A new rumour from the Marvel mill suggest that plans for the long-awaited Black Widow movie could include super-violent set pieces, sexy times, swears or a mix of all three.
Entertainment journo Charles Murphy, who’s broken more than one story about the ScarJo-powered MCU project, says that early talks about the movie saw the studio considering giving the project free rein to go where no MCU film has gone before: R-rated territory.
I'm not saying it will be for sure (no way to know what they will settle on at this point), but they have recently said that R-rated MCU films ARE a possibility, so it is a possibility. So if BW ends up R-rated, don't be shocked.
— Charles Murphy (@_CharlesMurphy) January 12, 2019
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige has said that R ratings aren’t out of the question for the MCU, and he wasn’t immediately gagged, tagged and locked in a secret island prison by parent company Disney, so that part at least must be true.
The Black Widow movie – which is being directed by Aussie filmmaker Cate Shortland and will apparently start filming in the first half of this year – could easily be an origin story about Natasha Romanov’s mysterious past as a Russian spy before she defected to work for S.H.I.E.L.D.
The bits of the story she’s hinted at are largely horrifying – remember the whole thing from Age Of Ultron where she tells Bruce about how they forcibly sterilised her? – so it makes so much sense for her movie to be dark.
And I don’t mean Justice League “dark” – I mean Nolan Batman trilogy dark.
I want wigs and latex catsuits, sure, but also blood and damage.
I want Natasha Romanov stalking around Soviet/Hydra spy facilities in a battered winter coat, snapping men’s necks with her thighs and taking headshots from snowy forest hideouts.
Like this, but covered in blood.
I want J-Law in Red Sparrow meets Deadpool meets John Wick. Let her avenge her bodily autonomy the way Keanu avenged that beagle: whole buildings of mooks at a time.
Natasha has been around since she rocked up at Stark Tower to be ogled by Tony and then beat the smirk off his face in Iron Man 2. And she deserves better than sitting around rolling her eyes at Mjolnir-based pissing contests, being moral support for Hawkeye, and having her only real emotional development revolve around whether she can bear children or not.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in ten years of the MCU and 20 films, it’s that there’s room in that big tent for all kinds of vibes – from 70s-style conspiracy thrillers to intergalactic road trips and relatively wholesome family-size fun. Just like in the comics, all kinds of stories can be told.
So come on, Marvel. Give me two shadowy, stylish hours of ScarJo doing a f**kload of murders. It’s the Black Widow origin story we all deserve.
