BLACK WIDOW and the Latent Last Act Blues (Patreon)

We spend so much time talking about catharsis.

But rarely do we hammer into what that really means. Because catharsis is not merely the notion that nice things happen at the end of the story, nor even that a bad guy will be defeated. Such things are easy and obligatory. Likewise, when ending sentiment or resolutions are forced, we say they feel “unearned.” No, the key to understanding catharsis is to go right to the root of the word’s definition: “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.” Which indicates that catharsis fittingly comes from tension. But not just any old tension, but a specific problem that you 1) completely understand the scope of and 2) desperately what to see resolved. And the bigger the problem? The bigger the feeling of relief. But you can’t treat it like simple math. It’s not about how many people will die or how big the enemy ships are. No, it means creating a set of terrible conditions in the first act of the story that make their catharsis resonate the most it possibly can.

I kept thinking about this as I was watching the first half of Black Widow (hell even the first 3/4 of the movie) because I kept thinking, “is it me, or is this pretty dang good?” Well, at least good in a way that lot of Marvel stuff hasn’t really been to me lately. While the MCU has always been  good at “likable” characters, this movie actually had a sharpness, an edge, a grounded quality that really got me to buy into the people and texture of everything I was taking in. Now, it would therefore make sense to think “oh the first half of this movie is good and it’s the ending that lets it down,” but this makes it seem like a story is nothing but separate and interchangeable parts. That if they made a bunch of different choices at the end, it would work great. But ultimately, there’s a crucial difference between liking a first act and it being the “right” for where a story is eventually going.

For stalwart examples of this dynamic, it’s easy to turn to Pixar classics. That’s because they have roots in this exact kind of “first act directness.” I know I talk about Finding Nemo all the time, but it’s really the perfect example. Director Andrew Stanton wanted to put the tragic backstory in a chase scene 2/3 in, but the brass talked him into putting it at the beginning. They were right. Because that opening trauma does two important things. 1) It lets you learn why Marlon is overprotective and thus you don’t completely find his parenting annoying and 2) it perfectly sets up the scenario for him to confront his (understandable) worst fears and have to go be brave to rescue his son - and at the same exact time, learn to trust him on his own because he can’t control everything. It’s great because it instinctively makes you want the two sides of that catharsis so, so badly. Similarly, the tragedy of Up makes me want the catharsis of an old man learning how to have a last adventure. Or in Ratatouille it makes me want an unappreciated little rat to find those who love both his food and love him for who he is. And if you want an example outside Pixar, you look at something more dramatic with the same lens of framing because it’s exactly what makes Minari so powerful, too. Twenty five minutes into that movie I’m like “I care about the success of this farm more than I cared about anything in my entire life.” And that set-up is hugely important to not just the conflict of their trials, but where the story eventually goes. Really, it applies to almost all traditional narrative films that aim for catharsis.

The interesting thing about Black Widow is that it’s really good at giving us half of what we need. The opening scenes capture something that feels idyllic, with that uneasy feeling bubbling up in their dynamics (I was honestly not prepared for some vibes from The Americans). Even the opening shootout, for all the craziness of a man being on the side of a plane, felt more grounded and smaller stakes than anything the MCU has touched in years. And say what you want about the Nirvana music cue, there's a genuine sense of grim darkness over those credits that’s directly steeped in the real world horrors of trafficking. Couple all that with the quiet patient scenes of her going on the lamb in Norway? I genuinely hate saying something as reductive as saying “it felt like a real fucking movie,” but I can’t remember the last time I saw an MCU effor this comfortable being serious and solemn. Lordy, it’s even one of more violent things we’ve seen from them in a while (completely some audience gasps from certain cues). Honestly, Cate Shortland’s fantastic direction feels like one of the most traditionally dramatic and visceral things they’ve done yet. And even on the story level, I admit we’re getting a sense of togetherness to root for. A kind Garden of Eden juxtaposed with a hardness that follows. But most of the things I’m speaking about are texture and emotion. The real answer to it’s relative “rightness” comes in the details of what follows.

