On hand to discuss the release of the first Marvel Studios movie since Avengers: Endgame in May of 2019 and Spider-Man: Far From Home in July of 2019 were star and executive producer Scarlett Johansson, director Kate Shortland, cast members Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz and David Harbour, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.
“From the beginning when we first spoke about the film, we knew it had to speak to two things which was Natasha as an individual and what happened to her and who she was at the beginning of the film, which was completely alone,” Shortland explained.
“It meant we very specifically knew there was a large period of her life we didn’t know about, not just her childhood but this period of time between Civil War and Infinity War,” Feige said.
Then she’s blindsided by this person who comes from her past who is just on fire and is a liability and has got this crazy energy and is dangerous and is full of life and isn’t needy but needs her.
There was also the pose Johansson built, starting with Iron Man 2, which becomes part of a joke in Black Widow.
She really comes out of the Red Room and can start life and she can buy clothes and she can buy the vest that has lots of pockets…so much so that we can see in th end tag scene that she’s flourishing, she’s becoming her own.” She also compliments Johansson for welcoming her in and making it such a comfortable space.
“The first sequence that we shot was the Budapest fight scene in the safe house,” Pugh said.
What I liked about Melina is that she had absolutely no sense of humor, like, none…It makes her quite funny sometimes.
Also, the family dynamics themselves are just so fun….There’s almost a traditional shot of us all around a table…where we’re all in super suits…I found us all falling into this cliché roles and then riffing off of them.
“Say we’re looking at the fight on the bridge with Taskmaster, she’s trying to use her skill set but that character she’s fighting, he can, or she, can do what she can do, basically.
Which other Marvel heroes would Harbour and Weisz like to team up with? Harbour wants to see Red Guardian with Captain America and Weisz wants to see Melina team up with the Hulk.
“The unique visuals? Are you referring to the screaming, crying children? We needed to set the stage for what all of these women had gone through in their past and what Ray Winestone, the villain of our film, had done and what made him so evil in his dealings,” Feige explained.
We knew that in this film, she had to evolve to a place where she was moving forward in her life and had resolved the trauma from her past…that she felt like a different person moving forward, if that makes sense.
“I was gonna say the pose but then Florence poo-pooed on that,” Johansson joked.