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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • It is easy to view that Yelena is the movie's main character as opposed to Natasha. The plot begins when Yelena is freed from the Red Room's brainwashing, and she subsequently ropes Natasha into the story by sending her a case containing more vials of the antidote. Once the sisters are reunited with their adoptive parents, the movie focuses more on Yelena's relationships with Melina and Alexei than it does on Natasha's, and it's Yelena who deals the killing blow to General Dreykov in the climax. And due to the recurring theme in Phase 4 movies about "passing the torch", the movie feels more like Natasha metaphorically passing her role on to Yelena, whose story would carry on in future installments, including Hawkeye and the upcoming Thunderbolts movie.
    • Alexei constantly talks about his rivalry with Captain America, despite another prisoner pointing out that this should have been physically impossible (he mentions a mid-'80s encounter, when Cap didn't come out of the ice until 2011). Is he lying about it all? Could it be that Alexei is legitimately delusional and honestly believes that he fought Captain America when it didn't actually happen?note  Is it possible that he did actually meet and fight a Captain America?note  A few people believe it's Post-Endgame Steve Rogers taking The Slow Path, despite the fact that Steve's life with Peggy in the past happened in an alternate timeline, because the Endgame "Time Heist" created branching timelines and did not change the main one, something explained quite explicitly by the Hulk in Endgame yet contradicted by Word of God by Endgame's writers who like the idea of Steve having created a Stable Time Loop, which was followed by some fans.
    • Does Val really want Yelena to kill Clint/Hawkeye? Or is she expecting Yelena to fail and just wants to see how she holds up in combat against a seasoned Avenger as a sort of "audition" for whatever team she's recruiting her and John Walker for? OR is this a case of Exact Words (Val merely said "target" and "maybe you'd like a shot," but never specifies the mission objective and never said anything about actually attacking him), and Val is really sending Yelena to hopefully recruit the retired and presumably recalcitrant Avenger to her new team, using the "responsible for your sister's death" line to needle her, a tactic that Valentina has been known to employ in the past? As of Hawkeye (2021), it is made clear that, whether hired explicitly to eliminate him or just to remove him as an obstacle, Yelena VERY DEFINITELY wants Clint dead... but Valentina isn't the only person involved with the contract kill (Yelena discovers she was hired by Kate Bishop's mother Eleanor, who is in cahoots with Kingpin, so Val might've only been a "middle-woman" who knew the best person for this job).
    • Did Clint Barton ever find out that Natasha used a little girl as bait in order to accomplish their mission of assassinating Dreykov despite being fully aware that the kid will also be killed as a result of being caught in the bomb's blast radius? Or did Natasha keep Clint in the dark in regards to how she made him, a proud and doting Family Man, an accomplice to the attempted murder of a child? Given that Loki mentions Dreykov's daughter to Natasha in The Avengers, Clint at least knew that Antonia Dreykov was likely killed in the explosion, but whether he knew she was used as bait remains in question.
    • Did all her time in the field and all the potential blood on her hands turn Yelena into a Death Seeker? She's heard musing over "a cool way to die" a couple of times, and didn't need a lot of pushing to make what she thought would be her Heroic Sacrifice by wrecking the airplane with Dreykov in it. Compare with the Red Room Black Widows who were still in training at the time, and upon getting the antidote, compose themselves well enough to help out our heroes eventually.
    • Are Alexei and Melina Karma Houdinis for being forgiven by Natasha and Yelena and surviving to the end of the movie with no serious consequences, or are they just as much victims of programming and propaganda as their surrogate daughters and thus deserve a chance to redeem themselves like Natasha had? They did send Natasha and Yelena into a hellish training program to become brainwashed assassins and don't seem that regretful about doing so; but they also help the girls take down the Red Room for good and it's implied they're going to earn their redemption by helping Yelena and the other Widows free all the other brainwashed girls. It's also worth noting that the original script ended on a much more ambiguous note for their characters with Yelena still hating them, until David Harbour's idea to use "American Pie" to let Alexei prove he really did love her.
