, where contact is established between her and Yelena Belova, who was raised with her and trained with her in the Soviet project for preparing Black Widows; The Red Room. Belova needs Romanoff’s help to destroy The Red Room and free all the Black Widows, which requires a confrontation with the leader of the program General Dreykov and his deadly weapon represented in the mysterious assassin; Taskmaster but, more importantly, it will require a confrontation with the past of Romanoff, Belova and the family in which they were raised.

Our team performed well. They made the best product possible from the leftovers of the Marvel stories ingredients. A villain that is more like all the villains that Captain America ever faced. A threatening super soldier that is more or less like The Winter Soldier or Ghost. A substance that gives a leverage to the side that has it like .. any substance that ever appeared in any Marvel film. We also have some twists and turns that are directly borrowed from “Captain America and The Winter Soldier”.

Our story has nothing that we haven’t seen before. It is only injected by diversified action sequences whenever called or uncalled for. Seriously, one of the best fight confrontations of the film didn’t have a single reason to even happen! But to be honest, the action was cool. Real effort was invested in designing them and making sure no two action scenes look the same. Stunt team did a great job with some advanced and mind blowing sequences. Stars of the film did nothing other than look sexy or funny in combat suits, but that’s the Marvel formula anyway. Nicely filmed, nicely edited. The final confrontation maybe took exaggeration a bit too far .. as far “The Fast and the Furious” honestly. This may be the only negative side of the action experience and that’s why it remains one of the best aspects of the film along with, like I said, the players in the field.

Very few of the characters of the film are ones that we’ve seen before and the key character is the one we know we shouldn’t see again. The formula had everything in it though. A hero with a rich story and a long history. A partner in this history with equal richness and a promising future in our universe. A mystery figure with continuous doubt in intentions. The comic relief with humorous and loveable presence, and sufficient complications between everyone.

I believe it will be hard to argue with the fact that the best character of the film is Alexei Shostakov or Red Guardian portrayed by David Harbour. One of those occurrences where you cannot imagine anybody else ever playing the character. Fresh type of comedy that jumps out of nowhere but never feels out of place and although the character is supposed to be a super soldier, his key dramatic input is kindness. In a film that is mostly colourless, David Harbour stands out as an undeniable shade of red.

Florence Pugh is great in the film and great as an addition to the future of the Marvel plans. She brings freshness to the label of Black Widow with some humour and warmth in the character history. As opposed to the relative coldness in which our beloved Black Widow was presented. We have a history with Scarlett Johansson in the character. We’ve seen her transform and grow from a side character that no one knew why she should matter, to a key character that shocked us when it was time for her to leave. I don’t think the Black Widow film was the best goodbye she could’ve had, but at least she had one and she did the best with the opportunity.

The story of Black Widow is not fun, and not good. The villain is poor and lacks charisma. The threat is not strong and not interesting. Our action makes the chapters of the film tolerable, and the formula of our protagonist side evened up the overall watching experience. Cate Shortland, the film director, comes from the literature and artistic side of movie making. So I don’t think she had much to account for in the action and, being in a Marvel film, I don’t trust she had a say in the story as a whole. However, she did make the drama better and did help the emotions feel real. I believe that is sufficient to call her experience a success.

A Technical Breakthrough with De-Aging Samuel L. Jackson

Out story takes place in 1995 and starts with introducing our key character under the name of Vers. She’s living without any memory of her past in Hala, the capital planet of the Kree empire. She has super destructive powers and is training under Yon-Rogg, her mentor, to learn to control those powers. The Kree are in a war with the shapeshifting Skrull that has been going on for centuries and Vers is finally given a mission in this war. During the mission she crashes on earth and meets S-H-I-E-L-D agent Nick Fury, and they partner to fight off the Skrull that followed her there while she waits for backup from her fellow Kree.

The biggest problem with the film in my opinion is Brie Larson playing Captain Marvel. Not for a second did I feel she was comfortable portraying the super hero. Not in comedy, not in drama and not in action. And not for a second did I actually get to see her trying to express how her character is supposed to be feeling. I mean, we get from the story that she’s bouncing from lost to daring to liberated to triumphant, but did the acting offer any help with that? I don’t think so. I’m not inclined to blame the film directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck for that simply because they got amazing performances from Samuel Jackson and from the awesome Ben Mendelsohn, who for the greatest part performs without the help of his own face. Therefore, I believe that, if you’re a good actor, you get to perform under Boden and Fleck. But before we pass that judgment, let’s wait and see how Larson will perform under the Russo’s.

I don’t want to spend so much time speaking about flaws because honestly, this is not a bad film and the best aspect in it, in my opinion, is the screenplay. It follows the rule of the narrow time frame, which I believe we will be seeing a lot of in the MCU. All the events in the film take place over the course of 2 or 3 days .. if not 1. This is becoming necessary with the intertwining events of all the films in the universe. It’s much easier to reserve a few days for a story to be told rather than risk it tangling with another story from another film. This has been the case with all their films since Doctor Strange with the exception of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Because stories are much more efficient this way and not boring. That’s what we get here though some sequences were indeed boring, but since they move fast, you don’t get a chance to nod off.

We get a nice partnership between our hero and Nick Fury. We get various confrontations, though mostly shallow like I said, and we get a fair share of, not exceptionally smart, surprises. We also offer a good share of services to the upcoming “End Game”. Most of the weak spots come from the comics and of course we get to blame the film for that but with a bit of sympathy. Also maybe the comedy wasn’t very successful. I mean, it’s there and it’s not silly or anything but not very laughable. Especially with Brie Larson choosing to laugh with us instead of trying to make us laugh. Or maybe she was waiting for us to make her laugh, I’m not sure!

We have no problems with pace, no problems with directing in general and no plot holes as far as I’m concerned. Captain Marvel is an ordinary film in the place of the awesome film some of us were expecting. That is not a big problem for me since I’m trying to teach myself to deal with the film I’m watching, not the film I was expecting. However, in all honesty, it suffers from obvious flaws and it deserves to be considered as a set back when compared to most other MCU films. Also compared to its equivalent in the competitor universe. Oh yes, I didn’t hate Captain Marvel but I don’t dare say it’s better than Wonder Woman in any way, shape or form. Or maybe it does have a better soundtrack.