Which I will say, at least all makes sense on paper. Black Widow’s sister comes back into the picture and we get introduced into the mind control plot (which is fittingly tied to both the opening Ohio heist and the climax action). Natasha and Yelena fight and then unpack their emotional baggage and then make a plan to go after their lingering ghosts AKA the Red Room, evening having fun downplaying the straightforward declaration of their goal, “could be fun.” This naturally leads to them having to get “Dad” and all his glory nonsense, which then  leads to the dinner table scene with “Mom,” and ultimately unpacking everything about the root causes of their family’s dysfunction. And more importantly, the things that actually meant something to them while in Eden. Then it all crests into the final act of them against the shadowy bad guy person who was responsible for their relative imprisonments / betrayals / etc. Everything about it makes sense in terms of shape and purpose. We have seen their family split apart then come back together. So the million dollar question is...

Why does it end up feeling so lackluster?

I’m already seeing people try to lay the blame down on the usual culprits of big futzy CGI, or a few clumsy moments, or even the obligatory need for giant third act battles (that are usually boring precisely for that reason). No, as “not great” as those things are, they are just tangible surface details and things we’ll totally overlook in more cathartic movies. Instead, the answers lie in deceptively simple script issues.

Let’s start with the most obvious example: the villain, Dreykov (I literally had to google his name because it was that unmemorable). Again, I get the logic of all of it because we intellectually know this is the man who is the architect of all their pain. But it’s not about the logic of it. It’s that we really only get to see him in this shadowy way with a few brief scenes. By the time we get to the final confrontation, it’s too late to start. We have two characters invoking a history together and yet this is the first time we’ve seen these two actors together on screen. How the heck could it really be meaningful to us? Plus it just keeps trying to throw new information at us. The thing with the pheromones is supposed to be some big surprise (and a short one), but you never want to stop and explain things in big moments like that. Just as you surely don’t want one but TWO flashbacks to explain it all right in the middle of a ruse that we didn’t even know was coming in the first place. With the double fake-out stuff, you can’t have meaningful catharsis to a problem that was only introduced 20 seconds ago. And more importantly, you can’t get meaning from something where we haven’t seen the pre-existing relationship.

A lesson which goes double for Taskmaster. Forget the fact that the fact that it can’t help but feel like a waste of the villain’s skill set (the mimicking thing best suited for group fights with heroes of very different styles, like imagine Taskmaster bouncing between Cap and Spidey and Hulk - also it’s funny seeing some people online get the character confused with DC’s Taskmaster). But it all comes down to that reveal of it being Dreykov’s daughter. Once again, there’s a way this reveal “makes sense.” This is a person we saw from a distance who Widow felt guilty about killing. We have a cerebral reason. But once again, that’s not what makes us care. Suddenly seeing Olga Kurylenko’s face is like 1) oh I guess she’s in this and 2) this all feels pretty late in the game (also, leave it to Hollywood to have a bunch of Anglos / Americans do Russian accents while the one actual Russian mostly stays quiet). That’s the whole thing. They are trying to play the *emotion* of these scenes but it’s all too new. Even the assignation scene is purposefully kept at a distance for secretly plot reasons so all of this, even Natasha’s guilt, only plays as “information” and not meaningful character dynamics between existing characters who have a relationship. So how could ever truly care about them in the third act?

The whole issue of guilt can’t help but bring us to that question of “what is Black Widow’s arc, anyway?” Again, for all the lip-service, it’s not really about guilt, at least not as constructed. And it’s a shame how much her character has to spend time sliding into the MCU’s existing line of continuity bullshit, as if it all lining up is part of the catharsis. To which, I can’t help but think about the hollowness of the last line she offers: “Turns out I have two families.” Which sounds nice, but when it comes to The Avengers of it all? That’s something that was technically as true at the start of that movie as it was at the end. And when it comes to the second part of that, her russian family? it certainly feels true, but reveals a whole bunch of complications on whether or not their coming back together works. To which, let’s start with Dad…

First off, between this and No Sudden Move, I’m sincerely glad that this is the month of “let David Harbour have ALL the fun.” But in that first scene all really get a sense of is a Dad who is playing Yelena’s favorite song (American Pie) to keep her occupied and by Cuba, we realize he is itching to get out. His real ego comes alive much later when we get to the midpoint prison and see him waxing nostalgic about how he was the super-soldier Red Guardian, utterly mythologizing his glory days. Through later midpoint explanations we get a deeper sense of what really went on there: that he abandoned them and was only concerned with his own shit. Heck, it’s outright addressed in the moment where after all this time he was only “asking about [him]self.” We even see that he did “love” them, but only in that fucked up way where he is proud they are famous killers. The thing I like about this character is that it’s a portrayal of a genuine toxic psychology - but still offers that important beat of him remembering American Pie, all before bad guys rush in.

