Black Widow Pitch Meeting

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Black Widow.

The latest Screen Rant Pitch Meeting tackles Black Widow. Marvel Studios returns to the big screen with Scarlett Johansson's long-delayed standalone film as Natasha Romanoff, although it also simultaneously dropped on Disney+. Directed by Cate Shortland, the movie was supposed to kick off Phase 4, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was pushed back several months.

Set in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War and just before Steve Rogers broke out Team Cap from the Raft, Black Widow follows Natasha as she revisits a conspiracy theory from her past — that the Red Room is still functional. She is joined by her Russian family, all of whom have varying connections to the mysterious program and the man behind it, General Dreykov. Despite being an unconventional standalone MCU film, given the titular character's death in Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow introduces a string of characters who are expected to have a long future in the franchise, particularly Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova. Having only appeared in a single Marvel Studios project, she has quickly become a fan-favorite and presumed next Black Widow after Johansson's exit.

Screen Rant's brand new Pitch Meeting episode centers on Black Widow and imagines how Marvel Studios' first briefing about the film potentially went down. Using its signature humor, the outing points out the unconventional timing for the movie given Nat's death. The clip also highlights several moments in the film that, realistically, should've killed the hero, considering that she's a non-suited and non-powered individual. Watch the video below:

Black Widow isn't a flawless film, and has several issues — some of them pointed in the video above. That includes the lack of serious injuries in the movie. Marvel Studios takes a more grounded approach to Nat's standalone adventure, which makes sense considering that she doesn't have any special set of skills. It allowed the project to lean into hand-to-hand combat and other manual fight sequences. But while it's been revered for that as per the critics' reviews, it's dubious that not one of the good guys gets seriously injured in it. That somehow takes away from the groundedness of the story.

Nevertheless, the public seems to enjoy Black Widow fairly well. In its first weekend, it has already pocketed around $140 million combined theatrical and Disney+ Premier Access sales. Despite naysayers claiming that it would fall flat considering that Nat's fate in the MCU has been pre-determined, the character's dynamic with her family is one of the best, if not the best, aspects of the project. So, despite everything that is going against it, the blockbuster is still a welcome addition to the franchise's roster of stories, especially since this wraps up the Avenger's arc so much better than Endgame did.

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