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ŹƆŶżźŶƃƇƀƄsTaskmaster, and also has a connection
to the Widow program. “He controls
the Red Room... they’re manipulated,”
says Yelena in the trailer, hinting that
Taskmaster has an army of brainwashed
Widows at his command.
“Natasha has to try to evade this
faceless, formidable foe, but she’s off
her game,” says Johansson, “especially
as she starts to experience the
Taskmaster’s fighting style. We’re used
to Natasha always figuring it out.”
Taskmaster’s anything-you-can-do
fighting style sees him mimicking the
skills of his opponents. “He has this
ability called photographic reflexes – so
if he fights you once he knows how to
emulate your style,” explains executive
producer Brad Winderbaum. “Natasha’s
tricks might work in their first
altercation, but by round two and three
he knows everything and she has to
come up with something else.”*2,1*%,*
In the Marvel tradition, Black Widow is
helmed by a somewhat leftfield choice.
Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland (to
whom Johansson refers as “our fearless
leader”) is best known for dramas like
Somersault and Lore. “Her stuff is sodeep and so character-driven,”
enthuses Johansson. “Just knowing that
I had her, knowing that she and I would
be able to build this character together,
I knew that we were cooking with gas.”
“I think what’s exciting about the
film is we’re playing with the audience’s
expectations,” says Shortland. “We’re
exploring parts of Natasha the audience
has absolutely no idea about. We
explore her family, love and passion,
and you get to see all these facets of her
we have never seen before.”
As Kevin Feige says, “[Cate] realised
she could tell a very personal story and
do something extremely special on
a big canvas.” And this is a big canvas.
Filmed over 87 days across the UK,
Norway, Budapest, Morocco and
Atlanta, Black Widow was no small
undertaking, featuring enormous set-
pieces involving sky-diving, motorcycle
chases and hand-to-hand combat.Given Johansson has to carry the whole
thing on her strong shoulders, it’s a
good thing that she’s had a decade’s
worth of training going into this.
“I luckily was at a place where I felt I
was stronger than ever and that my
body had this kind of physical or muscle
memory,” muses Scar-Jo. “And I feel
like in the 10 years I’ve been playing
this character, I’ve been working up to
this point. I’m older now, and things
hurt a little bit more and longer. But I
definitely feel like I’m in a much more
capable place than I was in 2009.”
As well as the aforementioned
skydiving and Budapest chase sequence,
Johansson has high expectations for
this film’s action. “I’m probably
biased,” she admits, “but I think there
are some of the best fights we’ve had in
the MCU. They come from the place of
character. It’s an important part of the
storytelling to understand where
Natasha is mentally in each fight. She
has no superpowers, so it’s all coming
from her... It was striking how many
stuntwomen we had on set at any given
time. The power of these women in one
room together was something I’d never
experienced before. It was an amazing
feeling to be surrounded by all these
badass women and be able to get down
and dirty with them.”
For all the kickass action, though,
Black Widow promises to enrich the life
of a character whose endgame we
already know, by adding valuable
context to her tussle with long-term
comrade Hawkeye over who would
make the Vormir leap. “In Avengers:
Endgame, we saw Natasha get to a place
in her life where she could make the
ultimate sacrifice for the greater good,”
says co-producer Brian Chapek. “Now,
we want to tell the story about who she
really is as a human being and what led
to her being capable of making that
heroic decision.”
As Johansson herself puts it, “I really
feel like we have the opportunity for
some healing and to understand why
Natasha decides to make the ultimate
sacrifice in Endgame, and where that
comes from. We may be able to believe
that she’s at peace with some of the
unfinished business that she’s had
to struggle with...” Natasha finally
resolving her unfinished business and
wiping that red from her ledger? Sounds
worth the wait.BLACK WIDOW WILL OPEN IN CINEMAS ON A
FUTURE DATE TO BE DETERMINED. YOU CAN
CATCH UP WITH NATASHA ROMANOFF’S
PREVIOUS ADVENTURES ON DISNEY+.
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APRIL 2020 | TOTAL FILMBLACK WIDOW