54 Time July 19/July 26, 2021
than the one we’ve seen before, a vulnerable child
rather than a cold-eyed femme fatale. As an adult, she
wears combat boots and a leather jacket more than
her bodysuit, and both deals and takes the sort of
brutal blows that few directors are willing to show in
brawling scenes between women. Those gritty scenes
are a potent reminder that in the spy genre, women
have played arm candy far more than protagonists.
As the rest of the MCU grows increasingly cosmic,
Natasha has remained grounded. She has no super-
powers, a boon for viewers who have overdosed on
special effects. When Natasha and her sister Yelena
patch themselves up after a fight, Yelena points out
that the “big” Avengers like the space god Thor prob-
ably don’t need to pop an ibuprofen after battle.
Black Widow is driven by the fraught relationship
between these sisters. Set after the events of Captain
America: Civil War when Natasha is a fugitive from
the American government, the film finds her
seeking to uncover the secrets of her child-
hood living with the agents masquerading as
her family. Florence Pugh plays her younger
“sister.” Rachel Weisz is the whip-smart ma-
triarch. The only man, a father figure played
by David Harbour, generously plays the butt
of the jokes as the entitled man the women
can send fleeing with their delightfully abun-
dant talk of lady parts.
Perhaps the most surprising twist in the
film is the way it deals with the character’s
infertility. “Victoria [Alonso] and I are both
adoptive mothers,” says Shortland. “We
wanted to talk about the idea that the fact
that you do not bear children does not mean
that you are less than. We wanted to empower
her.” Natasha and Yelena have frank conversa-
tions about children (or lack thereof), careers
and their futures. They even make jokes—
improbably funny ones—about their hysterectomies.
When I fIrst spoke to Johansson in March 2020,
it was supposed to be a banner year for female di-
rectors. Studios still rarely grant women the chance
to helm action epics, but last year was set to see the
release of Black Widow, Wonder Woman 1984, Mulan
and Eternals, all directed by women and predicted
to do top-10 business at the box office. The prom-
ise of more equitable opportunities was coming to
fruition. Instead, the pandemic drove those movies
to trickle out in hybrid theatrical- streaming releases
or to delay their releases until this year.
Johansson, who has worked on male- dominated
action sets her whole career, believes a female direc-
tor can crucially change the trajectory of a film. She
credits Shortland with deeply interrogating her char-
acters’ vulnerabilities and motivations. “Those curi-
osities, I’m not going to say they’re only female, but I
do think they’re inherently female,” Johansson says.
Increasingly, despite the setbacks of the pan-
demic, promising female auteurs are getting tapped
by the franchise machine. 2019’s Captain Marvel, co-
directed by the female-male team of Anna Boden and
Ryan Fleck, earned $1.1 billion. Chloé Zhao’s Oscar-
winning Nomadland hadn’t yet debuted when Mar-
vel signed her to direct this year’s Eternals, starring
Angelina Jolie. The studio has also tapped Candy-
man director Nia DaCosta to helm the second Cap-
tain Marvel film, The Marvels, which will star a co-
hort of female superheroes. Booksmart’s Olivia Wilde
will direct a female-fronted Spider-Man spin-off, and
Jenkins will return for Wonder Woman 3.
Marvel’s expansion to TV via Disney+ is also
broadening storytelling opportunities for women.
The debut of WandaVision in January represented
a leap forward in female- centric storytelling, as it
redeemed the arc of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth
Olsen), the 14th-billed cast member in Aveng-
ers: Infinity War. The character had largely been
defined by her lack of control over her powers,
a trait that veers into stereotypes about overly
emotional women who can’t help but destroy ev-
erything around them (see also: Dark Phoenix,
Game of Thrones). But the show leaned into an
exploration of Wanda’s emotions and served up
a treatise on grief and mental health.
The studio seems to have decided to trans-
form its shortcomings into strengths. After
under utilizing Natalie Portman as Thor’s love in-
terest Jane, they’re promoting her to the Goddess
of Thunder in 2022’s Love and Thunder. When
director Taika Waititi bestowed the hammer on
her at 2019’s San Diego Comic-Con, she accepted
with a smirk that screamed, “It’s about time.”
Whether motivated by courage or shame, or
perhaps a little of both, this willingness to stare
down its own checkered past is critical to Mar-
vel’s next phase. At one point during Black Widow,
Yelena ribs Natasha about the infamous pose in
which she lands with her legs splayed, gazing up se-
ductively at the camera. It’s been around since the
Iron Man era, a blatant male fantasy of how a woman
would fight.
“I decided to make a point of it,” says Short-
land. “Her sister says, ‘You’re a poser. The way you
move, it’s not real. Who is it for?’ We were point-
ing at it, allowing the audience to be aware of
what they had watched before and what they were
watching now.” Marvel gets to have its cake and eat
it too: Johansson still does the pose, after all. But
there’s an unspoken promise that characters like
Pugh’s and the ones that will populate upcoming
MCU films and shows—like a young female Hawk-
eye, teen Muslim superhero Ms. Marvel and Iron
Man’s successor Ironheart—could shed the expec-
tations that burdened Black Widow and set a stan-
dard of true empowerment. •Culture