Black Widow is a slick superspy thrill ride with a great cast , but the first Marvel movie for two years opens up a few questions. …
Black Widow is a slick superspy thrill ride with a great cast, but the first Marvel movie for two years opens up a few questions. What’s the deal with Taskmaster? Does the post-credits scene ruin one character’s whole movie? How many James Bond references are in there? And will we ever see Scarlett Johansson do that pose ever again? Released July 9 in theaters and on Disney Plus, Black Widow is both a prequel and a solo adventure for Johansson’s assassin-turned-avenger. So it isn’t as rife with links to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as some other films in the series (well, at least until the post-credits scene, which does hint at the future of the MCU). But this slick spy thriller still has a few things to ponder. Zip up your utility vest, pull your best superhero pose and join in the search for answers. Warning: Spoilers everywhere! At the end of the movie, Natasha and her surrogate family have crashed the Red Room, freed the Black Widows and are all set to start new lives. Hurray! Now all they have to do is get away. On foot. With a fleet of SUVs bearing down on them. We see Natasha hiding out again in the final scene, so what did the family and the Widows do? Cram onto that fancy hover plane? Hide behind some wreckage until the army of highly trained spec ops guys gave up and went home? What if two of the Widows tried to hide behind the same burning chunk of helicarrier? What if two if them started running in the same direction? Would that be hella awkward? Natasha beats Dreykov by severing her own olfactory nerve and short-circuiting his pheromone-based brainwashing. So in Infinity War and Endgame, does Natasha have no sense of smell? And why does the success of the mission rely on her smashing her own nose? Do we smell… a metaphor? Talking to my colleague Sean Keane, Black Widow director Cate Shortland revealed that her favourite Bond movie is visually striking 2012 film Skyfall, starring Daniel Craig. And there are spy-tastic references throughout Black Widow. For example, the music is written by composer Lorne Balfe, who also soundtracks the latest Mission: Impossible movies, and it’s performed by musicians including noted string quartet Bond. But that’s not all… Once safely holed up off the grid, Natasha settled in to watch a movie. Specifically,1979 James Bond flick Moonraker, in which Roger Moore battled toothy henchman Jaws on a cable car and went to space. Natasha knows the film inside out, so she may’ve been inspired by the villain’s hidden space station and the scene in which Bond dived through the air to steal someone else’s parachute.
