Black Widow and MCU films ranking

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Black Widow: The final chapter in Natasha Romanoff's story
This is a sad day I never thought would come. For the first time ever, Marvel high was not achieved by an MCU movie. For the dumb jabronis that don't know what Marvel high is, then you ****ed up and missed out on some serious ****. Marvel high was a mixture of excitement, joy, adrenaline, and just, in general, being pumped. For 13 or so years, close to every one of their films has given me that feeling. It even masked how mediocre Captain Marvel was. However, this complete disservice to Natasha Romanov is the first time that I left the theater not experiencing this. Was I entertained? Oh **** yeah, Marvel will always entertain. Still, this middle-of-the-road movie could not get to the next level, which countless others easily achieved.



The bad

Taskmaster: look, I don't give two flying ****s that shaped genders on this character. I'm sure there are other people more invested with this character that are throwing a bitch fit. I don't know much about this character other than he is a complete badass who can pick up anyone move set. I'm throwing a bitch fit because they made him lame as ****. How will you have a character who can copy of anyone else's moves, only for them to fight for like 5 minutes? ****, look at the end when Nat goes, "let's do this," and their fight lasts about 1 minute. Not sure Taskmaster even throws a punch. This Darth Vader/ Power Ranger combo was ****ing weak. They just dropped the ball on this one, and that is inexcusable. Hopefully, they bring her back and make her badass and actually show off her fight moves.



Underwhelming: You would have no idea that Nat fought an invading alien Chitauri army in the first Avengers after watching her in this. She was constantly getting her ass kicked, and this movie failed to show how badass she can actually be. Even the Red Guardian didn't have enough time to show his fighting skills off either. Add in the fact that this movie goes on forever, and it's understandable to see some missed opportunities.



Releasing it now: This movie should have been released about 4 or 5 years ago. First off, Romanoff should have been the first female avenger to get a solo film. She is owed that title since she was one of the few redeeming qualities to the subpar Iron Man 2. Secondly, the action scenes kind of got deflated a little bit with the release of the movie. Mother****ers acting like Nat might not make it out alive with all the explosions and stuff. Bitch please, I don't see no cliff on Vormir here. We all know Nat is alive, so stop being dramatic. Maybe release the film before we know how she dies. There would be some believability to her not surviving all the explosions and falling out of a flying station without a parachute.



- I'll overlook the lame-ass villain in this movie. Mainly because this is a spin-off, so whatever about the villain. Just know the Russian villain here is lame. So lame, in fact, that I forgot what his name even was.

Good

Florence Pugh: Dman bitch you really just came in and outshined Scarlet in her own movie. She was funny when she needed to be and was the heart and soul of this film. She had more of an emotional feel whenever there was talk of family as well. She was the glue here, and without her, this movie would have fallen in horsehit in no time at all.

David Harbour: Bring this man back for man and make the Red guardian a star. He was funny as hell here and was the second bright spot behind Florence.

Decent action: Marvel can do no wrong when it comes to fighting scenes. I know I talked **** earlier about Taskmaster, but when they let her fight in those brief sequences, some solid action was going on. The chase scene in Budapest was excellent as well. The jailbreak scene is the highlight of the action scenes here. By no means the most epic fights here, but they are still really good. They certainly help move the movie along.



All in all, this movie falls in about the 15-20 range as far Marvel movie ranks goes. It follows the Marvel formula perfectly. Except this just doesn't have the heart or interest level as some of the other movies. This isn't bad since there is some stiff competition with these movies. It's solid and entertaining but just a middle-of-the-road film. This movie is far too long, and they drop the ball on some of the stuff here. They have a long way to go to redeem their butchering of Taskmaster. This would have been better about 5 years ago pre knowing how Nat dies. Then maybe this movie would have been better. Alas, though, it wasn't and instead, it's just good but not great. 7.5/10



Here is my ranking of the MCU movies. Im torn between the top 3 but you cant go wrong with any of the top 15

