How To Waste A Villain - Black Widow

black widow for me is marvel's most frustrating movie it's because the potential is so obviously there with just a few minor tweaks and a handful of nudges this movie could have gone from being an okay film to one of marvel's best and why did this film fall flat on its face why was the last act of the film arguably the worst third act of the entire mcu well the core of this problem it's task master the villain and here's the thing about task master right she is hands down the most forgettable villain the mcu's had since malikith yet bizarrely she was almost one of the mcu's best villains as good as loki thanos or maybe even better okay here's the meat of it time and time again black widow's core wound has been highlighted the mcu has more or less promised us exactly what this movie was going to be about and it's this it's really not that complicated i got red in my ledger i'd like to wipe it out can you can you wipe out that much red draco's daughter sao paulo the hospital fire your ledger is dripping it's gushing red and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything and i could play a whole montage here because this sentiment has been voiced so many times at the mcu but this is the core question behind black widow's character can you wipe out that much red or in other words will black widow finally reconcile with the evil she's done and find redemption this is why taskmaster was such a catastrophic waste of potential like it makes me want to rip my hair out how badly they missed the ball on this one like i'm legitimately angry not because she was a corruption of the source material although yes she was but because she came so close to doing a perfect job at answering that question okay for those of you who haven't seen the movie it gets revealed that taskmaster is the daughter of the big bad villain drakov and black widow tried to kill them both many years ago however the child survived the bombing got all disfigured and became taskmaster this whole thing is a few tweaks away from being perhaps the most powerful hero villain dynamic of the mcu as taskmaster the symbol the personification of the evil of natasha's past is catching up with her as the film goes along and yes the film technically had that dynamic there but the terrible shame is how the film puts absolutely zero energy into exploring it into taskmaster and black widow actually speaking to each other you know having some kind of debate like not literally debating obviously but more so the same kind of debate that uh the batman and joker had throughout the dark knight black widow entirely lacks the juicing nuanced conflict that could and should have been going on between the hero and the villain as taskmaster is bitter and rightfully resentful because you know black widow crippled her and ruined her life when she was a child and a black widow begging forgiveness crushed by guilt as she tries to fight the embodiment of her core character wound but of course taskmaster can't do any of that because she is a literal blank slate who doesn't even have one line of dialogue like god there was so much potential here but did we get a fascinating exploration on the nature of redemption some insightful commentary on the human condition no because how does natasha deal with taskmaster in the end all she does is punch her a bunch then spray some red gas in her face and that's what takes her out not a grand revelation or an emotional conversation as she truly reconciles with this wound of hers and finally gets closure remember when loki asked can you wipe out that much red well it turns out that this film's answer to that core question around black widow's character it's really quite simple if you've done true evil in the past don't worry about feeling guilty or coming to terms with it because in order to find redemption all you have to do is track down the person you wronged and spray some red gunk in their face you're on the verge of greatness you were this close and you threw it all away this film was one this film was one tweak away from being the best standalone hero film the mcu's ever had and they missed the mark so miserably it ended up being one of the mcu's worst now that's not to say the film is awful but it's just okay and it could have been so much more also before we crack on i've been pretty anxious about this channel as of late uh my last video i did on batman took me over a month to make and the algorithm decided i was only going to get 50 of the views that i normally get and as a result i got paid less for that month than i was expecting now it didn't break the bank or anything uh but dealing with this is par for the course for pretty much every youtuber and i can tell you firsthand that it's hard emotionally it's easy to get yourself worked up in the anxiety when your income is decided by largely what feels like a random roll of a die but what helps tremendously with the unreliability of youtube is a project 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so if that deal sounds good to you all you have to do to sign up is click my link in the description or use my code closer look and get two for one on these two great streaming services today anyway the thing is black widow doesn't entirely neglect that question loki posed in the first avengers film it does put in a token effort all that time that i spent posing i was trying to actually do something good to make up for all the pain and suffering that we caused trying to be more than just a trained killer then you were fooling yourself because pain and suffering is every day and we are both still a trained killer but that's all the film gives like a token effort it never actually