Marvel Studios' Black Widow - Official Teaser Trailer

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by marmalade166, Dec 3, 2019.

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  1. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    I guess you can tell which DC hero is my favorite :hide: but yes, definitely.
     
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  2. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Richard Donner was a childhood fan of Superman. In one interview he said he traded and bartered to collect the comics, and probably even had Action Comics #1, but the whole collection was thrown out by his mom (the familiar story). He signed onto the movie with the intention of making a faithful adaptation that stuck close to the comics he had read. Hollywood didn't understand what he did even after he did it, and starting making Superman into their own goofy idea of what he should be as soon as Donner left the movies.

    The norm in Hollywood when doing adaptations continued to be to take the name of the character and then completely change everything else about it as they saw fit, because they're bigshots who know better than the comic, cartoon and book writers. That sometimes works, but usually for something obscure like Roger Rabbit, not something that's been in circulation for years with an established fan base. Burton did follow in the footsteps of 1980s Batman comics by making the material darker, but still took liberties with the costume and origin, and increasingly with the characters in Batman Returns. Of course Howard the Duck is the classic example of Hollywood sucking everything that was good about the source material out of it and producing a hollow shell of the character.

    The Marvel movies have been successful because they, largely, simply stayed true to the source material. They realized the basic logic that if something is successful already, why change the basic characteristics of it that were responsible for its success? And why use a character if you're going to change everything about it? Kevin Feige was a true Marvel Comics reader and fan, and got involved with the movies as early as X-Men in 2000. The reason the movies are successful is because these stories were already successful when they were published as comic books. In print, they took Marvel from nowhere to become the top comic book company. If a character has stayed popular for decades in various media, it's a no-brainer to figure out that putting the same character in a movie will also make it popular.

    Hollywood got better about doing faithful adaptations in the 2000s, but still gets it completely wrong sometimes, as with the G.I. Joe movies.
     
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  3. rikki nadir

    rikki nadir Gentleman Thug

    Location:
    London, UK
    Don't be so hard on yourself - if National Review are hiring reviewers you have a job for life.
     
  4. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    I just saw the movie last night, so I haven't watched any of the You Tube recaps like New Rockstars. A scene like that is right up their alley. Likely they've already gone through each face frame by frame and identified any notable characters.

    We too watched it at home, more because of scheduling conflicts than anything else. I cracked one liners through the whole thing which makes my 13 year old daughter mad. My wife fell asleep a few times (she hasn't slept a lot recently) so it'll be nice to watch it again. I liked it, fun movie and I can't wait to see more of Yelena.
     
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  5. rock4ev

    rock4ev Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA USA
    Right on. It was a cool spy like action thriller that happens to have a major MCU character.
    And that made it simple to watch as it's not part of a big developing/unfolding story, even the end credit scene is more of another thing elsewhere, I will leave it at that.
    As far as the the possible "Widow" comment I made in my original post, I plan to re watch the movie some point this week and also the final Loki episode.

    As for any connection I made, I must be way off as I never saw any YouTube mentions in a week of checking easter egg stuff on the movie, I don't put a lot of time in it, though I did think that one of the Widows aside from Yelana is/has been shown to us.
    Usually those YouTuber's catch that stuff.

    Cheers
     
  6. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    My kid and I saw this in a theater on Monday night--first theater experience in more than 1.5 years and my kid was very excited. Theater was almost empty, which suited me just fine. I found the movie didn't meet my expectations, but still enjoyed it, as did my kid.

    My biggest problem with it was that I found it very predictable and the humor and action never hit the mark of some of my favorite Marvel films. I found myself accurately predicting what would happen in each scene, and even predicting what the next scene would be. Usually I can't do that with any degree of accuracy.

    On the other hand, my kid was totally lost throughout most of the film. Often my kid has to tell me what the heck is going on, so I found this interesting. For example, at the very beginning of the movie showing the two sisters, my kid didn't even get that the older one was Natasha--actually thought the Natasha child was a boy! Perhaps Marvel hit the right notes for average viewers, and my kid and I were outliers for some reason.

    The females in the film were multifaceted and showed character development, empathy, reconciliation. The males in the film were unidimensional, caricatures/cliches, incapable of self-reflection or anything like that. It was pretty obnoxious. Even Captain Marvel had more multifaceted males, e.g., Nick Fury. The action sequences were pretty great.
     
