After years of starring alongside Ironman, Captain America, Hawkeye and The Hulk, Black Widow is finally getting her own movie, and it looks amazing. Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow may not have made it out of
Avengers: Endgame alive (spoiler, but you’ve had enough time), but the upcoming
Black Widow is finally giving the character the respect she deserves for saving the world. Of course, this movie takes place before her dramatic plunge off a cliff, and there’s a lot about to go down.The
Black Widow trailer shows Johansson back in black and reuniting with her pseudo-family to…wait for it…take down bad guys and save the world. I know, we’re full of spoilers today. Premiering late Monday night,
Black Widow is Marvel meets
Jason Bourne meets
Red Sparrow. There’s hand-to-hand combat in a dreary European apartment where viewers meet Natasha’s sister-like friend, the equally deadly Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). There’s the introduction of Melina Vostokoff, a.k.a. Iron Maiden (Rachel Weisz), a woman who, like Romanoff and Belova, was trained in the Russian Red Room. For comic relief,
Stranger Things’ David Harbour will do his best Russian accent as Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian, the European counterpart to Captain America who has a long history with Romanoff. There’s also a return to the Red Room training facility where Natasha Romanoff became Black Widow, with Johansson telling Pugh’s character “We have unfinished business. We have to go back to where it all started.” It really is very Jason Bourne-y.
Set to take place after the events of 2016’s
Captain America: Civil War, the new trailer also introduces Taskmaster, a mercenary character who can copy his opponents’ fighting style in order to beat them. The identity of Taskmaster has yet to be revealed, but he’s shown with a bow and arrow in the trailer, the same weapon of choice as Romanoff’s longtime friend Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). As for fellow MCU characters, William Hurt and Robert Downey Jr. are expected to make appearances as Thaddeus Ross and Tony Stark / Iron Man.A stand alone Black Widow film has been a long time coming. The project was first put into development by Lionsgate and writer-director David Hayter back in 2004. It was shelved, and Johansson made her debut as the character in the 2010 Marvel film
Iron Man 2. The film was finally greenlit and began production with director Cate Shortland behind the lens in 2018, with Marvel and Disney possibly taking note of the success that came from teaming a female director with a female star in
Wonder Woman.Filmed in Norway, Budapest, Morocco, England and Georgia,
Black Widow opens in theatres on May 1, 2020.[video_embed id='1827039']What Disney Plus really means for the media giant[/video_embed]