1. Ragnarok

2. Winter soldier

3. Infinity war

4. Avengers

5. Guardians 1

6. Guardians 2

7. Iron man

8. Endgame

9. Homecoming

10. Civil war

11. Captain America

12. Far From Home

13. Antman

14. Black Panther

15. Age of Ultron

16. Captain Marvel

17. The Incredible hulk

18. Black Widow

19. Dr.Strange

20. Antman and Wasp

21. Thor

22. Iron man 2

23. Iron man 3

24. Thor 2

go here for more MCU reviews
https://tjkellyrants.com/movies/marvel-movie-collection



I didn't like the first two acts of the movie as much as I liked the first two acts of almost any other Marvel movie. But despite Taskmaster not fighting as much as she should have, much of the third act was phenomenal. Still, I'd probably put it in my bottom ten.



I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Not the best by any means, but pretty solid and the supporting characters were mostly great. Cant wait to see more of Pugh in the Hawkeye series.



I would throw it at the just above the edge of my top ten - around 12 or so.
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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton



"How tall is King Kong ?"
I will not accept any criticism towards a movie that openly declares its love for Moonraker like that. Plus, who heavily mocks the ridiculously affected hero landing poses. That movie is my friend, and I refuse to acknowledge any of its flaws, be it its tiresome, bloated fight sequences and unending ending, its superheroes attempting to murder each others just as a way to say hello, its physically indestructible fighters that are physically indestructible because they, well, trained very hard for it, its magically homing baddies that make the presence or removal of trackers completely pointless, its videogamey flying station only starting to fall once the very last engine is out, or its icky icky nerve thing. Who cares. Do these MCU clichés appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season ? It's probably one more discreet homage to Moonraker. Everything is forgiven. Best MCU movie ever.

Yes, I'm easily bribed like that.



(Also, I now look forward to the next Stranger Things.)



Welcome to the human race...
I'm intrigued as to how this is the first MCU movie to lack the "Marvel high" as you call it but it still manages to come 18th out of 24. Also not sure how you write a predominantly negative review with a final rating of 7.5/10, which actually sounds fairly good instead of "middle-of-the-road" (which I'd consider to be in the 5-6 range).

Not going to get into the ranking until (or is that unless) I revisit the rest of them, but I'm already side-eyeing Iron Man 3 in second-last place. That's probably my pick for a favourite.
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lol @ Flicker, totally re-watching Moonraker this week!
Play it again, Sam



A system of cells interlinked
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Watched this last night. After what I felt was a fairly strong first 45 minutes or so, this went off the rails for me, big time. A bad tonal shift that the film never really came out of or recovered from, weak villains, several absurd, head-scratching choices by the film makers, and a run time that was both too long and wasted in its usage, made this one a big miss for me. Pugh was the lone bright spot in the movie, giving me hope that if Marvel can right their now precariously listing ship, they will at least have a good actress playing the new Black Widow.

That said, what in the **** were these writers thinking? To me, Widow's story was already sort of set out, wasn't it? They already had a framework in which to work, they just had to fill it in. Not sure if it was from some lack of creative ideas, or just a case of a serious lack of talent in who they chose to handle this film, but they somehow totally blew it, phoning in a sort of loose remake of The Winter Soldier, with only the names changed, adding in a dash of FX's The Americans as a setup. Instead of HYDRA, we've got the Red Room. Instead of The Winter Soldier, we have Taskmaster. Instead of the Project Insight Helicarriers, You have some goofy 70s era James Bond Sky Fortress, complete with bad 60s/70s decor.