All of this functions fairly well as a promise to the audience that “this toxicity will be disarmed” and the characters will atone and come together. But three things stop the Dad plot from really coming together in a way that means something to us: 1) I genuinely can’t believe that Harbour doesn’t get a big “character moment” action beat in the finale. He sort of just fights the taskmaster for a bit and then he and mom get off the ship and they meet up later? Like how do you fail THAT lack of an action beat??? 2) They pull the rug out from the actual catharsis of his last act conversations not once, but twice by revealing he’s not actually communicating with people (which is funny, but undermines the sincerity). And 3) by the time we finally get to the last character beat? The lesson he learns is to shut up because he’s always “saying the wrong thing,” but that just addresses his poor communication of earlier mid-points, not his change or anything he just said in a deeper notion. The story needs ANYTHING else at this point. Any kind of recognition that shows growth from ego I.E. knowing that his daughters are 10 times the heroes he could ever be / savers, not killers / etc. But instead of really landing any of that with a big button, it meanders, limps, and misses the big moments.

Then there’s Mom, which suffers more from hiding and convolution. Granted, Rachel Weisz still shows that she has all the range in the world as a performer. She can bounce between sincere and comedic and sharp and threatening and soft at a moment’s notice (but also, a quick aside about actors’ ages because she does not read as “mom” to Scarlet at all. It would mean she apparently had her when she was 15? And even though he “ages up” better in makeup, David Harborgh had her at 10??? I would say this all feels like high school play moves, but I had a friend who in one year went from playing a high schooler to a mom. Yay Hollywood!). The ultimate thing is that Mom’s arc is pretty inscrutable. Which is a shame because she gets that great moment in the opening where they have to leave and she quietly tells Natasha “I’m sorry” and it implies SO MUCH about their relationship and bond, along with how they must feel about this new life. It’s a great thing that cascades into her getting shot. Which would fittingly lead to Natasha’s sense of abandonment over her dying. The base is all there. But the catharsis gets lost for a few reasons.

The first is that, like dad, she ALSO doesn’t get a critical action beat at the end (the blowing up of the engines is too early in the fight, how do they mess that up?). The second is the aforementioned double fake out. Not just because it’s A LOT on the plot level, the problem is that it loses her catharsis in the process and takes away from the key emotion of their “let’s team up and get this fucker” by turning into the needless twisty stuff. Seriously, mom’s “betrayal” played too quick anyway and convolutes her loyalty in a not fun way. Plus, the mask switching thing is even logically unnecessary? There are infinitely more elegant ways of getting those two characters in that situation (which, in the end, is what that kind of plotting shoe leather is really after). But even then, the thing about the farmhouse scene earlier is I’m left asking what IS the real apology here? Is it just vaguely for all of it? Should there have been a bigger moment of “let’s stay” early in Ohio life? Was it just about Mom being understood? Part of the reason it doesn’t click is that her appearance alone is an answer to a question we didn’t even know we were supposed to be having. Meaning she’s weirdly given most powerful set-up, but these answers don’t match to that which is given (keep this in mind for later).

Finally, there’s sister Yelena. To its credit, the relationship is absolutely the most functional thing in the movie. Part of this is of course due to the wonderful performances. Florence Pugh has been throwing 103mph for a few years now and imbues the character with a whole range of both innocence and assuredness. And I just have to mention that we keep sleeping on Scarlett Johansson, though probably for good reason (the crass insensitivity to which she approaches Hollywood politics / diversity utterly deserves that eye roll and then  some - it just unfortunately comes full on with the fact she’s one of the most talented actors we have around? I don’t know. There’s like 12 times in the movie she handles a really important beat with a little look and I don’t think people realize how horribly the film would fall apart without what she does?). Anyway, all the middle act scenes between them are really sound character work. Form the fun of “it’s got pockets!”  to the fights, to the method of re-alliance, to the great near-end line of “we’re both upside down.” We undoubtedly care about their relationship the most, which is good because they are the movie. But it also brings us to the crux of their story…