answers the question it never gives any kind of resolution in the end and that is precisely why the end of this film failed at why the first and second acts were like more or less okay but the third one fell so short calling it mediocre would be an act of extreme generosity it's because the end of any good story has a catharsis and the climax of this movie has absolutely nothing of the sort it is an extremely common complaint that the finale of this film was downright boring to watch and this is the reason there is no moment where natasha learns a valuable lesson or overcomes her deepest flaws like making it worse the only motivation natasha's had that's driven the plot is a revenge motivation to kill the villain drakov and in the end natasha never actually gets to kill drakov instead her sister does like while black widow watches from a distance passive as can be while it happens revenge has been natasha's main motivation throughout the film and the resolution to this is a total damp squib as he's indirectly killed by an explosion that she didn't cause as villain deaths go dracos was the opposite of satisfying and if there were to ever be any kind of story where you had to give a satisfying villain death it would have to be in a revenge movie aside from revenge the movie also fails to give catharsis in another way because this film has another focus aside from natasha trying to get redemption family that's right darm it's family so natasha was orphaned and spent a few years as a kid being raised by this surrogate family and a huge chunk of the movie is focusing on them getting the band back together rescuing their dad and finding their mother all because they need them to hunt down the big baddie drakov the movie really was onto something here if you ask around most people will say that the dynamics between the characters in this family was the highlight of the movie it looked even better they start off bitterly hating each other and it ends with them loving each other like the movie has the foundation for a powerful character journey here however they made one terrible mistake a mistake that ended up being the final nail in the coffin as to how the final act lacked any kind of catharsis and it's a very common mistake people make when writing character arcs and changing relationships to put it simply the film made the mistake of believing that a character merely changing constitutes an arc when in fact it doesn't in order for any kind of characteric or changing relationship to come to a satisfying conclusion you can't just have the characters change their feelings over time like this film does the characters also have to learn lessons and have revelations if you want a pitch perfect example of a character arc relationship having a really satisfying conclusion pixar's up is a fantastic example in that film carl starts off as an old man going on an adventure to keep a promise he made to his late wife when they were children that he's gonna take them both on an adventure to paradise fools so carl goes on this adventure after his wife's moved on believing that keeping this promise is the right thing to do but late in the film just before the climax in the all hope is lost moment when he's abandoned his new friend russell carr gets out his wife's book and reads through it he comes across the stuff i'm going to do section that she left empty and carl just cries because he never got to take his wife on that adventure he promised her but then as he's closing it he sees an edge of a photo and there's this total gut punch of a scene where we see the section of the book that was meant to be for her adventure to south america instead being filled with pictures of him and his wife and and carl has this heartbreakingly cathartic moment that if you didn't cry out like you and that therefore means you are not a human being as he realizes that he already gave her the adventure he promised her he just didn't realize it and the whole thing is tied up wonderfully as his wife's penned in at the end thanks for the adventure now go have a new one like i'm god i'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about it like that is how you do a character arc changing relationship because in order for it to come to a satisfying end to really hit the audience hard in the fields there absolutely must be a revelation otherwise there will be no catharsis and the problem with natasha and her family they never get that natasha just suddenly starts to love her surrogate family once the climax starts and it doesn't feel earned it instead feels like she has started to love her family because and only because of the fact that we've entered the third act and that is the final nail in the coffin as to how this movie's third act ended up being as deeply unfulfilling as it was now it's dead easy to criticize a film so it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is give a few tiny tweaks to this movie and in doing so hopefully elevate it from being merely an okay film into a vastly better one so at the start of the film after the prologue black widow wakes up in a cold sweat having nightmares about her dark past reminding the audience of her blood-soaked ledger and showing that the evil she did still haunts her then elena her sister gives her an in-person visit she says she's going to hunt down and kill drakov as revenge for all the evil terrible things he forced them to do how he turned them from children into monsters yelina wants to break her dad out of prison because he knows where drakov is but she needs natasha's help she can't do this alone black widow refuses saying she's moved on and yelena calls her a liar tells her how to find her if she changes her mind then storms