Before she sacrificed herself for the soul stone, before Thanos snapped half of all life out of existence, Natasha Romanoff was on the run. She stood with Captain America against the Sokovia Accords and was declared “wanted” by the United States. The Black Widow went underground to avoid trouble, but trouble found her. And like it so often does, it came in the form of family.
This month, Eve and I return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and take a closer look at the latest Phase 4 offering, Black Widow. The story takes place immediately after we last see her in Captain America: Civil War after she switched sides and help Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes escape the forces arrayed to apprehend them. To avoid capture, Natasha goes to ground—a skill she has mastered over the years. Despite her best efforts, she can’t stay hidden, though. A package sent to her by a woman she once called “sister” draws the attention of the creator of the Black Widow program. Before she knows it, Natasha is pursuing the unfinished business of killing the man who created the Black Widow program.
Along the way, Natasha has to confront an uncomfortable past with a fictional Ohio family from her preteen years. When she was eleven, Natasha spent three years as part of an undercover family in rural Ohio. Russia’s very own super-solider, Alexi Lebedev, a.k.a. the Red Guadian, filled her father’s role. Societ super scientist Melina played the role of American housewife and mother. Six-year-old Yelena Belova was Natasha’s “little sister.” Over the three-year mission, though, the line between real and imagined became blurred—even more for the children than the adults. When the mission abruptly ended, so too did the illusion of family life for Natasha and Yelena. The “parents” returned to their lives as Russian specialists, but Dreykov sent the girls to the abuse of the “Red Room,” where exceptional girls were trained to be elite assassins, and less-than-remarkable girls are summarily killed.
Now Natasha has learned that the creator of the Red Room, a man she thought she’d killed years ago, was still alive. The Red Room program, too, was still going and worse than ever before. To finish this business, Natasha has to team up with her Ohio family. Along the way, she realizes that family isn’t always neat and clean, and it’s rarely clearly defined. Yet what makes it family is what makes it worth saving.
Cate Shortland directs Black Widow with music by Lorne Balfe. It stars Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Rachel Weisz as Melina, and David Harbour as Alexei.
First Impressions
We’ve both been looking forward to the release of Black Widow for a while. Originally slated to be the launch of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase IV, the pandemic caught it in its web, and both production and release were delayed multiple times. Finally, out in theaters, Black Widow does not disappoint. It is every bit as action-packed as we’ve come to expect from Marvel movies and is even more interconnected to the other Marvel properties than any we say in the first three phases. In fact, Black Widow has brought back the post-credit recruitment scene, after a fashion, and are setting up the hero team of the next several phases. Along the way, it appears they will be turning the conventions of the first three phases on their heads.
Black Widow did many things well. Even when you consider Marvel’s higher protection bar. The casting of Natasha’s family was particularly well done. There was good, believable energy between Natasha and Yelena—it was easy to believe they could be sisters. David Harbor’s Red Guardian was equal parts serious character and comic relief at the same time—the way Marvel has seemed to excel at.
The stunts of Black Widow were really top-notch. The digital de-aging of David Harbour and Rachel Weisz was so believable as to make me question if they de-aged the actors for the 1995 scenes or if they used makeup to age the actors up for their “modern-day” scenes. Frankly, it is getting unnerving what computer AI can do when it comes to facial features!
On the topic of David Harbour’s Alexi being the comic relief, though, some came away with the feeling that the movie was tooting the ol’ feminist horn. In the family of Alexi, Melina, Natasha, and Yelena, the women were all extraordinarily competent, while Alexi was, more often than not, a bumbling fool. This is a common trope in modern presentations, almost as if it is rebelling against the images of heyday shows like Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons. Both had father figures who could be funny but were generally competent, wise heads of their households. If there is a feminist vibe in Black Widow, it may be offset (or obscured) by the dual elements of Dreykov’s stomach-churning misogyny and human trafficking as portrayed by Ray Winstone.
One of the more humorous bits in Black Widow was a recurring commentary by Yelena on how Natasha always seemed to make “useless” poses when she was fighting. In a way, it was a fan-service breaking of the fourth wall, however minor.
Black Widow‘s writing was a little weak overall. I came out of my second viewing feeling like the movie sacrificed quality at the altar of continuity and pacing. Throughout the movie, I felt like there were small leaps of logic or bendings of reason that could have been handled better. It wasn’t fatally distracting, but it was annoying.
Overall, Black Widow gives a rare look into the psyche of a secretive superhero and filled in background information that we don’t usually get.