    • Does Dreykov truly not know or remember the name of Natasha's real mother? Or is he just taunting Natasha by robbing her of any peace or satisfaction she may have gotten from learning it?
  • Angst? What Angst?: Despite the infamous time Natasha broke down about her hysterectomy, she has a far more lighthearted reaction when it's brought up here. Of course, given how hated the former scene is, several fans don't exactly mind this, even if they saw the execution as clunky.
  • Awesome Music:
    • Think Up Anger's haunting cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which plays throughout the opening montage of Natasha and Yelena's days in the Black Widow program, fits the chilling sequence like a glove. It was previously used in the trailer of The Gallows.
    • From the score, Natasha's Lullaby, introduces Natasha's theme as though it were a Russian folk song before building into a bittersweet crescendo. Natasha's final outing in musical form.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
  • Canon Fodder: Alexei's brag about having fought Captain America during the Cold War is dismissed by another inmate on the grounds that Steve Rogers was in the ice; however, previous MCU material raises a couple of possibilities such that Alexei may have been telling the truth about fighting a Super-Soldier who used Cap's mantle. One possibility is that he fought the Steve who took The Slow Path after the events of Avengers: Endgame, while The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's revelation about postwar American efforts to recreate the serum raises the possibility that it was Isaiah Bradley (Alexei doesn't describe the Cap he fought). Or it could be another character entirely who hasn't been formally introduced to the MCU yet (perhaps even the MCU version of William Burnside).
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Yelena freeing the Widows from their conditioning is extremely satisfying when they're attacking Natasha. Natasha freeing Taskmaster/Antonia also counts.
    • Yelena blowing Dreykov to smithereens is a pleasant sight to see after how utterly repulsive he's been throughout the movie, especially when Natasha reassures Antonia with the news after freeing her.
      Antonia: Is he gone?
      Natasha: Yes. He's gone.
  • Common Knowledge: Olivier Richters, who played a Gulag inmate called Ursa in the movie, stated that he in fact played Ursa Major, who is the first mutant in the MCU according to him. That is often repeated by many fans in regards of Professor X appearing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Kamala Khan being a mutant in Ms. Marvel (2022), ignoring that Ursa was never confirmed to be a mutant in the movie itself and never showed any of his comic book powers. As Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron shows, being a mutant in the comics doesn't mean you're one in the MCU.
  • Complete Monster: General Dreykov is the man who runs the Red Room. Having abducted or purchased numerous girls, including Natashawhose mother Dreykov murdered for trying to find her daughter — and Yelena, Dreykov subjects them to nightmarish training to become "Widows", assassins whom he can use; only one in twenty girls survives the horrific training. Dreykov later turns his own injured daughter into a brainwashed assassin after she was scarred and intends to use his Widows to enact enough chaos and death across the world that he might control things from the shadows, viewing each of the Widows he's taken as nothing more than the recycling of a "useless resource" in the girls he corrupts and destroys.
  • Continuity Lock-Out: Fans who have only been following the MCU's film releases will have no idea who Contessa Valentina is, as she appeared in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ before Black Widow was released. Granted, she was supposed to appear here first before the film got delayed.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • The whole scene with the helicopter running out of fuel before reaching Melina like our heroes wanted. It doesn't go up in a fireball, it just goes spelunk on the ground like a garbage bag—and everyone survives! Crosses with Reality Is Unrealistic, since a helicopter that's out of fuel will still have its fall slowed down by its spinning rotors, and without fuel, there's nothing to ignite into a fireball.
    • The scene where Alexei gets shot by a tranquillizer dart, shrugs it off, then gets peppered with darts that knock him out cold is an extremely cartoonish way to begin the otherwise intense raid on Melina's farm. The fact that this is a near-perfect recreation of a scene in the How It Should Have Ended video about The Dark Knight Rises only makes it sillier.
    • Alexei talking about how proud he is of Yelena for becoming the world's greatest child assassin is messed up on so many levels and would be revolting if any other characters in the movie said it, but from him, it's likely to elicit a startled laugh.
