I don't know if you're old or sexist, I know I quite liked Captain Marvel, and thought Birds of Prey was good enough for a movie in a franchise desperately trying to find its direction, and WW84 was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. Black Widow just didn't do anything for me and I think it's for a combination of reasons, which I'll just list below with some elaboration.
- Black Widow, the character was introduced as a badass femme fatale for the MCU but over the course of the series became the Avengers' nanny. She never truly did anything for herself, she just went from being Hawkeyes support system, to Bruce Banners, to Steve Rogers etc. Blame this on having so many characters that she was never able to be the leader, star, aggressive force, or wild card. She was always merely a second in command in every scene she was ever in. Now this paid off in dividends with her character in Endgame when she finally took the leap (pun intended) to action and didn't just support someone else. But now 2 years later, we get her lead movie, and...
- They just make her another support system. This movie felt like it was the origin story for whoever Florence Pugh's character becomes and not actually Black Widow's movie, she's playing second fiddle once again, and honestly I don't care much for Florence Pugh, I know she gets hailed for her acting in Midsomer and Little Women, but when I watch her I just see a blank slate. She aced all her acting courses, checks every box for an audition, but I've never seen a bit of personality. Which leads us to...
- Scarlett Johannson has personality, but it's not action star lead charisma personality. She is really good at emoting things beneath the surface. You can watch her in her quiet scenes and she always looks like she's observing, calculating and plotting. This is why she is so good playing a spy assassin character, but her personality is almost that of an observational comedy. Most of her funny lines in these movies she's reacting to the boystrous wit of her co-leads with her form of dry wit. This doesn't work so well when you're the star and the comedic relief character (Red Guardian) is only in the movie for about 15 minutes.
- The plot just didn't work for me because I couldn't understand the political dynamics of the world within the movie. On paper it sounds great to make a superhero movie that's "The Americans meets Mission Impossible", but it begins in 1995, years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and then shoots to 2016 (presumably) where this guy who's Russian, but not KGB or even seemingly Soviet. I felt like this was a movie that actually needed an opening crawl explaining the geo-politics of this movie universe as it pertains to the Soviet Union. I felt Ray Winstone's character had some Harvey Weinstein coding to him and this Widow program was coding for Weinstein's casting couch victims, but it was coded well enough not to be too obvious, but geo-politically it didn't work for me.
- And neither did the action, I just didn't find any of the action all that thrilling.
So just in short, it didn't feel like a well thought out movie, and it's ultimately just another set up movie.
6/10