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  7. marmalade166

    marmalade166 Sous les pavés, la plage! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Aberdeen, Scotland
    don't worry, there's literally thousands of films where the roles are reversed for you to enjoy
     
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  8. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    My complaint as an old fart (relatively speaking) is that some of the action sequences have so much going on, you can't see it all. Just because you CAN add a tone of stuff with CGI, doesn't mean you should.

    I did like the car that went down the subway stairs end ended up on its roof...Blues Brothers style...'they broke my watch.'
     
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  9. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    He's definitely not the only one who was confused about who the children were. I was. And I've seen other people saying they thought one was a boy. Just pull up Home Alone 3 ScarJo scenes on YouTube to see what she should've looked like at that age. Almost the same as she does now. Girls don't change their appearance that much from that age.

    Red Guardian had a few moments where he got to show some growth or maturity. My main problem with him was that his schtick just wasn't that funny. I'm not really sure what it was all about. Just random stupidity and insensitivity?

    I thought Nick Fury was really neutered in Captain Marvel. I don't think he was allowed to be anything close to the cool character that he had been set up to be in previous movies. Turning him into comic relief was a real letdown, and his comic relief was much worse than even Red Guardian's.
     
  10. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    He needed to be LESS Nick Fury than we are used to because it was set earlier and he hadn't developed 100% of that Nick Fury edge.
     
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  11. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    I thought that too for a little bit until the very end of that sequence where the older kid is called out as Natasha.

    Didn't detract from the opening for me in the least.
     
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  12. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    That's my most common complaint with most Marvel/DC action sequences, a thousand things all happening at once at super human speeds, it gets to a point where my brain goes numb, I disengage from the scene and want it to end asap.
     
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  13. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    My complaint about the action is similar, but I understand that's what we're signing up for in these films. My favorite action is John Wick, where you get to see every facet of the hand-to-hand combat. But we can't expect that in MCU.

    True. But the best films have compelling female characters as well as male.

    I agree, but it's easy to deduce who the two girls are at the beginning because the name of the movie is Black Widow, after all.

    I wouldn't call it growth or maturity so much as acknowledgement that he lacked growth or maturity--plus he could barely carry the tune American Pie with a Russian accent, haha. I agree, the humor was stale and immature. It could have been dressed up much better with some darker element to his personality or more detail about the state secrets he stole--anything to provide a twist.

    I thought Nick Fury was interesting in Captain Marvel because he rapidly embraced that humanity wasn't protected from extraterrestrial forces and you could see the beginnings of his leadership role in SHIELD. He started out totally ignorant of that in CM, so he wasn't at all the same character that he later developed into, but that right there shows how different he was than Red Guardian, who was unidimensional at the beginning, middle and end.
     
  14. pdenny

    pdenny 22-Year SHTV Participation Trophy Recipient

    Location:
    Hawthorne CA
    [​IMG]
     
  15. 5th-beatle

    5th-beatle Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brazil
    I watched this film today and enjoyed it a lot. Good action scenes, fine acting and interesting character development.
     
  16. Shoes1916

    Shoes1916 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Two words:

    Florence Pugh

    An absolute must-see to be suffered through as necessary!

    :love:
     
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  17. davenav

    davenav High Plains Grifter

    Location:
    Louisville, KY USA
    Just awesome!
     
  18. davenav

    davenav High Plains Grifter

    Location:
    Louisville, KY USA
    Ya think?
     
  19. Roland Stone

    Roland Stone Offending Member

    This is a solid if unspectacular entry in the MCU, somewhat similar to CAPTAIN MARVEL.

    Like others, I thought the movie struggled to balance humor and action as the best MCU installments do. Perhaps they should have stuck to the two sisters who had great on-screen charisma and written out the parents, whose humor was too broad.

    I also had a hard time figuring out the reverse nerve agent thingie for awhile . . . It didn't make sense at first. I mean, it's a comic book movie and everything but that seemed kinda backwards. The gas attack frees their minds?
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2021
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  20. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    No, he didn't need to be that way and shouldn't have been that way. We should've seen how badass he was that he would eventually get promoted to the level he got to. He was neutered simply so that Captain Marvel could soak up more "girl power." It's the same thing that happened to Finn in The Force Awakens. The black men are made into bumbling, confused clowns and the butt of jokes so that the white women can strike intense poses into the camera and do all the heavy lifting for them. Fury lost his eye because of a cat...that's emasculating, makes him the butt of a joke and takes away from his mystique and power since we assumed he got the injury while doing something courageous. It was a disgusting thing to do to his character.
     
