BLACK WIDOW
SCARLETT JOHANSSON’S FIRST SOLO ADVENTURE AS BLACK WIDOW FINALLY TAKES FLIGHT – IN WAYS MCU FANS MAY NOT BE EXPECTING
She lives! Alright, she’s still dead. But don’t be a downer.
FOR NATASHA ROMANOFF (AKA BLACK Widow), finally getting her solo cinematic day in the sun has been a long time coming. The character, as played by Scarlett Johansson, was first introduced 11 years ago in Iron Man 2 and went on to become a primary player in six more Marvel Cinematic Universe films (including all four Avengers instalments). For pretty much that entire time, audiences were asking for Romanoff’s own showcase movie that might shed some light on the enigmatic, Russian-trained spy/assassin who gets the job done without the benefit of superpowers.
A Black Widow movie became a reality by 2018, with a first-pass script in hand and a very broad search for the studio’s first solo female director to helm it. At San Diego Comic Con in July 2019, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige formally announced Johansson, director Cate Shortland, and a supporting cast including Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz and David Harbour, along with a 1 May 2020 release date that would formally open Phase 4 of the MCU.
Then Covid-19 happened, and MCU releases ground to a halt for the first time in a decade.
By then, Romanoff had already experienced her very real demise in Avengers: Endgame, and this prequel story set post-avengers: Civil War began to feel ever tardier in terms of the pop culture zeitgeist as it was bumped to
November 2020 and then May 2021, finally receiving a firm global release commitment of July 2021.
While director Cate Shortland finished her work on Black Widow in early 2020, she’s since seen audiences around the world grow even more motivated to return to cinemas, where they’ll be able to celebrate Romanoff’s past together in a darkened room – and the director can finally reveal her very female-gaze view of the character.
Romanoff has traditionally subsumed herself into whatever the mission dictates. In this film, however, Shortland made it a priority to capture the real Nat, a woman still wrestling with her legacy as a powerful presence within two found families: the one from her Russian Red Room life and the one she later formed with the Avengers.
PITCH PERFECT
On paper, the Australian writer/director may not seem like the obvious choice to steer such an action-heavy film, and she’d agree with that too. In fact, when she was approached by Marvel Studios’ long-time executive producer Brad Winderbaum regarding the job, Shortland tells SFX candidly, she “didn’t really understand why they were coming to me.”
But Winderbaum has been explicitly interested in finding filmmakers with unique points of view – like Peyton Reed, Taika Waititi and now Shortland – which he made abundantly clear in their initial call. “When I spoke to him about what they wanted, and why they approached me, and about the journey that they wanted to take these characters on, I could
understand,” she explains. “Then that was all really cemented when I spoke to Scarlett.”
As the champion of Romanoff since Jon Favreau cast her in the role, Johansson had a lot to say about who was going to direct Black Widow. A fan of Shortland’s 2012 film Lore, the actor instigated their first connection by asking the director for a list of her favourite films and music. The two then exchanged lists with one another and discussed them.
“That was really beautiful,” Shortland says with a smile. “We could just see that we had similar tastes. But also the films we liked, what we liked about them was that they had heart. Whether it was an arthouse film or a commercial film, it was about the character’s journey. And that’s what we’ve tried to do with Black Widow: give her a really strong journey through the film.”
Shortland then presented the team a pitch reel – standard for new directors coming into Marvel Studios – that visually relayed what her version of Black Widow would look and feel like. Working with editor Danny Lachevre in Australia, Shortland cut together “an amazing trailer” featuring music videos and films that presented a sense of “the choreography of warfare. We looked at lots of films that were really regimented, and music videos, where they use almost Busby Berkeley fascist lines, and things like that,” she explains.
“And in amongst that was a woman and a child in a very vulnerable situation. And what I did – because I knew the character had died in
Endgame – was I connected it to an idea of eternity. What does it mean to be infinite and live on? There was this connection to nature.”
That vision secured Shortland the job. They then delved into fashioning the script into an exploration of found family, a test of Romanoff’s physical prowess in the face of an enemy – Taskmaster – who also came from the Red Room program, and something which finally reveals the Natasha that exists outside of her support circles.
“There aren’t many situations in the [Avengers] films where she’s alone,” Shortland notes. “Even the way she physically moves in those films, it’s like she’s being observed. So, the first thing that I wanted to do was get her on her own. Especially for female viewers, so we could just see her as she would be if she’s unobserved – because women are really different when we’re in public to when we are alone, and you never see her like that. It was kind of crucial to me to know: how does she walk when she’s alone? How does she eat? All this stuff. I wanted to see her as a woman first and a superhero second.”
Natasha’s past family, also members of the Black Widow training program, serve to reveal other facets of the woman. Reuniting her with the fractured unit of little “sister” Yelena Belova (Pugh), “mom” Melina Vostokoff (Weisz) and “dad” Alexei Shostakov (Harbour) was an opportunity to provide context about the choices Romanoff made before, and continues to make.
“What was important to me was that this family wasn’t biological,” Shortland says. “My children are adopted, so I related to the idea of a found family and loving people for who they are, rather than by biological make-up, I suppose. You talk about your nuclear family, but sometimes your found family is just as crucial. And what does that mean? We looked at that as well.”
Shortland says that the film has plenty of subtle sequences which allow audiences to soak up the relationship dynamics that have
I get really bored watching fights where I don’t understand what’s happening
helped to shape Romanoff. “I like moments where the characters are just existing,” she muses. “Like, there’s a really great short sequence where the two girls have just left a gas station. They’re driving in a stolen car, and it’s just these two sisters talking, and that’s really beautiful.
“Then I really loved a moment in a helicopter with David [Harbour], when he joins the two girls. It’s almost like the first tentative moments when the family rejoins. The same with Rachel, when she rejoins. There’s beautiful moments with O-T [Fagbenle] as well.”
When it came time for the superhero moments, Shortland says she was determined to embrace them entirely, but from a new point of view. “There had to be a sense of truth within the fights,” she explains. “I mean, I get really bored watching fights where I don’t understand what’s happening.”
Shortland says she talked about it a lot with Johansson, who’s consistently done many of her own stunts in the Marvel Studios films. “She’s amazing in the stunts and the action sequences. And because I hadn’t done action sequences before, I wanted to do them better.”
They accomplished that by going back to the idea of exposing the Natasha that is pressed and on the edge. “I wasn’t interested in the polish,” Shortland says. “I wasn’t interested in the veneer. I wanted to see what she was underneath. Then what was really beautiful was I wanted to have that rawness and have the spectacle. [Natasha] creates the spectacle, and she’s always at the centre of it because she’s our shining star. She’s the heart of the movie. So it was like, she was also this rough diamond. She could be this really raw, fucked-up daughter, but then at the same time she was kicking ass.”
To illustrate, she cites a sequence which audiences have already glimpsed. “I love when Scarlett flies through the air over the prison in the snow-white suit. I was inspired by Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!, in that I just wanted this moment where we have all this male violence underneath her that’s really chaotic. And then this woman’s just floating above it, observing it.”
While many assume that Black Widow will serve as a swansong for Romanoff, Shortland is quick to challenge that idea. “I very much treated it as this time in her life,” she explains. “But what I respected was that the audience had seen Endgame, so I wanted to connect her to a wider universe.”
She personally hopes that there are more stories in Natasha’s complex history worth revealing – and depending on the reception this one receives, she’s very much open to help tell them.
Black Widow is in cinemas and available via Disney+ Premier Access from 9 July.