away not much time later taskmaster comes after black widow like he did in the film except this time there are no vials of anti-mind control drugs he is just there to kill her he gets within a hair's width of ending her but she escapes just in the nick of time natasha then goes to a motel tries to sleep but again wakes up in cold sweats having nightmares about all the evil she's done that's when natasha looks at the card gelena gave her crushes it in her fist tears on her face and she finally accepts the call to action she hunts down her sister exactly as she did in the original film and tells her about this man who copied her abilities and nearly killed her yelena says she has no idea who this guy is she's never even heard of him but they both agree that he must be one of drakov's secret projects they're laying out their plan how they're gonna bust their dad out of prison but meanwhile drakov's widows have tracked them down and are setting up around them in a perimeter with sniper rifles and whatnot reading to kill the two of them but then that's when the widows start disappearing one by one a two of them aren't responding on the radio and draco's widows are panicking because something's obviously taking them out then we see taskmaster as he comes up to one of the widows and effortlessly takes her out then throws another out of a window to their death what this creates a bit of intrigue because taskmaster was supposedly working with these people but instead he's killing them oh like who is the guy beneath the mask like what's his deal very mysterious uh but anyway there's a big fight just like we've got in the film as taskmaster comes after yelina and natasha they escape and then later yelina asks natasha what made her defect to shield and natasha reveals that she was the first candidate of drakov's brainwashing she was the first ever agent he tried the process on but one day she snapped out of her conditioning she says on that day she was on a mission to kill a politician and his wife a mission where it was vital that she left no witnesses as she went through with it but her intel was bad because their child was there and natasha after killing the kid's parents in cold blood aimed her gun at the kid knowing the mission demanded for there to be no witnesses and this child had just seen her face but that was when natasha finally cracked she couldn't go through with it and that was what broke her out of her conditioning and made her defect to shield yelena says she was made to do far worse things than that and none of that ever broke her free of the brainwashing and natasha says well she was the first one he hadn't perfected the process back then it was clearly flawed because she broke free from it on her own but now he's clearly perfected it in the other widows so the plot goes along a bit they rescue their dad find their mum and the entire second act is more or less the same but we reinforced the idea that red guardian is acting like a caring father to elena natasha and natasha clearly believes that he's just manipulating them he's faking his love as a means to an end so he can kill drakov himself so now we have a little cut away to task master he's speaking to one of the widows this is taskmaster's ace in the hole because it gets revealed that a year ago he managed to trap a widow and using her own brainwashing against them he converted this widow to serve him instead of drakov and no one is any the wiser and so she's feeding him all of this intel from the inside of the red room and she tells him that they have the confirmed location of black widow at her mother's farm so then we have a grand action scene as tasks buster and the widows all converge on this farm when natasha and her family are taskmaster arrives first because the widows are still getting organized that's when red guardian takes him on buying his girl's time to escape but getting his ass absolutely kicked in the process and we have a little character moment here we have a revelation when natasha is using this window to run away but she looks back at the fight sees the two of them fighting and is genuinely confused she thought her dad didn't give a damn about her he was just using her as a means to an end but there he is giving away his life so they might have a chance to live that's when natasha makes a decision and goes back to help her father choosing to accept him as her family just as taskmaster's blade comes plunging down about to end red guardian's life black widow comes in saves him and they have a fight which again taskmaster wins he is just too good and as black widow is by her father on the floor after she's all beaten up taskmaster finally takes off his helmet revealing himself to be a young man who we've never seen before but the horror is clear on natasha's face her jaw dropping as she looks up at him with a first person perspective shot of his face and while showing that we cut to a shot from long ago when natasha chose to spare that child after murdering his parents a child with a very similar face and from this the audience can realize that taskmaster is the child she orphaned all those years ago the revelation strikes natasha hard and taskmaster says something about how she murdered his family so he's gonna do the same to her and so he beats down red guardian brutalizing him beating him with an inch of his life and he gets his gun out about to kill him as natasha screams for mercy that's when drakov's widows finally come in guns blazing taskmaster gets taken out and all three of them get captured now the climax task master and natasha are put into opposite cells so they have a chance to talk and he drills into her the guilt accusing her of being worse than the monsters