Far From the Widow and the Falcon

I decided that I don't need to really recap the next couple things in the MCU as it isn't necessary to know EVERYTHING in them to follow the series as a whole. This is in no way a statement about the quality of these movies. I just want to save myself some time and writing while still covering anything that might be important to know for future installments of this NEVER ENDING SERIES. Anyway. Here is a summary of both "Spider-Man 2" and "Black Widow". You're welcome.

"Spider-Man: Far From Home"

Starring: Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Samuel Fucking L. Jackson, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Tony Revolori, Martin Starr, J.B. Smoove, Colbie Smulders and the ghost of Robert Downey Jr.

Remember when I noted how weird it was that somehow that "random" half of the universe that Thanos snapped included almost all of the Barton and Pym/VanDyne clan? Well, it turns out it also included ALL of Peter Parker's classmates, so we are able to continue this part of the series with them all still the same age. Convenient, that. Though they claim some of them (just no one in the main cast) did age five years and some of them have younger siblings who are now older. They refer to the five years they missed as "The Blip" because no time passed for them at all and yet they have to repeat that school year because TEACHERS ARE SO UNFAIR OMG.

At the end of "Homecoming", Aunt May figured out Peter's secret Spider-Man identity, so she knows from the beginning of this one and is surprisingly okay with it. She refers to Peter's spidey sense as his "Peter tingle", seemingly clueless to how horrible that sounds and packs his Spider-Man uniform in his suitcase for him when his class goes on a trip to Europe, basically so we could get some cool scenery that isn't New York in the background of all the fight scenes. The bully from the first movie is...still a dick to Peter, but has become a big Spider-Man fanboy, so that's a thing. As is Aunt May and Happy flirting with each other, apparently.

Speaking of things that sound horrible, early on Peter notes that his powers make him "strong and...sticky" like that second part isn't an alarming statement coming from a teenage boy.

This movie mostly deals with the aftermath of "Endgame" and whether Peter is capable of filling Tony Stark's shoes or not. He inherits Tony's tech and Happy, but is still in over his head when Fury taps him (nice way of saying "hijacks his class trip to make sure he's where they need him to be") to fight a threat supposedly from another universe called the Elementals (Earth, Wind, Fire, Water...you know, those all important four ingredients that were used to murder cardinals in "Angels and Demons" and YES I WILL KEEP REFERRING TO THAT BOOK). Helping him (seemingly) is Jake Gyllenhaal as Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (so dubbed because of the first major Elemental attack happening in Italy where reporters dub him Mystery Man), although it's really more the other way around since, as I said, Peter's powers aren't all that helpful against giant monsters from another dimension. But Thor, Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange are all doing other movies...sorry..."busy".

Anyway, Beck introduces the concept of the multiverse and claims that the universe of the MCU is 616, which...I'm not sure is accurate, actually, but whatever. He claims his Earth (833) was destroyed by the Fire Elemental. I say claims because about halfway through the movie it is revealed that the Elementals are just drones projecting really intricate holograms using technology he designed for Tony Stark (retconning him in the background of that BARF presentation scene in Civil War) enhanced by cloaked drones designed by a bit player from the first "Iron Man" so they actually do damage. Apparently Tony fired Beck for being...mentally unstable, which is one way to create supervillains in a comic book universe. Also, obviously, he's not from another universe and he finds it hilarious that people fell for THAT insane bullshit.

Ahem.

Anyway, his biggest beef is that nobody seems to listen to the "smart guys" or the ones with all the cool tech unless they can also fly and shoot lasers and Tony handed the reins of his superhero empire to a CHILD. Typical supervillain stuff, really. He wants to be the superhero and be adored yadda yadda. Also, he wants to kill Nick Fury.

Ned gets a girlfriend and basically ditches Peter for most of the movie. MJ figures out the Spider-Man thing, mostly on her own, but she almost believes him when he initially denies it very badly.

