I kind of felt like the whole movie we just saw was based on Natasha confronting her past. I mean, are we suggesting that her being willing to kill a child to get to a mass murderer is somehow just as wrong as said mass murderer enslaving thousands of women to be his personal assassin squad?
Natasha has a dark past: "Oooh, she just says she does but she's as heroic as everyone else."
Natasha's dark past is revealed: "She's a horrible person and is too easily forgiven." / "The movie cheaps out on punishing her for her evil act."
Make up your damn minds.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2021 at 9:36:24 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Exactly.
Here are the two main problems with Black Widow, one internal and one external:
- It suffers the common Hollywood mass-market problem of being two or three different movies awkwardly stapled together: a family drama, a spy thriller, and an action flick, and each seems to be made by different studios who didn't speak to each other.
- It commits the unforgivable sin of adapting Marvel comics canon without the prior approval of its hardcore fans. Ergo the "Taskmaster is disappointing" stuff.
It has a secondary problem in that it presents a morally complex female character who is neither cleanly vilified nor vindicated by the end. That's it. Nobody likes those, apparently. It's too much for our primitive caveman brains.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2021 at 10:36:03 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
We don't get much time for that resolution, but the impression I took is that she hated Dreykov so much even as a child that she would have considered it a Mercy Kill.
Those people can fuck off, preferably with a rusty iron drill bit.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2021 at 12:08:30 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Or alternatively, while being blown up by Natasha sucked, being turned into an unthinking killing machine by her father was a Fate Worse than Death.
One wonders why Dreykov didn't make multiple Taskmasterses once it was a proven concept. It's not like he had scruples against mutilating people to make assassins
Forever liveblogging the AvengersSince when do villains in the MCU ever make sensible decisions?
If I had to make a more nuanced guess, I'd say it's because he views Taskmaster as a side project. His main thing is training Black Widows to infiltrate society and give him ultimate power; it's a little tricky to do that when you're an emotionless hunk of flesh inside a suit of power armor.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2021 at 12:45:58 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Dreykov's main deal is that he's amassing power for his own personal greed, so it does make sense that Taskmaster is more of an enforcer and the Widows around the world are his real focus.
And Widow makes a good point, all that power is pretty much meaningless since he spent too long in the shadows.
Granted, he was powerful and rich enough to afford the sky fortress.
Which made the second viewing funny because like there's a lot of focus put into how Natasha and Yelena don't know where the Red Room is, and have to get help then it turns out it's a giant sky fortress.
Guess Hydra helped cover it up?
@Fighteer. Calling people who have problems with how the movie dealt with Black Widow blowing up a child as having primitive caveman brains? Seriously?
Edited by RedHunter543 on Jul 13th 2021 at 12:56:02 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"
Yes, I am calling them out. Implied murder of who knows how many children at the hands of his weapons didn't stop Tony Stark from being lauded as a hero. I'm saying that people take a black-and-white viewpoint of morality and appear unable to intellectually handle the idea of a character being grey yet still on the heroic side.
I'm asking why we draw the lines in these particular places. What makes the life of a child taboo but hundreds of implied assassination victims and/or war crime victims completely cool?
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2021 at 1:00:31 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Hello? Did I actually say I support Stark? I prefer Captain America for not being a war profiteer and actually taking steps against things like drones and spyware.
EDITH is another war crime and horrific privacy invasion and I've never been fond of connecting Spidey with Stark in the MCU for the latter's morally questionable and various war crimes in addition to his amoral use of spyware to track Peter.
And I am not saying Natasha is irredeemably evil for for blowing up Antonia in an attempt to assassinate Dreykov, as I said in a previous post I actually understand the logic behind the decision even if it's a horrible one. I have said that Natasha being on the Heroes side while willing to commit assassination and other morally dubious acts in service of good is one of her defining traits.
What I am saying is for a character who regrets the blood on her ledger, this movie should have handled the Taskmaster plot point with more focus and less glossing over. There's no need for condescending strawman arguments.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Jul 13th 2021 at 1:08:54 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I feel like you're saying that she got off too easily for that crime. With all the crap she went through in this film, I don't see how that follows at all.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Exactly, I have no idea why Tony's actions have anything to do with Black Widow's actions in this movie.
Tony isn't relevant in this movie at all.
No one is saying Tony is a hero compared to Natasha in this forum or comparing their actions.
Hell, half the fandom lauds Tony as a redeemed arms dealer, the other sees him as a war criminal who got off easy so it's not exactly a set thing.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Jul 13th 2021 at 2:05:01 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!""Not enough guilt?" She's constantly talking about herself as a monster who doesn't deserve love or a family because of the things she's done...
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

This missing the point though.The issue here is that Widow doesnt confort the results of her own actions.Her heroic safice in Endgame doesnt work as atonement becasuse the actions of Thaos had notting to do with her.