Black Widow

The entire thing… The ENTIRE POINT of this movie is for Scarlett Johansson/Black Widow to hand off ass-kicking duties to new ass-kicker Florence Pugh. Because it’s a prequel and everyone knows Black Widow’s going to die later, so the stakes aren’t really life and death in this. The acting here is all pretty good. The skilled cast slums it a little in this interim narrative, a rough metaphor about sex trafficking. Otherwise, it’s kind of a bland story. Black Widow deserved her own side-story before she was dead, so she could have a little more skin in the game. But juggling the schedules of all these supers in Marvel World can’t be easy.