Beck sends Peter through a really elaborate string of nightmare scenarios to elicit information about who he has shared information with. It is so elaborate that he has a hard time telling what is real and what isn't for a while, which is why Happy has to prove his identity by revealing that he knows Peter was watching porn in the hotel room he stayed in during "Civil War". He also gives the big rallying speech to Peter by telling him that Tony was really just a big ball of insecurities and look what he accomplished, so...

Beck orchestrates an elaborate attack using all the Elementals combined into one megamonster in London that will involve Peter's entire class and just happen to kill the ones Peter blabbed to. Fury is going along with the "aliens are attacking" lie Beck spins until Happy calls to tell him he left a surfboard at Tony's that everyone thought couldn't be his because he doesn't surf but, "APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING." Then he's obviously just playing along, biding time until Peter arrives and disables the cloaking mechanism on the drones. Then Fury calmly orders Maria Hill to destroy the drone hovering in front of him like the badass he is. Of course, this doesn't stop Beck from still going ahead with the plan to kill Peter and his friends because his superpower is his ability to manipulate facts, making him a wildly appropriate villain for this day and age. Actual line: "people need to believe and now days they'll believe anything." Yeah, this is a comic book series. It was never meant to be SUBTLE.

Anyway, Peter takes down, like, five dozen drones and still doesn't get all of them before he finds Beck so their final showdown is briefly complicated by more illusions until Peter successfully takes enough down using Spidey Sense to locate them in a scene that looks even more like a video game than usual for this series. Beck removes whatever safety prevented the drones from firing as long as he is in range and is immediately shot. Peter gets Tony's tech back and confirms the AIs prompt to execute all cancellation protocols with "do it. Execute them all." This is another instance of something being designed seemingly to create a very specific scenario, which of course it does. So before Beck apparently dies, he records that and sends a video - broadcast by the news in the mid credit scene - where he claims he defeated the Elementals before Spider-Man attacked him because he wants to be the new Iron Man and ALL THE DRONE ATTACK STUFF WAS HIM. Oh, and his real name is Peter Parker. So this movie ends with a cut off "what the FU-" just like the last one, except this time it is Peter instead of May saying it.

Oh, and the final scene after the credits reveals that the real reason Fury initially fell for Beck's bullshit is that he and Maria Hill were actually Skrulls all along. Specifically, he was Talos. And they were sent by Fury on this mission because the real Fury is on a Skrull ship somewhere using a holodeck program to take a vacation on a beach. I'm sure there will be more about this in the next Captain Marvel movie. Or sooner.

"Black Widow"

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz, David Harbour, Ray Winstone, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko

With an appearance by William Hurt.

Part of the reason I felt this one didn't need a full recap is that it isn't so much the origin story that we never got despite years of begging as it is a filler flashback. The plot is less important than the characters introduced, especially Natasha's sister Yelena (Florence Pugh).

It begins with a flashback that you can be forgiven for mistaking for an episode of "The Americans". The undercover Russian spies are played by Rachel Weiss (Melina) and David Harbour (Alexi), the latter of which casually demonstrates unusual strength as they are running after their cover is blown. Because he is the Soviet answer to Captain America, the Red Guardian. Melina is shot during the escape to Cuba, forcing Natasha to fly the plane, presumably until Alexi is able to stop shooting at their pursuers. The two girls are taken by some military guys after Natasha initially threatens to kill anyone who touches Yelena because that's her job as big sister and she KNOWS where they're being taken: to The Red Room, which is where the Black Widow program is run by a guy named Dreykov. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Loki mentioned his daughter when she was interrogating him in "The Avengers" and this movie finally gets around to explaining what that was about. Eventually. But first...

The bulk of the movie takes place between wars Civil and Infinity, when Natasha escaped Thunderbolt Ross and whatever authorities tried to take her to the underwater Alcatraz for supers.

Adult Yelena is introduced when she guts a fellow Widow while under some sort of hypnotic state that is broken when the mark sprays a red powder in her face and instructs her to "free the others". The second she stops responding to the handler like a good little drone though, Dreykov activates "Taskmaster Protocol", which involves a new character whose ability is being a really good mimic.