she fights how does she deserve to live when she's taken so many innocent lives natasha cracks up saying she's sorry but she didn't actually do any of those things she was being mind controlled by drakov she had no control over her actions but taskmaster doesn't want to hear a word of it doubling down promising that he will kill her then drakov comes in saying he's really quite impressed with taskmaster so he immediately begins the indoctrination process tying him into a chair converting taskmaster into his loyal agent because he'd just be such a useful asset to have but that's when taskmaster's inside widow the one he has under his influence kills the scientists and breaks him out of his chair taskmaster then goes straight for natasha in her cell seeking to end her life but of course natasha breaks out before that and confronts dracover she's going to end it as she has him at gunpoint and don't worry there are no pheromones don't worry like that was awful instead natasha accuses him of using her as a mindless slave to murder innocent people of brainwashing her and bizarrely draco france then looks confused then holds the look of understanding and that's when he starts to laugh holding his belly barking out a love of genuine amusement as if she's told him an extremely funny joke but she's not having any of it she hits him and he collapses but he's still having the time of his life as he looks up at her and reveals the bombshell that natasha was never brainwashed yes it's true he conditions his agents and erases their free will but he only started doing that after she affected in fact it was her defecting to shield that inspired him to start indoctrinating his agents to prevent any of them from betraying him again he reveals that she had and always has had full free will every time she pulled that trigger every innocent person she killed she chose to and it turns out that her belief that she was being mind controlled was nothing but a coping mechanism a fantasy she made up so she could protect her mind from absolutely crumbling to dust under the guilt of it all and natasha's composure deteriorates uh drakov smiles and says go on what are you waiting for shoot me what better way for a murderer to redeem themselves than to murder some more and natasha can't she just can't shoot him even as he walks up to her rips the gun from her hand and punches her in the face like pheromones like jesus christ like what the [ __ ] was that anyway and natasha escapes facility go boom and natasha is talking with yelina once they're on the ground that's when taskmaster comes in and attacks the both of them he absolutely ruins yolina just beating the absolute hell out of her within an inch of her life and we have this big old climactic fight and barely after giving it everything she has natasha manages to beat tasker master finally she kicks his ass and has him at her mercy but then she doesn't just spare him she doesn't just drop the gun she gives her gun to him surrendering to his judgment giving him the chance to get his revenge he's confused but he takes up the opportunity and aims at her and looking down at the barrel she finally voices the truth that she never defected to shield because she wanted asylum but because she wanted to make up for the evil she's done how she's tried and tried and tried to make up for her despicable deeds by joining the avengers but the guilt has never gone away and she knows it will never go away no matter what she does she will always be a murderer but then she looks up into his eyes crying and says but i'm sorry i'm so sorry if you want to kill me do it because you deserve it and so do i and task master who up until that point has been remorseless relentless killing machine has a moment of hesitation being the first ever person to see black widow not as a badass taciturn super soldier super spy but instead a terrified human ruined by guilt then taskmaster with difficulty drops the gun and spares her forgiving natasha choosing to end the cycle of violence no puff of red gunk necessary they give each other a long look before he finally says if killing others is what you're feeling so guilty for why do you still carry a gun then he walks away and instead of the film ending on a weird hollow note of her walking towards a quinjet it instead ends with natasha looking at the pistol in her hand and throwing it into a nearby lake there you go i have changed absolutely no plot points or set pieces but if you ask me those tweaks would have made it a much more satisfying story but anyway these videos take me a really long time to make so if you guys can support me on patreon and help me make more videos like this i'd really appreciate it like also i've got a i'm working on an absolute mammoth of a video on a cyberpunk 2077. i've been working on it for like six months now it's jesus christ the amount of time i'm putting into this next video that you're going to see next is insane and but if you support me on patreon by clicking my link in the description quickly nudge uh you'll get to watch it before anyone else and you'll get to watch this mammoth video essay uh long before anyone else can publicly so uh the link is in the description uh but yeah please hit that like button you know down below and also the subscribe one while you're at it and i'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 848,342

Keywords: black widow, black, widow, the closer, closer look, the closer look, video, essay, video essay, natasha, romanoff, natasha romanoff, avengers, end game, endgame, disney, batman, scarlett johansson, scarlett, johansson, disney plus, movie, scene, reaction, review

Id: 4WgRj9pDgQk

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021