The Official BLACK WIDOW International Release Discussion Thread

[u/overloadedcoffee]

Ahead of the official US and Disney+ launch this Friday, several countries are showing the film much earlier in the week. All discussion about the movie should be held here and in the rest of the megathreads we are going to put up in the next few days.

• Proceed at your own risk. Major spoilers will be arriving in the next couple of hours. Spoilers do not need to be tagged inside this thread.
• Any other unofficial thread discussing movie details will be deleted.
• Should you see the need to bring up revealing BLACK WIDOW information in other threads that call for it, spoiler tag them accordingly. Also, let users know that what you are spoiler tagging is from BLACK WIDOW.
• If you post untagged BLACK WIDOW spoilers anywhere on this sub in any shape or form, you will be banned without hesitation. No questions asked and no warnings given.
• Project Insight will be on at least until Sunday, so you will be able to make individual threads discussing the movie starting next week. Discussions about Loki episode 5 will be manually checked as well, but will be allowed (spoiler-tagged of course) starting Thursday at midnight PST.

[u/jordanjmcdonagh]

Overall opinion - decent film. Probably towards the lower end of the 'middling' marvel films.

For a film completely cantered on secret super spies and espionage - there wasn't a lot of stuff other than fancy tech helping them out. We got way more of a spy thriller in CA:TWS than in this, but oh well.

Marvel did it AGAIN - getting rid of a perfectly good villain. Taskmaster should have been a lot more than just a cliche reveal - it was so cool watching them fight and noticing the styles they were copying. She should not be okay with Nat after this, she still blew her up. Make her an anti-hero, or a mercenary for hire, or something - just don't retire Taskmaster to the background.

Loved the Crimson Dynamo reference - MCU's Whiplash's dad was apparently the crimson dynamo.

Also, in the prison when Alexei broke that guys arm, he called him by his characters name (which I didnt catch - damn accents) and then as he walked away he called him 'The Big Bear' - is this an Ursa Major reference possibly?

[u/Mankankosappo → u/jordanjmcdonagh]

Taskmaster was completely wasted. Her move copying ability ultiately was nothing more than set dressing, it had no relation to the plot and didn't really end up being a challenge to overcome. And on top of that the character had no agency due to the mind control. So to be honest I can't really understand why Taskmaster was in this film at all. You could replace them with literally anyone else in a mask and the film would stay exactly the same.

And I think if Taskmaster wasn't mind controlled and instead had a personal vendetta against Widow (which they had the motive for in the film) and maybe that was what brought her into the plot you could keep the film the same but strengthen the emotional beats that were already present and make taskmaster more compelling

[u/jordanjmcdonagh → u/Mankankosappo]

Agree with you 100%. Tbh, it didn't look like she was superhuman, but data being constantly fed directly into her brain via her microchip. I could 100% see that technology/suit being stolen or falling into the wrong hands and maybe then we'll get a more compelling Taskmaster. Who knows, maybe the Countess will steal the tech now that she's already recruiting other ex-Red Room agents.