It’s been a long time coming, but our first look at Marvel’s Black Widow solo movie is finally here, and it definitely doesn’t skimp on the action.
Black Widow has always been a bit different from her fellow Avengers. While the other members of the hero team are either superpowered or otherwise eccentric (Hawkeye doesn’t have powers but he fights with a bow and arrow), Natasha Romanoff has always been pretty grounded. She has no powers, no affinity for Medieval weaponry; she’s just a very well-trained spy who’s an excellent hand-to-hand combatant. It makes sense, then, that her movie would look less like an MCU film and more like a James Bond movie, and that’s pretty much what we get in the Black Widow trailer. Save for David Harbour’s comic relief Red Guardian squeezing into a superhero costume, the trailer plays it pretty straight, with lots of Jason Bourne-esque fighting and Mission: Impossible-looking stunts. It’s all kinds of thrilling, and while it may be long overdue (how high can the stakes be when the audience already knows the ultimate fate of the main character?), it still looks like a worthy entry to the MCU catalog.
The film takes place in the years between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, when Black Widow was on the run from the law after aiding Captain America in Civil War. The story follows Natasha as she goes “back to where it all started” — presumably Russia — where she meets up with her old “family” and looks to clear the red from her ledger by making amends with her troubled past.
Black Widow probably should have come out years ago, but we’ll have to take what we can get. The film arrives in theaters on May 1, 2020.