We meet a British guy who apparently provides fake identities, vehicles, etc. for Natasha any time she needs to disappear. He gives her a box of shit from the place she stayed in Buhapest, which he has given to "someone else" since she doesn't need it.

So Nat immediately...veges out in the woods in Norway for a while until something happens in the form of the Taskmaster trying to kill her with a car bomb. They fight for long enough that the audience can get that Taskmaster is mirroring her movements perfectly, but the real mission was apparently recovering the vials of that red powder Yelena was given that were in that box that ended up in Natasha's truck. Natasha somehow manages to rescue them before being kicked into a river. She finds a picture of her and Yelena as children conveniently wedged between them and figures out who is staying in Budapest and travels there so they can have what passes for a sibling reunion in this universe, by which I mean they try to kill each other. Once they get that out of their system, Yelena explains that the vials are full of "the counteragent to chemical subjugation" or, you know, the antidote to mind control and the intention was for her to take it to one of her scientist friends like that Stark guy. Because Nat is the only superhero she knows and she thought she could enlist the help of the Avengers in bringing down Red Room. Except, of course...did I mention this is immediately after the Civil War?

Apparently Nat thought the Red Room already was taken down years ago, which launches the exposition that the Dreykov thing was a mission she and Hawkeye went on as "the final step in my deflection to SHIELD." They blew an entire building, but didn't stick around to identify any remains, so...of course he survived.

Nat and Yelena are attacked by a Widow squad before they can actually finish the exposition though, and one of the Widows commits suicide in front of Nat after crying that she doesn't really want to do this, but "he's making me", thus proving the whole mind control thing. This leads to an epic, multi-vehicles chase through the streets and subway system of Hungary with more Widows being led by the Taskmaster.

When the sisters are holed up in the ductwork above the subway where Nat and Clint apparently hid on that mission, we finally finish explaining the Dreykov's daughter thing. That building Nat and Clint blew up to take out Dreykov? She was in it at the time. And Nat was looking at her through the window when she gave the order to blow the building because I guess they could only be absolutely sure Dreykov was in the building once the girl was. Or something. Obviously it made sense to the writers. So Nat killed a schoolgirl. Or so she thinks because I'm just gonna skip ahead to the third act reveal that the daughter, like Dreykov himself, survived the blast and is the Taskmaster. The fanboy rage generated by this reveal could probably power a nuclear reactor for a year and is probably a good portion of the reason the IMDb rating for this movie is so low. (The rest probably being just the general ratio of male-to-female characters being tipped toward vagina). It makes me wonder if I misread the fanboy rage about Captain Marvel. Maybe the problem was never Carol Danvers at all. Maybe it was about Mar Vell being played by a woman (and not getting to do a whole god-like alien hero story of his own before dying). Because that is what they claim is the problem here: that this movie changed Taskmaster's entire backstory, which is part unknown and part "former military villain who trains other villains". Which, frankly, sounds like the sexist version of "I'm not a racist, but..."

By the way, since the comic version is named Tony, her name is Antonia.

The sisters break their "dad" Alexi out of prison (where Dreykov put him) using a helicopter Nat's contact gets for her. Yelena gets to exhibit her skills as a sharpshooter (and accidentally bury the entire prison in an avalanche of snow) and Nat gets to do her stylized hero landing, which Yelena makes fun of because "you look like you think everyone is looking at you all the time". Alexi reveals that Melina is still alive (which...I mean...she was when the girls last saw her, so were they told she was dead and believed it?) and they go to find her in St. Petersburg. I put "dad" in parenthesis up there, by the way, because none of them are actually related, they were thrown together for a three year mission, although since it was during a time Yelena was most impressionable, the fact that "the best part of my life" was fake is a bit traumatic for her. No explanation is really given for why only Natasha doesn't have a Russian accent either. Melina worked with SHIELD/HYDRA in conjunction with the Winter Soldier thing to develop a drug that could so control the subject that it overrides their self preservation instinct. Which Dreykov used to control his Widows and here we are. Oh, and Natasha's real mother didn't abandon her to become an orphan; she was paid off to hand her over because genetic testing identified her as having "potential". And then Dreykov killed her because she asked too many questions and tried to contact her daughter.

