By the time her name was called for a coveted
standalone, she knew that, above all, she wanted
Black Widow’s film to be unexpected. And as the
first lead actor to serve as a producer on a Marvel
film, she actually had a say.
The character, introduced in the comics in 1964,
is inextricably tied to a Soviet-era spy aesthetic
fitting of James Bond. But that seemed like the
easy route.
“I didn’t want it to be an espionage film,”
Johansson said. “I think we avoided that.”
Instead, “Black Widow” helps peel back the
layers on a hard-to-grasp character, with a little
bit of an origin story, a little bit of a coda and the
introduction of people outside of the Avengers
who mean something to her. Johansson also
personally recruited Australian indie director
Cate Shortland, another unexpected and
inspired choice, to helm.
Marvel veteran Eric Pearson had the task of
writing the script and took advantage of the
fact that the character seemed to change and
become more emotionally vulnerable between
“Civil War” and “Infinity War”/”Endgame,” which is
when “Black Widow” is set.
“We’re looking at what happened there,” Pearson
said. “What happened when she went back and
confronted her past that unlocked her heart
and kind of opened her up to the world and
eventually led her to make that all-time sacrifice
at the end of ‘Endgame.’”
Part of that involved introducing a sort-of sister
character in Yelena Belova, played as an adult
by Florence Pugh, who also had the traumatic
experience of being trained in the “Red Room”
as a child.