Black Widow: the femme power, the Bond movie stylings, the gender-swapping – discuss with spoilers

Was the Marvel stand-alone instalment a fitting send-off for Natasha Romanoff? And what about the much-vaunted return of Iron Man?What an unusual yet beguilingly brilliant Marvel movie Black Widow is.

The Disney-owned saga’s Usp is that everything is interlinked: each episode powers up the next, like nodes lighting up on a superhero circuit board.

Cate Shortland’s film, however, exists almost entirely outside this continuum.The prequel is set after the events of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, and acts as a stand-alone adventure for Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff.

This is probably a good thing, as Black Widow has a narrow window of opportunity for adventures left before she suffers a tragic demise in the events of Avengers: Endgame.

But it does mean we’re into entirely new territory for the Marvel Cinematic Universe: an episode that goes nowhere, yet in dazzling, femme, power-fuelled fashion.Continue reading.

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