Because when Natasha says, “I should have come back for you,” that’s supposed to be the big lesson that’s at the heart of everything, right? And we genuinely do get the sentiment / fallout of it, but we’re still missing the most important thing that makes us care for it. Because there isn’t that first act thing where we experience the heartbreak of that along with them. Because we don’t actually see Natasha leave her behind. Everything we get about those years is all dolled out in the ever evolving backstory. Meaning it is something told, not really shown. And by not shown I mean dramatized for maximum catharsis. And to help get to the heart of how to do that, there’s a question that often makes that arc apparent.

“What is the thing they can do at the end of the movie that they couldn’t do at the beginning?”

With the aforementioned Finding Nemo, it was Marlon learning to be brave and also learn that bravery is sometimes giving your son space. With a film like, Max Max: Fury Road it’s learning to give a shit about others. But what’s interesting about the choice of the opening with Black Widow is that I suddenly get really confused about what to do with that question. Because the first thing we see in Cuba is her fight for her sister in that opening bit! And by the end she is just fighting for her again. So not only is this Point A to Point A journey - the problem is how the treat the fall in the middle. Because what they seem to be trying to do is characterize the opening in Ohio as something that they’ll never really have again. You can make abstract sense of this, of course, especially as the ideal of childhood. To Natasha, 90’s Ohio is The Garden of Eden. A place of fireflies and gentleness that represents the absence of murderous warfare. You need that light of hope. But what it doesn’t REALLY show us is the cardinals sins of the characters in that fall (I ain’t callin’ them original sins). Sure, we get brief glimpses in the rushed scenes of Cuba, the implication of where it could all go. But to really feel the loss of Eden, we gotta hammer home the mistakes made in those reactive moments in its wake. We know this because the movie is constantly TALKING about them and what happened. But for all the haunting texture of the opening credits, I can’t tell you how much the opening of this movie misses the sequence where all the early strife in these relationships comes to a head. Because that’s the thing about dramatization…

You need it for catharsis.

So, thought experiment! The following does not imply there’s some perfect or even better way to go about telling a story. This stuff is hard as shit. It’s really just a way of looking at things to see what you possibly need to function. To that, imagine a sequence earlier in the film - after Ohio / Cuba - but pre-Dreykov assassination attempt. Because it’s precisely in this timeframe where you can dramatize all the crucial things in set-up for the ending.

We’d go from Dad saying “things are going to be okay” to the two girls getting tranquilized and things being very much not okay. Natasha and Yelena are in the thick of it, Assassins in the red room and former “sisters” in an incredibly strained relationship. This is where you dramatize them being as far away from each other as possible. You also establish THERE that they think their mom died and are still heartbroken over it (especially because the current version of her death is conveyed AFTER Dad tells them she’s alive, which is a hell of a poor choice). Also, this is where you really highlight Dad’s selfish choice to be Red Guardian and show that they absolutely fucking hate him for it. Even show him at the height of his glory (also some transgression that makes the jail thing happen because right now the jail thing is utterly unmotivated). This sequence would not just be “world building” and seeing the Red Room in its prime, it would also establish the sisters’ relationships with the other widows in the program / the top brass.

Chiefly, it allows you to have a brief moment between Natasha and the Dreykov’s daughter and her worrying about this young girl getting caught up in the family’s cycle of hell (hell, if you want to even lay in a clue you can show her trying to copy Nat’s practice moves). Which means you also get close to Dreykov here, which sets up the beats you need to have more elegant payoff in the last act. Because it means that from the very onset you get to see how awful he is and go, “oh I hate this fucking guy and want him to die not just cause he’s shadowy. I hate him for who he is.” Which also means you can show Widow finally get close and try to assassinate Dreykov and THERE learn about the pheromone thing all the way back here (cue the timing of Jack Burton and the “reflexes” callback). Which would make it seem like a hopeless situation… unless she had a lifeline and help (AKA defecting to Shield) and getting out of her toxic “family.”