Because Melina is a lifetime member of the Red Room, she called Dreykov to turn them in the minute she saw them. Except she is inspired by Nat's success in breaking free of the cycle, so she actually works with Nat on a plan to double cross involving them switching identities via the mask tech we last saw her use in "Winter Soldier", I think. During Dreykov's gloating villain speech he reveals the whole Taskmaster thing plus the added control of having a chip in Antonia's neck that may or may not have been installed because of the damage done in the explosion (it's not really clear). The second Antonia leaves the room, Nat tries to kill Dreykov but can't because I guess the failsafe to prevent one of his Widows from killing him if she breaks the mind control is...a pheromone lock that stops them from harming him...somehow. Look, science is not exactly a strength of the writers in this series.

Nat tries taunting Dreykov for a while, mocking him while he hits her a few times about how it's easy for him to prey on little girls who don't put up fights. It turns out she's just letting him reveal his whole world domination plot: an army of widows who can do any insane thing he orders them to do. And Nat is the final cherry on top because if he can control an AVENGER... Because Melina already warned her about the pheromone thing, she decided to employ the Lethal Weapon method of breaking her nose to stop the effect. She had hoped he would do it when he was smacking her around, but he didn't hit hard enough, so she has to resort to slamming her face into his desk.

Did I forget to mention that the Red Room is on an aircraft carrier like the ones SHIELD used? Yeah. The final showdown happens while it's crashing. And all the Widows currently on board descend on Nat to protect Dreykov. She holds her own for quite a while, but they do finally surround her and are just starting to beat her to death when Yelena arrives and throws a powder antidote bomb. She also kills Dreykov as he and his men are trying to escape by jamming a long pole into a propeller of their plane as it is trying to take off, exploding it. Nat has to save her by jumping after her with a parachute. And then fight Antonia in mid air and then continuing on the ground until a vial suddenly appears out of nowhere and she can break it in her face. Remember that thing Chrissy said about some of these movies being a bunch of cool action sequences barely strung together by a plot? Yeah. Also, Nat is able to get some closure because she can apologize to Antonia AND finally finish the job killing her dad now that she's old enough to appreciate what a psycho he was because he used her as an attack dog for years.

She also gets to bond with her "sister" because even if she knew what was going on when they were kids, it was real enough for her too. Because MCU families are generally messed up. Particularly any sibling relationships. T'Challa and Shuri being the one exception and DAMN IT WE'RE NEVER GONNA SEE THAT AGAIN. Everyone but Nat joins the freed Widows from the Red Room and Antonia to track down the rest of the Widows (whose identities were taken from Dreykov's computer before the whole complex crashed) and free them too. Meanwhile, Nat seems to turn herself in to Thunderbolt. Except two weeks later, she's got her hair shorn and dyed blonde and her contact buddy has gotten her a quinjet. She announces that she's going to go break some of the members of her other family - the Avengers - out of jail and maybe try to fix that whole mess. She flies the jet off into the sunset to the Avengers theme, thus completing the gap in the timeline.

And then we get a scene I'm just going to go ahead and recap.

After the credits, Yelena takes her new dog Fanny for a walk in the woods, where a graveyard is located. She tends to Natasha's grave, clearing a bit of debris and righting all the trinkets people have left as a memorial. She presses her forehead to the stone and gives her end of the call and response whistle she and Nat had that was sort of wedged in at the last minute in that final scene there. And then when she goes to stand in front of the grave again, Julia Louis Dreyfuss appears beside her and blows her nose loudly. Yelena just stares at her and she apologies that she's "allergic to the Midwest." Yelena grumbles that "Valentina" isn't supposed to be bothering her on her time off. Valentina bullshits that she just came to pay her respects to Natasha. Yelena is like yeah, sure...uh-huh. "I want a raise." Valentina laughs, but says she will probably earn it with this next target they have for her. She takes a tablet out of her purse and presents it to Yelena, saying she has the opportunity to take out the man responsible for her sister's death. It is a picture of Clint in full Hawkeye getup. And we smash to black while she's contemplating it.