    • In The Stinger, Yelena visiting the grave of Natasha does the old whistling call-and-response for old time's sake. The response she gets is Contessa Valentina blowing her nose.note 
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • Some fans who were impatient for the MCU to take advantage of now having the rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four started an especially silly rumor that David Harbour saying in an interview how excited he was about "this thing" meant he was actually playing The Thing.
    • Due to a shot in the trailer where Yelena is shown strapped to a table while surgeons prepare to operate on her skull, some fans theorized that the movie would have a Twist Ending revealing that she and Natasha had surgically swapped faces, with the "Natasha" who subsequently died in Avengers: Endgame actually being Yelena. The fact that she has blond hair and the same green vest Natasha wore in Infinity War only added fuel to this speculation. The film ultimately completely dispels such ideas; the surgeons were trying to figure out how she broke free from Dreykov's control, and Natasha herself ensured Yelena was able to escape before anything can even happen, Yelena gave the vest to Natasha as a gift before she left with Alexei, Melina, and the liberated Red Room Widows at Natasha's insistence, and Natasha's continued evasion of Ross and his soldiers is glossed over, with nothing suggesting Natasha would ever consider something so drastic to be necessary.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • One has sprung up following this film between fans of MCU Black Widow and fans of MCU Hawkeye, despite previously being Friendly Fandoms owing to their friendship. In-part, the film has reminded many of why they liked Black Widow, so they're angered by the fact she died on Vormir instead of Clint, particularly since this movie shows that Natasha has a family just like he does, and Natasha's younger sister very much misses her. For those who justify Clint's survival with his family being biological, the film also goes out of its way to remind viewers exactly why Black Widows cannot have children through the trauma of having an involuntary hysterectomy. What's more, the post-credit scene that indicates Yelena (said younger sister) is going to be hunting Clint in his upcoming series has made many (mostly jokingly) cheer her on in this pursuit. Fans of the MCU version of Hawkeye (fans of his comic self are kinda on Black Widow's side, due to long-time anger at the film version's considerably different portrayal), have taken this as a slight and argued against it, particularly taking offence at the idea Hawkeye is to blame when he was trying to sacrifice himself instead of Natasha.
    • Fans of Taskmaster from the comics are not happy with the film for the many changes made to their character, while in contrast, fans of the movie have became antagonistic towards comic fans for not embracing the change.
    • Hilariously, fans of the British panel show, Taskmaster are also feuding with fans of the movie, because it drowned the show's title tag on social media sites. Prior, there was a Friendly Fandoms between the comic character and the show due to shared names, but many who don't follow the Marvel movies are bothered they can't just post about their show in peace.
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • Taskmaster's depiction, which bears no resemblance to the comic character, has been the subject of controversy among fans since the first concept art came out, and particularly exploded once people finally watched the film and learned the full details of just how different the character is. At the same time, the level of change (and even the details of the change) are no different than what Ghost note  went through in Ant-Man and the Wasp. However, several factors made the changes made to the source material more understandable or easy to digest than in this movie. While the changes to Ghost weren't without criticism, Ava Starr is generally regarded as a solid enough villain with a compelling motivation, and this was helped by the comic book version having very little in the way of personality or an actual secret identity/backstory. This isn't the case with Taskmaster, who was/is significantly more popular, and possessed a large amount of characterization, personality and backstory in the source material. The movie version is seen as taking away any potential the character had, and by virtue of being another brainwashed assassin under Dreykov's command for a grand majority of the movie, the MCU incarnation of Taskmaster has virtually no agency or notable personality to speak of that can make them stand on their own two feet as a character in their own right. Ghost having a far better costume just adds salt onto the wound.