What is Family?
Natasha’s concept of family is definitely tainted by her lack of a real family for her whole life. She believes her birth mother abandoned her, but she got a taste of family when she was part of the undercover operation and for a while lived in the traditional Western family, but that was torn apart when the operation was over. In Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, we see that Natasha had come to see the Avengers as her family, but even that had been torn apart by the Sokovia Accords and the events of Captain America: Civil War. We witness Black Widow as she rebuilds her ideas of what family is—flaws and all. Black Widow has no blood relatives, but the movie’s main theme is what it means to be family.
As Natasha and Yelena gather their “faux family” together in the search for the Red Room, Natasha is adamant that none of it was real. Melina and Alexi don’t dispute that, but that doesn’t stop them from slipping back into their roles of mother and father, regardless. Yelena knows intellectually that it wasn’t real, but in her heart, it was genuine. And every time Natasha insisted that it wasn’t, it hurt Yelena a little bit more. This allowed a little redemption at the movie’s end when Natasha admitted to Yelena that it was real to her, too.
This theme speaks to us as Christians in particular. When we are saved, we are adopted into the family of God, made recipients of his infinite inheritance. It doesn’t matter the problems you come with or your personality quirks; you are a brother or sister in Christ. And in Christ, you have billions of brothers as sisters around the world and throughout time.
That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring. (Romans 9:8)
Spiritual families are not immune to family squabbles, and until the curse of the fall is lifted once and for all, we will continue to have problems. But those problems don’t make us less of a family. If anything, it makes us more of a family. A family isn’t just about the happy times together, but also the shared suffering.
For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:14-17)
“These girls were trash.”
During Dreykov’s evil-mastermind monologue, he reveals the horrific depths of misogyny.
These girls were trash. They are thrown out into the street. I recycle the trash, and I give them purpose. I give them a life . . . My widows can start and end wars. They can make and break kings . . . And with you, an Avenger under my control, I can finally come out of the shadows using the only natural resource that the world has too much of. Girls.
In reality, the world has fewer women than men, not more. But that doesn’t prevent many cultures around the world from promoting elements that devalue women over men. Even in the United States, women fought for decades to have the same rights as men.
Fed by this evil belief, Dreykov has set up a gargantuan human trafficking operation to bring girls into his program. Worse, it is implied that only about one in twenty girls graduates from training (the other 19 being killed as a result). Thus, for every ten Widows, 200 girls were kidnapped, and Dreykov murdered 180 of them. Still, Black Widow missed the mark in making a strong statement about the very, very real problem of human trafficking. If the characters had reacted to the human trafficking with more disgust and taken more visible action against it, the statement could have been stronger.
Dreykov also cannot see that women have the same inherent value as men—that all are made in the Creator’s image. Instead, he seems stuck believing in a “barefoot and pregnant” kind of way that the girls he turns into Widows are “rescued” from the lives they would have led.
For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:27-29)
“Free the Others”
When Yelena, under the influence of Dreykov, delivers a mortal blow to a woman on the streets of Morocco, the woman sprays a red chemical into her eyes. We see a veil lifted from Yelena’s eyes, and the woman uses her dying breath to task Yelena to “Free the others.” This should have been the core imperative of the movie, but Yelena doesn’t quite embrace it, at least not at the start of the movie. Instead, she literally outsources the job to a sister she hasn’t seen in nearly twenty years and without communicating the task at all.
We would be doing a disservice if we didn’t compare the impact of the pixie dust—wait, sorry, wrong Disney franchise—mind control antidote to the affect of the Holy Spirit on a newly repentant soul. When a widow is exposed, their eyes are literally cleared, and they can immediately see how they were a slave before exposure and that what they were doing was wrong. The widows immediately gained the ability to be discerning. Discernment, though, is not wisdom. Understanding your former slavery does not mean that you immediately know how to set it all behind you. Like Yelena in Black Widow and Natasha before her, the widows would need to learn to apply that discernment with wisdom.
For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)
When Adam and Eve ate the apple, I imagine that this ability to discern right from wrong was part of what they were expecting to get. But, in reality, they got just the opposite. Their sin interposed the veil between humanity and God.
Go! Say to these people: Keep listening, but do not understand; keep looking, but do not perceive. Make the minds of these people dull; deafen their ears and blind their eyes; otherwise, they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand with their minds, turn back, and be healed. (Isaiah 6:9-10)
Filling in the Gaps to Redemption
One of the running jokes in the film was Yelena’s teasing of Natasha’s penchant for poses when she was fighting. Yelena said that Natasha was more worried about looking good than getting the job done. Natasha retorted:
All that time that I spent posing, I was trying to actually do something good, to make up for all the pain and suffering that we caused. Trying to be more than just a trained killer.