Two reasons that scene was important. Obviously that is setting up an additional post-Endgame plot where Yelena is going to appear and she and Clint are gonna have to have some sort of confrontation. But also, Valentina appears more fully in "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" which was the next thing on Marvel's schedule before the pandemic totally fucked everything up. I am going to do things in the order they were originally intended to be in (as much as possible anyway), so...

"The Falcon and the Winter Soldier"

Starring: Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Erin Kellyman, Wyatt Russell, Daniel Bruhl, Emily VanCamp, Cle Bennett, Carl Lumbly, Florence Kasumba, Georges St.Pierre, Amy Aquino

With a couple appearances by Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Yes, I am going to do a summary/essay instead of a recap of this one too. Everyone I spoke to about this series who saw it agreed that it was boring and one of them didn't really watch it so much as skimmed through really quickly to get the gist before moving on to the other two Disney+ series. I watched it all the way through, but I don't particularly want to watch it again in great detail to get to the relevant points. But having a quick rundown of those relevant points is obviously a thing that would be useful, so...don't say I never did anything for y'all.

This series deals a bit more directly with the fallout from "The Blip" that "Far From Home" only touched on. The main adversary is a group called the Flag Smashers who are less than thrilled to have the missing half of humanity return all at once thinking they can just go back to how things were with the old arbitrary national borders and shit. Of course the main thread is basically Sam initially refusing to take up the title of Captain America because it doesn't feel right to just take the mantle from Steve and he isn't even superpowered and blah blah, but that doesn't take six hours. Though it does delve into how the country treats black soldiers and how black people in general were treated like guinea pigs which totally explains their current distrust of the medical industry. Because it turns out they made another super soldier (or several but he's the only one left) when Steve disappeared and the Korean war broke out: a black man named Isaiah Bradley, played by Marcus Dixon. Sorry, I mean Carl Lumbly. Of course, the government didn't TELL him or the others in their little experiment that it was super soldier serum and they buried all evidence the experiment ever happened and held Isaiah prisoner while they experimented on him for a few decades until a nurse had him declared dead. Isaiah gives a speech about what the "stars and stripes" mean to him when it is ALWAYS held up by white boys and tells Sam that they will NEVER let a black man be Captain America.

The blood of one of the victims of this experiment is used by a shady scientist (in a project that was delayed five years because he was snapped) to recreate the super soldier serum that the Flag Smashers have gotten hold of and are using to "enhance" themselves. Since he doesn't have government backing and his lab blows up in one of the many fight scenes of this show, there's a limited supply of it and whether or not the "good guys" should use it comes up a few times.

And as long as we're talking about the ways authorities treat black people, this and another "superheroes but not as fun" series called "The Boys" did a nearly identical scene of police officers harassing the black superhero until they realize he IS a superhero. Because "The Boys" essentially exists in the real world, the message is a bit more complicated because half of the superheroes in general are corrupt in some way and can literally get away with murder, or at least manslaughter, as the black one did while high on drugs. The Marvel universe is a lot more...sterilized. Which makes the image of cops asking Bucky - an actual terrorist - if Sam is bothering him all the more insulting.

In one of my recaps, I referenced how this show addresses the Civil War supers registration act. An article written midway through the show pointed out that early in the series it shows how registration could work: with Sam playing it totally by the rules and taking orders from the Air Force on a mission involving that Canadian wrestler guy from Captain America 2 (no, he's not really any more important here than he was there). The mission almost fails because Sam is beholden to military rules and cannot cross into another country's airspace while in pursuit, which starts to show the cracks in the pro-registry argument right there. But it becomes even more overt when the government decides that if Sam isn't going to be the new Captain America, they will just assign the job to someone THEY choose. Someone they can control. A good ole' blond haired, blue eyed white military boy named John Walker.

Here's a question: did Steve Rogers die at the end of "Endgame"? Are we supposed to assume he did, like, immediately after that last scene? Because I would think if he were still alive, he would have some opinions about all of this. But it was never clear.