    • Additionally, while the twist has been heavily compared to the Mandarin reveal from Iron Man 3, that plot point still has some fierce defenders who praised it for slyly commenting on the xenophobic nature of the "foreign boogeyman" trope seen in the comics. By contrast, the Taskmaster twist largely lacks that subversive edge, instead really only serving to give the character a more personal connection to Natasha. Also not helping matters is that many fans who were disappointed by the Mandarin twist at least enjoyed Ben Kingsley's charismatic performance, while, by contrast, Antonia is a mute cipher who doesn't have anything remotely approaching a personality, meaning Olga Kurylenko didn't really have the opportunity to win over doubters. And the Mandarin at least had a justifiable presence — one would expect Iron Man's archenemy from the comics in one of his movies — and reason to be altered — Yellow Peril characters are discredited today — compared to Taskmaster, who isn't even a personal foe of Black Widow.
  • Genius Bonus: The scene from Moonraker that Natasha watches involves several female assistants to the villain luring James Bond into a death trap. One imagines the Red Room itself used the film as an example of what they were looking for from the Widows, showing it enough for her to memorize it. It also provides some slight foreshadowing, with the opening scene featuring Bond free-falling from a plane with no parachute, in a similar vein to Natasha at the end of this movie. Both are also chased by an Implacable Man; Jaws in Moonraker and Taskmaster in Black Widow. There's also the Big Bad having his undetectable Supervillain Lair far above Earth, with both looking like a Space Station (it is a space station in the case of Moonraker).
  • Gratuitous Special Effects: The outdoor bar scene between Natasha and Yelena was actually shot entirely in front of a blue screen (with additional digital retouching of an arm gash). The responses run the whole gamut, from amusement at how it's unnoticeable to thinking that the simple solution of building everything on a soundstage was bypassed so the production won't have to bother with any unionized jobs and logistics.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The Widows being freed turns out to barely make any difference in Hawkeye, where it's revealed some of them ended up becoming assassins-for-hire because there's no other option available for them due to their complete lack of experience in the real world. Including Yelena, who, as the credits to episode 5 reveal, was hired by Eleanor to kill Clint.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: When Alexei is reintroduced in the present day, he's been imprisoned in a Russian gulag, and Natasha and Yelena have to break him out. Fast-forward to the fourth season of Stranger Things, and David Harbour's character Jim Hopper also spends much of his time imprisoned in a Soviet Union death camp while two of his allies try to save him.
  • Ho Yay: Between Antonia and Lerato, the Widow who serves as her caretaker. Lerato caresses her face and tells her to smile. After they're freed from mind control, Lerato holds her hand as Antonia lays injured on the ground. Lerato also has similarities to Mercedes Merced who is Taskmaster's caretaker and wife in the comics.
  • I Knew It!: When trades reported that Olga Kurylenko was part of the film's cast a few months before release, a few fans correctly guessed that she was behind the Taskmaster's mask, with this adaptation of the character being female.
  • Inferred Holocaust: Hundreds of prison inmates and guards likely died in the avalanche because of Yelena shooting that rocket, and that's not even mentioning how hundreds of feet of snow are now covering the entire prison. It's incredibly likely that power and communications were knocked out, and since this prison is likely far away from civilization, the chances of anyone inside getting help are slim at best. (Of course, since the prison was a Russian Black Site, it's unlikely anybody besides the guards were ever leaving legally to begin with.)
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Taskmaster being reimagined as a mostly-mute brainwashed cyborg assassin has been met with a mixed reception, due to said characterization making them too similar to the Winter Soldier. It also attracted criticism because the concept of someone being forced to become a human weapon against their will has been a recurring plot point in the MCU, bringing to mind not only Bucky Barnes, but also the likes of Nebula and Gamora, Ghost, the Maximoff siblings, Kara Palamas and the other Black Widows.
  • Magnificent Bitch: Melina Vostokoff is an experienced Black Widow of the Red Room, having gone through the program's conditioning five times. Joining an undercover family in America to steal details on the Winter Soldier program, Melina is injured in their eventual escape but manages to coach a young Natasha on flying their plane. Surviving and becoming a Mad Scientist, Melina works on perfecting the Red Room's mind control to force future Widows into becoming killers against their will. Melina agrees to help destroy the Red Room upon reuniting with her "family", quickly formulating a plan with Natasha and informing her of Dreykov's defenses. Switching places with Natasha before being captured, Melina frees Alexei and Yelena while she hacks into the Red Room's systems, calmly destroying one of the Room's engines to send them into a controlled crash when she's locked out. Escaping in a jet with Alexei, the injured-but-alive Melina reunites with her daughters on the ground, taking the freed Widows and Taskmaster with her as the family escapes Ross' forces.