  21. davenav

    davenav High Plains Grifter

    Location:
    Louisville, KY USA
    No. Showing that he was not always Mr. Cool, makes him more human and shows the growth he underwent post Capt. Marvel.
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    So the experts in Hollywoo say that Black Widow may be a game changer, since it made $160M in theaters and another $60M in pay-per-view. A $220M haul is a huge amount of money for any movie in its first week...

    Marvel Studios’ Black Widow may have just changed the rules of Hollywood’s all-consuming streaming wars race. The Walt Disney Co. stunned rival Hollywood studios and theater owners Sunday when it included premium video on-demand numbers in its box office note for the female-led superhero pic starring Scarlett Johansson. It’s the first time any movie studio has revealed such data for an opening weekend, and only the second time for any PVOD title after Trolls: World Tour (several weeks after Trolls 2 opened in spring 2020, NBCUniversal chief Jeff Shell said the animated film had earned more than $100 million.) Otherwise, viewership numbers have been kept in the vault, whether for PVOD titles or studio films opening simultaneously on their sister companies’ streaming services at no extra fee (think HBO Max, or Disney in some instances).

    According to Disney’s Sunday note, the big-budget Marvel tentpole grossed more than $60 million on Disney+ Premier Access — subscribers had to pay an extra $30 to watch Black Widow — while debuting to a pandemic-era best $80 million at the domestic box office and $78.8 million overseas for a global theatrical bow of $158.8 million. The Disney+ portion made up a hefty 27 percent of the total $218.8 million opening. That $60 million from Disney+ would mean that about 2 million of its 103 million global subscribers paid $30 to see Black Widow.

    ‘Black Widow’ Stunner: Disney+ Reveals Revenue in Game-Changer – The Hollywood Reporter
     
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  23. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    1. It wasn't a cat. It was a Flerken.
    2. He got the injury supporting Captain Marvel's mission to join the Skrull in fighting the Kree, which morphed into her mission to join the avengers in Endgame--so it was something courageous. You can argue he helped save the universe because of it.
    3. His character didn't come into existence believing in extraterrestrial threats and endorsing top secret weapons development; this was an important backstory for him and the way they applied CGI to make SJ look younger is the most successful use of that de-aging I've seen. Far more effective than what I saw in The Irishman. Now THAT was shameful.
     
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  24. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    I think their main point is that Disney actually revealing what the movie earned on Disney+ may be a game-changer for more transparency in streaming numbers, which have barely ever been revealed. I don't know how we got to the point where box office results are openly reported, but it seems like there's no justification for keeping numbers on movie earnings a secret just because they're on streaming. Likewise, broadcast TV ratings are openly reported, and home video sales seem to be reported to some degree.

    Then at the end they say this:

    “This is going to shake up the industry and cause problems. Talent and exhibitors will be very upset,” says one source.

    They have a similar article at the bottom which explains it better:

    Why Disney’s ‘Black Widow’ Premium VOD Reveal Rattled Hollywood – The Hollywood Reporter

    "Wall Street analysts and film financiers believe that day-and-date releases cannibalize box office and diminish other ancillary revenues. Imax CEO Richard Gelfond agrees. “When other studios have analyzed the piracy rate and the cannibalization coming out of day-and-date release, they decided to go to a 45-day window,” Gelfond says."

    "But BoxOffice Pro analyst Shawn Robbins cautions, “As more people grow comfortable returning to cinemas, how much money is left on the table by essentially discounting a new release for families able to share one purchase across an entire household, not to mention with friends and extended family?”"

    So...if Disney cuts down on overall revenue for the movie with the "discount," but gets 100%, they may make more money than they would have by selling more tickets, but theaters are cut out of the equation entirely, while talent has less of a pie to draw from for their profit-sharing. It's just a very threatening development to the established order of how business in the industry works.

    This probably ties into how streaming has changed the music industry. According to the below article from this year, artists hate the streaming model. "...the streaming model has exacerbated the divide between superstars and everybody else." And, of course, streaming music hurt any store that sells albums, the way streaming movies would hurt theaters.

    Streaming Saved Music. Artists Hate It.
     
  25. PH416156

    PH416156 Alea Iacta Est

    Location:
    Europe
    I'd say if you have a massive TV or a projector and can't stand traffic, people with smartphones that are eating, drinking and burping at the theater, $30 is a huge deal.

    And if it's too loud, you can turn down the sound if you like, and enable subtitles. Yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Nolan! :D

    6 or more friends can share the cost..I can see small/medium/large groups of friends doing it.
     
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