To which Yelena replied, providing some deep insight into her worldview and highlighting the difference between the two widows:
Well, then you were fooling yourself because pain and suffering is every day and we are both still a trained killer. Except I’m not the one who is on the cover of a magazine. I’m not the killer that little girls call their hero.
Natasha seeks to perform restitution for her acts as a state-sponsored killer, a past she is clearly remorseful of and is actively seeking rehabilitation. The only thing she is missing is requesting forgiveness from those she has wronged. I’m just not sure how that would manifest—in fact; I think it might be key to the character arc that she is never able to complete her personal redemptive arc because she never forgives herself. This is similar to how we often have difficulty letting go of our guilt and shame as Christians.
Even though Christ has taken our sins upon Himself, and we should not wallow in our shame, that does not mean we should not feel grief and remorse, but it needs to be godly:
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death. For consider how much diligence this very thing—this grieving as God wills—has produced in you: what a desire to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what deep longing, what zeal, what justice! In every way you showed yourselves to be pure in this matter. (2 Corinthians 7:10-11)
Seeking to change is important, but it is also important to understand that we cannot do it alone—we do not have the strength. We depend on God for real change:
For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:24-26)
Finally, and once again, even though Christ has taken our sins upon Himself, we are not excused from addressing the impact of those sins on the people around us.
When a man steals an ox or a sheep and butchers it or sells it, he must repay five cattle for the ox or four sheep for the sheep. (Exodus 22:1)
Yelena retorts that Natasha is fooling herself because pain and suffering still exist, and they are both still trained killers, as if that somehow negates Natasha’s efforts. There is a serious logic disconnect here that doesn’t seem consistent with the characters. Does Yelena think that personal change is useless because the world will always be in a sinful state? (Maybe that reflects her maturity level?) Does this attitude have a contemporary meaning in real life? Are there sinners out there who KNOW they are sinners but figure that their personal salvation couldn’t do anything to offset the crummy state of the world, so they choose not to pursue it? Understanding the relationship between the sinner and God is paramount to spiritual growth.
Imposed Myopia
As Natasha and Yelena gather their parental figures together in the search for the Red Room, we see how skewed Alexi’s worldview is thanks to his indoctrination:
Did I do something wrong?
Is that a serious question?
I only ever loved you girls. I did my best to make sure you would succeed to achieve your fullest potential, and everything worked out.
Everything worked out?
Yes. For you, yes. We accomplished our mission in Ohio. Yelena, you went on to become the greatest child assassin the world has ever known. No one can match your efficiency, your ruthlessness. And Natasha. Not just a spy, not just toppling regimes, destroying empires from within, but an Avenger. You both have killed so many people. Your ledgers must be dripping, just gushing red. I couldn’t be more proud of you.
This is how the Soviet Union raised its citizens. They had no free access to information. They learned what the state wanted them to learn. Eventually, through this carefully curated information flow, they would think what the state would want them to think. When Alexi praised his girls for their successes as assassins serving the state, he did so because he knew that what they had done in service of the state was something to be proud of. He would not believe anyone who said differently.
Because Alexi’s information exposure was so controlled, he could never be expected to think critically about the right and wrong of his actions or the actions of Natasha or Yelena. I think this is what is happening with the polarization of the United States. Due to the ubiquity of internet access and the ability to generate professional-looking news sites, people migrate to only sites that support their opinions and reinforce their own perceptions. The result is a fractured populace incapable of seeing eye to eye on anything because each cannot conceive of any reality or fact that does not fit with their carefully cultivated sources. Without making an effort to keep a balanced flow of information, you cannot think critically.
But where do you find “neutral” sources? It seems impossible these days – everything is biased now. That’s where discernment comes in – you have to apply wisdom to all information you consume and separate the wheat from the chaff. Regardless of if it is a Marvel superhero movie or CNN Headline news, you have to think critically about it, research it, and work to uncover the truth.
The inexperienced one believes anything, but the sensible one watches his steps. A wise person is cautious and turns from evil, but a fool is easily angered and is careless. A quick-tempered person acts foolishly, and one who schemes is hated. (Proverbs 14:15-17)
Don’t despise prophecies, but test all things. Hold on to what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21)
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