  • Memetic Mutation: Delay or Release? Isn't it about time already?Explanation
  • Narm:
    • Dreykov revealing that he can't be harmed by the Black Widows because of his strong pheromones has been called out as being more silly than it is intimidating. It was also ultimately unneeded given he was already happily indulging in Evil Gloating beforehand, making the need to "trick" him into a false sense of domination feel unneeded.
    • Dreykov saying that girls are the only natural resource there's too much of has gotten a few chuckles both due to the questionable logic and the way it makes him sound like a Saturday morning cartoon Straw Misogynist villain.
    • Dreykov's death. The effects of the fire absorbing him are already iffy, but the very cartoonish way his glasses survive the explosion and fly towards the camera makes it almost impossible to take seriously.
    • Related to the above, Yelena's destruction of Dreykov's aircraft. Also doubling with Special Effect Failure, the way Yelena is blown away from the explosion and the fact that she doesn't even get a scratch has raised a few laughs.
  • Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: The reveal of who is under Taskmaster's mask is easy to guess beforehand when Olga Kurylenko is in the credits, yet barely appears in the movie until that moment.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The Big Bad Dreykov is meant to be presented as a terrifying and realistic villain, but the over-the-top performance by the actor, his blatant misogyny that feels more cartoonish, a cheesy attempt at a Russian accent, and his absurd method of controlling the Widows via strong pheromones, makes it hard to take him seriously.
  • Older Than They Think: Not the first time Taskmaster ended up female, Deadpool MAX also has a similar premise.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Ever Anderson got a lot of attention as the young Natasha in the opening sequence, perfectly capturing the characterization Scarlett Johansson had built up over the last decade.
    • Valentina Allegra de Fontaine makes an enjoyably obnoxious appearance in The Stinger setting up some potential conflict between Yelena and Clint Barton.
    • Dutch bodybuilder Olivier Richters appears as a very huge fellow inmate of Aleksei challenging him for arm wrestling just to lose to the Russian super soldier. This scene is noted by casual viewers to be very funny and helped establishing the Red Guardian as a capable character, comic book fans especially like that the prisoner was nicknamed Ursa, making him the MCU-version of Ursa Major from the Winter Guard.
  • Questionable Casting:
    • While they both do a good job, David Harbour and Rachel Weisz as Scarlett Johansson's adoptive parents is a little questionable given both actors aren't that much older than her which is reflected in their appearances. Harbour's beard and disheveled look helps make him seem a bit older, but Weisz — actually the senior of the two — looks remarkably young for her age, which just makes this casting more noticeable.
    • Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster is a rather strange choice. First off, the actor only portrays the role for an extremely short amount of time, with a stunt double being used for nearly all of Taskmaster's screentime. And when the credited actor does portray the part, she does almost nothing at all, standing still for one scene, and partaking in a very small fight followed by one line for the next. With this in mind, it's a wonder that an actor of any note was cast in the part when a stuntman could've done the role in its entirety. There's also the fact that, with Taskmaster's backstory in the film, this is a massive case of Dawson Casting, even if not entirely apparent due to the prosthetic makeup on Taskmaster's actor once unmasked.
      • This casting decision makes a bit more sense in light of subsequent news that Taskmaster would be one of the stars in the Thunderbolts movie.
    • While Ray Winstone is a well-decorated actor, the general consensus seems to be that his attempt at a Russian accent leaves... something to be desired, leaving many to wonder why they couldn't just get a Russian or at least any Eastern European actor to fill the role instead.