THEN you do the far away assination scene right here as it already exists. I mean, it’s already in the middle of the fucking movie, no? Only do it as a scene where her daughter getting into the room wasn’t “her way in,” but instead a huge complication that she deeply regrets. And more importantly, the defection could be so much more impactful because this is her CHOICE to leave her sister behind (AKA the thing she keeps alluding to being the big regret of the movie, which we never see). Hell, Natasha could believe Yelena’s “too far gone” and just not realize she’s the first whom the drug is being tried on (If you want to set up ALL of the story’s plot).

By having the first act actually show the sin of leaving her behind (instead of the image of her protecting her with a gun) it makes the end of her saving her an arc. And for Natasha the defection gets to the heart of her want versus her need. She thinks Shield will be a safe haven (and we know it is kind of) but it even makes a much BETTER therefore / but transition when we go straight from Nats to defection and cut to the Civil War era that starts the movie anyway - because she is now she’s being hunted by the very people were just like “we’ll take care of you.” Because this sequencing would hammer home is how BOTH her families let her down and thus we fully are on board with her inclination to be on her own - not in a way that’s merely alluded to, but in a way that has been fully dramatized. Hell, then all of the Norway sequence would make way better emotional sense based on that, too. And better yet, it would allow you to show an ending of her going off on the jet, but not with the lesson that she simply “has” two families, but that she understands that family is something you have to put the honest work into to fix.

Now, you may ask, “Wait, isn’t that a lot to do up front?”

Nope! Really it’s three scenes and that it’s it, then your movie can just go. I talk about this all the dang time, but there’s so many writers who don’t want to dramatize really important opening moments because they are in such a hurry to make the movie start. But I swear it costs them in the long run. Think about how much this movie is constantly stopping  to explain itself and talk about backstory or what characters used to be doing. The very reason you DO this stuff early is because THEN the rest of the movie can just go go go and instead of stopping to explain things. Think about how much cleaner Natasha and Yelena’s stand-off would be? Same with their anger with dad and the surprise of mom being dead. And the third act itself? Honestly it doesn’t need much tweaking at all, maybe a few bits of better callback, and one drawing of a straighter line, and the realization that yes, they had their Eden - but they have to make amends for their cardinal sins to get back there. Literally all the pieces of this movie are there. The ending simply drowns in last act explanation because it has the overwhelming fear of being straightforward at the start - which is exactly the shit you need for catharsis to be meaningful.

It always comes back to these same principles that storytellers like Billy Wilder advocated again and again for years. I’m telling you, when J.J. Abrams says he’s good at first acts / starting stories, but he is, in fact, very much not good at that at all. They are just first acts draped in vague mystery and promise that is utterly disconnected from any meaningful payoff. And when I similarly say, “I liked the first hour of Black Widow” it turns out it’s not about that first hour being right either. When it comes to a big traditional popcorn narrative, the truth is there’s no difference between the start and end of a movie. They’re two sides of the same proverbial coin. The set up and the punchline. And they both need to directly feed into each other to properly work.

And when I think about the end of this movie, I only think how I wish there were a few things I understood better before we got to the ending. Along with the wish that my last feeling with the film wasn’t so directly tied into Marvel’s post credits scene industrial complex. Seriously, thanks to the absurd timeframe cramming, I go from the arc of those sisters coming together, to Yelena suddenly mourning Natascha, to the comic interruption whatever the hell they’re trying to do with Valentina (and I adore JLD), all to introducing a conflict with Hawkeye that we already have the solution to because we know what actually happened??? As I left the theater, the rumbling thoughts of all that nonsense is part of what had to process, along with the way it failed the set-up to those critical buttons. Which stinks.

Because I actually liked this movie. There’s really good stuff in here, not just in the texture of solid filmmaking or family dysfunction, but all these real pieces that make the text that can help make a narrative resonate ever on. They even know what to aim for. Thus, Black Widow comes so close in that way that can help but end up feeling really far. And it’s due to the same problems I see again and again and again from the kind of writing that hides itself instead of going to the “Pixar first act school” most popcorn films need to embrace. Because while the MCU almost always nails the texture of the facade, only half the time has the architecture behind it. So in the end? The movie is crisp, well-acted, and even gets at some truths of life.

But it ain’t catharsis.

<3HULK