The last item is a good focus on one of the main issues with Black Widow: It doesn't know what type of movie it wants to be. It moves from a riff on the show The Americans, slides into a overtly serious high tech spy thriller, with some dire implications on child trafficking and forced sterilization, only to then tank into a campy take on the worst aspects of 70s-era Bond (we even see a scene from Moonraker, perhaps the worst ever Bond movie, playing on a TV in one scene). The intro is a totally anachronistic cold war era scenario, with a family of Russian spies in deep cover having to suddenly pick up and escape when their cover is somehow blown, although we aren't told how or why. The problem is that this takes place in 1995, which just doesn't make sense no matter how I try to spin it. The USSR is gone, the cold war is over, and at that point in time, Russia was in a complete shambles politically. To top it off, there is a daring escape, with the intrepid family barely escaping in...a small personal plane. This takes place in Ohio, and yet somehow, once they are off the ground, the Feds drop pursuit, and the scene cuts to Cuba, where the family has managed to evade authorities in a small aircraft with a fat guy hanging off one wing and a 10-year old kid flying the plane.

Still, I gave the film a pass at this point, as this was all clearly to ret-con in a sister for Natasha. Why they just didn't have the family living in Russia, perhaps as ex-spies for the KGB, who knows, but it is what it is.

The next 40 minutes or so expose us to the Widows, the team of assassins that Natasha was once a member of. This section of the film is played in a edgy, serious manner, as it is revealed that most of the widows are under some sort of conditioned control, which a couple of the girls have broken due to some sort of chemical agent, the origin of which is never explained well. Although these scenes are well done, action packed, and exciting, when you take a minute to consider the number of contrivances and illogical actions taken by characters needed to push events along, not much holds up under scrutiny. Why did Yelena send the chemical to Natasha, with only a cryptic photo for information? Yelena is also a trained assassin with the same skillset as Natasha, so why didn't she just keep the chemical, using it herself to free the minds of her colleagues? When I first saw the contents of the case, which were presented to Natasha as items taken from a "safehouse in Budapest", I figured Yelena had been captured, or something along those lines.

Alas, no. Yelena is fine, just hanging out at the safehouse. I don't get it. If it's a safehouse, why risk the antidote by shipping it to a different safehouse in Norway only to have it returned to the safehouse in Budapest from the safehouse in Norway, which by the way, Natasha is hiding out at, so how does a recently-freed-from-mind-control Russian assassin chick know Natasha is there, where it is located, how to get in touch with the arms dealer guy who brings the items to Norway...none of this makes sense. To pile on more oddities, why in the world do the two girls immediately attack one another when Natasha finally arrives at the safe house in Budapest? One girl contacts another to come help, and the other girl goes to help, but they try to kill one another as soon as they are in the same room? Dumb.

What follows is an increasingly bizarre and unlikely series of events including an awkward family reunion littered with a mixture of bad jokes and downright psychotic behavior from the lady who played the mom in Marvel version of The Americans from earlier in the film. She basically chokes the family dog and then chastises Natasha to sit up straight while she is doing it. She then lifts a site gag from the Mission Impossible series to pull off an idiotic switch-a-roo in order to fool the shadowy puppet-master villain, who up until this point, hasn't even been in the movie; a guy who, once we meet him, turns out to be the guy from The Departed who gives DiCapprio **** for drinking cranberry juice, complete with a bad accent that randomly comes and goes. At this point I have a sinking feeling in my gut that Marvel has seriously jumped the shark into parody-ville.

Things only get worse, as we are treated to a third act that is completely absurd, with several cringeworthy scenes of terrible dialogue, disappointing fight scenes, and a ridiculous plot twist that was totally obvious, but I had been hoping just couldn't be where they were going with this character until the twist happened, but they did it anyway. So, Natasha and Clint blew up an entire building in order to kill a person, sadly also killing his young daughter in the process, but somehow, the guy escapes completely unscathed, but his daughter is turned into a cross between Darth Vader and Johnny Mnemonic, so hideously disfigured that she needs a special suit and neural hard drive to function. Not sure if this is a story taken from the comics, but man, it is almost painfully dumb. Apparently explosions work differently in the MCU, as there are several other instances of people directly in the middle of an explosion somehow walk away unscathed, or with minimal damage, without even their hair style being affected.

The final fight sequence, which plays out mostly in the sky as people are falling to the Earth from the fortress obliterates any shreds of suspension of disbelief that remain, coming across as a ridiculous cartoon.



Bummer.
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