  • Realism-Induced Horror: The Red Room, at its heart, is a program that abducts young girls, subjects them to horrific abuses, and employs them as disposable objects against their will. The film's opening credits show a montage of Natasha and many other girls being transported in shipping containers and being forcefully dragged out by armed men, which has a particularly disturbing resemblance to real-life human trafficking. Dreykov's final confrontation with Natasha also has unsettling overtones of sexual abuse, where he strokes her face and takes sadistic pleasure in rendering her powerless and beating her, while boasting that his power and position makes him untouchable. The fact that Dreykov himself (most likely coincidentally) has a passing resemblance to the infamous sex offender Harvey Weinstein only heightens this effect.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Less a vilification of the character and more a misrepresentation of their morality, but several MCU fans unhappy with the idea that Natasha should have survived her redemption arc point to the Budapest flashback in which Natasha "kills a child" as irrefutable evidence that Natasha needed to die to redeem herself. This phrasing omits the extremely important context: The choice is presented as a morally ambiguous one —Additionally, Natasha “redeems” herself for the callous choice in this movie, and she saves Antonia in the end, who is shown not to hold a grudge thanks to Natasha freeing her from her father's abuse. However, the moral ambiguity remains, as even though Antonia survived, it was only by chance and not through intention, and she was still brainwashed all the way into adulthood, something that Natasha is still responsible for, despite Antonia having a future ahead of her.
  • Salvaged Story:
    • Avengers: Age of Ultron got a ton of heat for an awkwardly written scene where a lot of fans got the impression Natasha was saying her forced hysterectomy (and subsequent inability to have children) made her a monster, rather than the evil things she'd done for the Red Room. As critics have noted, this film chooses to focus more on the body horror of having reproductive organs forcibly removed, rather than Natasha's angst over being infertile. The film also justifies Natasha calling herself a monster as being in reference to the monstrous acts she committed before her recruitment to SHIELD.
    • In addition, another criticism of Age of Ultron that Endgame was lambasted for reinforcing was the emphasis on Natasha's lack of blood family or the capacity to birth biological offspring, which both movies implied made her incapable of forming close bonds with others or living a fulfilling life, and that she was more expendable than Clint as a result. Black Widow addresses this by revealing Natasha had an adoptive Family of Choice all along, who are shown to care deeply for one another and be just as capable of the same kinds of tight-knit bonds that a biologically-related one is. Indeed, Yelena loves Natasha enough despite their lack of blood ties that she'd willingly assassinate Clint out of misguided revenge.
    • The Stinger where Yelena visits Natasha's grave, which is surrounded by tributes honoring her sacrifice, and Valentina sends her off to hunt down Clint for his role in Nat's death also helps address another common criticism of Avengers: Endgame, in which Natasha's death was treated as an afterthought in favor of Tony's sacrifice. The scene shows that the public mourns Natasha as well, with the above making it clear that her death will have consequences in Hawkeye.
    • After Captain America: The Winter Soldier introduced the existence of an electronic Latex Perfection mask, a lot of people were confused and disappointed that said mask was never used in any other films in spite of how practical and useful it would be in dangerous situations. This movie brings back those masks and uses them in a very clever and unique way during the climax, showing that the gadget hasn't been forgotten.
  • The Scrappy:
    • The MCU's iteration of Taskmaster has very few fans due to having almost nothing in common with the popular comics villain they're based off of. Even discounting the gender swap, the character's lack of personality or agency due to being a brainwashed puppet of Dreykov made them too underdeveloped to appeal to both comics and non-comics fans.
    • Dreykov is similarly unpopular for being a one-note, underutilized Big Bad who's hard to take seriously and hurts the attempt at a more grounded story with his over-the-top nature. Although all the hate was intentional, he still fails to be a truly menacing villain for that matter.
  • Signature Scene:
    • The opening credits sequence is one of the film's most popular scenes due to its intense nature, the chilling parallels to real-life human trafficking rings, and of course, Think Up Anger and Malia J's foreboding rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
    • For a more light-hearted example, Yelena mocking Natasha over her infamous fighting poses has been cited as a highlight.
    • A more infamous example is the scene where Yelena blows up the airship turbine due to its obvious green screen.
