I am a Marvel comic movie aficionado. I can’t get enough of them.
I also can’t think of anything better than watching Scarlett Johansson kick ass and take names for two-plus hours. In fact, I would pay to watch it — that’s one movie I would gladly drop $10 to see. But even as Johansson suits up for her fourth Marvel movie — the much anticipated “Avengers: Age of Ultron” out on May 1 — there is still no talk of her amazing Black Widow character getting her own stand-alone movie.
In August, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, said in an interview with Comic Book Resources that a female-lead movie “comes down to timing.”
He said, “But we find ourselves in the very strange position of managing more franchises than most people have — which is a very, very good thing and we don’t take it for granted, but it is a challenging thing.”
On Oct. 28, Marvel announced their full phase 3 lineup, and along with the expected installments of “Captain America,” “Thor,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Avengers,” were four new players: “Inhumans,” “Doctor Strange,” “Black Panther” and “Captain Marvel.”
“Captain Marvel” — slated to come out in 2018 — will be the first female-lead Marvel film. The Internet rejoiced, but in the back of many minds was the same question: “Where’s the Black Widow movie?”
In a tweet Jan. 19, Marvel Canada (@MarvelEntCA) asked fans “The demi-god, the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist & the super-soldier - who are you most excited to see in #AvengersAgeOfUltron?”
Three days later they posted, “The results are in & it’s an overwhelming win for #BlackWidow! We too are excited to see her in #AvengersAgeOfUltron.”
By “overwhelming,” they probably meant just about every single reply involved Black Widow either kicking ass alone, or accompanied by Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch, or Colbie Smulder’s Agent Maria Hill.
Nathan Edmondson, the current writer for the Black Widow comic series, even released the first six pages of his own screenplay on his website to garner more interest in a stand-alone movie for the ex-assassin.
The scene ends with a succinct “... and like, a whole movie of Black Widow stuff and hell-yeah moments and gunplay and [subterfuge] and a romantic arc and etc., etc., etc., ... someone get on it, already.”
Since the next five years of Marvel cinematic productions are tightly planned, I know I won’t be getting the Black Widow movie I want any time soon. But, I still hold out hope that one day I’ll be able to see a young Natasha Romanoff shrug off the lies and corruption of the KGB after a life-saving pardon from a young, fresh new S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Clint Barton, codename Hawkeye.
One day I’ll know how being attacked by aliens from outer space compared to Budapest, or why Hawkeye remembers it differently. Until my dream becomes a reality, I’ll enjoy every second of Black Widow in all the other Marvel movies she’s been in — which have been most of the successful ones. Just saying.