There's a bit of elaboration of the history of both title characters with the addition of a sister and some nephews in New Orleans for Sam and an old Asian guy Bucky befriended seemingly out of guilt after he killed the guy's son during a Winter Soldier mission. Bucky's entire arc is basically coming to terms with that past via counseling and a twelve step program. And whatever the Wakandans did to break him of sleeper agent control.

Anyway, it all goes sideways after John takes the serum (because of course he does) and ends up violently beating one of the Flag Smashers to death in front of a whole bunch of people with phone cameras because one of them killed his best buddy (his version of Bucky). The government takes the Captain America title from him in a public trial that is an obvious metaphor for every soldier ever punished for killing when that is literally his job. This is when Valentina (Allegra de Fontaine and boy were her parents pretentious) comes in to poach him, basically. For whatever mercenary operation it is she's running.

The final showdown happens when the Flag Smashers attack the MCU equivalent of the UN as they meet to vote on a "global resettlement" bill, with Sam fully taking up the part of Captain America and John also trying to play Captain America but with a non-vibranium shield he made himself. Sam as Captain America shows some promise for future installments in the MCU as he is a whole lot sassier than Steve, yelling things like "boy, you have earned this ass whuppin'!" He gives a somewhat forced speech to the UN people in front of news cameras in the end about how he has taken up the shield even though he doesn't have blond hair or blue eyes or super strength because he is doing what is RIGHT and they all need to do better. Because if they don't, they will just create more people like the Flag Smashers.

The wind down involves John Walker getting a new gig for Valentina as something we are calling US Agent for the time being, which has basically the same outfit but in red white and BLACK instead of blue. Bucky finishes apologizing to the last person - that Asian guy - on his list of people he needed to make amends to, thus completing his twelve step program. Sam goes back to Isaiah, who acknowledges that Sam might be an exceptional case. Sam says he might fail, or die trying to fill this part, but "we built this country. Bled for it. I'm not gonna let anybody tell me I can't fight for it. Not after what everybody before me went through, including you." Then he takes Isaiah to the Captain America museum, where he has had a corner devoted to him and his men with a statue of Isaiah and Isaiah hugs him and it's probably the best moment of the entire series.

And I neglected to mention that Sharon Carter played a pretty big part in this series as a former agent sent into exile and, after helping Sam and Bucky bring down the Flag Smashers, being pardoned and welcomed back into the government. This will probably be important in the future mostly because the final mid-credit scene suggests she has become a major black market dealer.

And the fact that I was able to reduce a six hour miniseries to two pages says a lot. Not that the series is bad, but that it is basically a stretched out Captain America movie. Straightforward with lots of fight scenes. This series, more than anything else Marvel, probably suffered most from COVID shaking up the schedule because when viewed in this order it is a great segue from the movies that came before it into this new television format. Instead, we got it wedged between the two it was supposed to set the stage for and it became a dull-by-comparison follow up to "WandaVision". At least for the people who didn't quit two episodes into "WandaVision" because they just can't do delayed gratification. And this is the main reason I am doing them in the order they were originally intended to be in.

Which brings me to this...When I told Chrissy I was ready to do the recap(s) of "WandaVision" because I had finished brief summaries of these three things, this was the conversation that followed.

Chrissy: You did WHAT?
Diandra: Did you really want to sit through all those hours of recap?
Chrissy: [grumble] Okay, well, did you at least get in one joke about the Red Room of Pain?
Diandra: No, and I don't know why you keep trying to make references to that awful series.
Chrissy: Fine. Fair enough. [groan] You did the "I can't remember Zemo's name thing" again, didn't you?
Diandra: Actually, I didn't even need to talk about him at all.
Chrissy: Wow.
Diandra: I did refer to Carl Lumbly as Marcus Dixon though.
Chrissy: Shocker. You are going to recap "Loki" though, right?
Diandra: "WandaVision" is first, so if you want to join me for that recap, we can discuss it.
Chrissy: What is there to discuss? We're doing them and then we're doing that third Spider-Man movie.
Diandra: Yes, boss.