  • Special Effect Failure: The first two-thirds of the movie avert this quite well, even during the prison raid section which uses a lot of CGI for the avalanche and helicopter. However, the climax of the film is a whole mess of CGI; Yelena destroys one of the airship's turbines, which has a particularly bad green screen effect, followed immediately by an obvious "wire jump", and the parachuting looks more fake than the preceding freefall Natasha does to get to Yelena because of how steady the camera is.
    • Despite the reveal that Taskmaster is Antonia played by Olga Kurylenko, in many shots it is blatantly Andy Lister’s body in the suit, with the face reveal looking like a bad green screen of Olga's face over Lister's body.
  • Squick:
    • Two cases involving Yelena and Alexei, the former reminding him in detail of the forced hysterectomies of the Red Room, and the latter telling her how his father saved him from frostbite by urinating in his hands.
    • When Alexei takes offense at something his arm-wrestling opponent says, he snaps the guy's wrist. There's a nauseating shot of the man's hand flopping about.
    • Natasha breaks her own nose to prevent herself from smelling Dreykov's pheromones, and it's crooked and bloody for most of the scene afterwards. The Sickening "Crunch!" when she snaps it back into place is particularly unnerving.
  • Spiritual Adaptation: The closest there is to a live-action film about the story of the Dolls from the Street Fighter series. In both cases, there are young women being brainwashed to serve as assassins for the male head of a Nebulous Evil Organization. Yelena's arc even mirrors that of Cammy White: being broken free of her servitude and then dedicating herself to save the other girls. Further compounded by their vaguely similar hairstyles and sharing a British portrayer. Taskmaster’s scarred face and past with Natasha are especially rather similar to Decapre.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The film's iteration of Taskmaster has been widely derided by fans for having little to nothing in common with the hugely popular comic character. Nearly every aspect of the film version has been met with mockery, from the generic costume design to their reliance on HUD technology to fight, and the comic character's signature dry wit being completely removed. The revelation of the character's true identity has even prompted comparisons to the infamous Mandarin twist from Iron Man 3 and Deadpool's treatment in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
    • To a much lesser extent, Natasha's "family" have had some complaints, though it's mitigated by their Ensemble Dark Horse status and Yelena being seen as the best thing in the movie. The Adaptation Relationship Overhaul each one receives — turning Melina from a villain into Natasha's mother figure, Red Guardian from her ex-husband into her father figure, and Yelena from her much younger Unknown Rival into her sister figure — significantly alters the character in how they're presented. For some, the result was less interesting; Melina and Alexei not only feel Easily Forgiven by the narrative, but Alexei's status as Natasha's ex-husband makes the father/daughter portrayal feel quite squicky, while in the comics, Natasha/Yelena had long been a popular ship due to the great deal of Les Yay between them, something now thoroughly sunk by the movie casting them as sisters (unless the shippers are that kind of people).
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Some reviewers have pointed out that the rest of the Black Widows don’t get enough attention, especially considering the movie’s own themes and the consequences of their training. This also extends to Taskmaster themselves, who despite being presented and advertised as the Big Bad and ostensibly being The Heavy of the movie, only gets two scenes before the final act and remains a silent henchman until the end. Even with the sympathetic backstory, so little is actually put into developing the character beyond being a silent, brainwashed soldier, so unlike similar characters we've seen before like Ghost, Winter Soldier, Nebula, and the like, Taskmaster feels like a trite redo.
    • Outside of an extremely brief scene, Dreykov is completely absent from the film excluding the opening and the climax. This low screentime predictably causes him to come across as an underdeveloped and one-note Big Bad. With a little more screentime, the movie could have properly explained his questionable reasoning for running the Red Room and why he screwed over Alexei in the past.
    • Some think that Alexei/Red Guardian was handled very poorly by being shoved into the role of the Plucky Comic Relief character, depriving him of the opportunity to show maturity and emotional depth as a parental figure for Natasha and Yelena, as well as that chance to justify his boasting by having him give Taskmaster a serious fight on camera. This also makes him come off as Easily Forgiven for his complicity in the horrors Natasha and Yelena experienced when he could've been given the opportunity to realize what he did and work to redeem himself over the course of the film.
    • Madame B, Natasha's trainer in her flashbacks from Avengers: Age of Ultron, does not appear nor is her existence ever brought up. In that movie, Julie Delphy gives off a creepy and intimidating performance despite what little screentime she's been given, with fans hoping that she would make an appearance in this film as an antagonist, if not the Big Bad herself.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • With the sheer level of changes made to Taskmaster, they've more-or-less became a completely different character, but not necessarily a new character; their status as another Red Room victim, rival to Natasha, silent and obedient to point of seemingly having no free will, and having power mimicry, now makes them actually resemble the comic version of Yelena Belova, during her Adaptoid phase, in fact they're now closer to Yelena than the film version is (who had an Adaptation Relationship Overhaul that cast her as Natasha's sister instead of her rival; though the comics, in prep for the film, adapted this change into canon and gave Yelena a Heel–Face Turn). With that in mind, it makes one wonder why even use Taskmaster, when they could have just used Yelena as The Heavy; even with the sisterly bond they have in the film, having Yelena and Natasha be forced to fight because of the former being controlled would have made the fights much more personal.
    • The revelation that Taskmaster is actually a grown up Antonia Dreykov could've served as the perfect impetus for why Antonia is so determined to kill Natasha. If it wasn't for Nat's willingness to sacrifice Antonia's life (who was a child at the time) to assassinate her father General Dreykov, she would've never had been physically mutilated then reconstructed into the villain she is now. This could have led to some poignant storytelling moments where Nat is truly forced to confront the reprehensible actions she has committed as an assassin as she is brought face to face with somebody she wrote off as Collateral Damage. But since Antonia is Brainwashed and Crazy for a majority of the movie, this plot point effectively gets swept under the rug the second Antonia is cured like all of the other Red Room candidates and is never brought up again.
    • The first act sets this film up to be a much darker, more brutal, and realistic story than the typical Marvel fare. Then midway through, while not completely dropping that angle, it changes gears to a more lighthearted tone mixed with a more high-gear science fiction plot. Several viewers believe the movie would've benefitted from sticking to the tone present at the beginning, which would help to set it apart from the other movies in this series while also selling the tragedy of what happened to the victims of the Red Room.
    • Alexei has a Running Gag that he claims to have fought Captain America despite not being active at the right time. Taskmaster is able to replicate the fighting power of any hero in the MCU. Many fans felt that the potential for Alexei to prove his worth in fighting a facsimile of Captain America was completely wasted. While Taskmaster does use a shield at a few times in their fight, it is left unremarked upon and doesn't seem to carry any significance to Alexei.
  • Uncertain Audience: Could be argued to be both one of the reasons this film underperformed at the box-office and the start of the franchise's problem with this. It sets itself up to be a gritty spy thriller, yet still feels the need to have quippy dialogue and a big special effects extravaganza for the climax in typical Marvel fashion, in addition to a villain who comes off as too cartoonishly misogynistic by the time he appears on-screen despite his chilling off-screen actions.
  • The Woobie: Despite being underdeveloped, Antonia Dreykov still manages to count as one. To start off, she is severly burned in an attack on Budapest, but that's not where it ends. Her father brainwashed her, put her in a suit and stripped her of all free will just to use her as a weapon. After she's freed from mind control, her first words are "Is he gone?" to the same person who burned her face off and nearly killed her - which speaks volumes of how horribly Dreykov treated her and how desperate she was to get away from him.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?: Taskmaster's helmet has been derided for its generic design, not resembling a skull, and making the character look like Lord Zedd. It doesn't help that other adaptations like Spider-Man (PS4) gave Taskmaster a more practical mask that actually resembles his skull face from the comics. The cape from the comic was also removed, which while impractical, is generally a big part of his look, and the fact it's Awesome, but Impractical is something the character has lampshaded and acknowledged in the past.

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