As an intricate member of The Avengers, it’s been widely speculated for years why she’s the only member of the super gang not to have her own solo movie. However, that’s all changed with the release of Black Widow, which sees our favourite Russian spy have to confront some secrets from her past when a makeshift family from one of her early missions turns up again in her life.

For Shortland, this was the perfect opportunity to explore Natasha’s character in a way that has never been done before: “We wanted audiences to go on a massive fun ride but then we wanted something really intimate where we could explore the intricacies of Natasha’s relationships and how they would help us open her up.

“Who is Natasha was when she wasn’t being an Avenger? Who is she when she’s a daughter, a sister, a human being?”

To begin unpacking this notoriously mysterious character, Shortland went back to the beginning… “I looked at the comics and her origin story,” she reveals. “Then I looked at all the films that she’d been in. I really enjoyed the films but I was like ‘who is she really? Who is this character?’

“So I worked with a Russian historian in London, a young woman who was the same age as Scarlett [Johansson] and we created a childhood in Russia for her and then we morphed that into her joining the spy program and into the MCU…”

Natasha has been played by Johansson since the character first appeared in the MCU back in 2010 for Iron Man 2 and since then she’s become integral to the character’s development. So much so, in fact, that it was Johansson that brought Cate Shortland in for Black Widow: “Scarlett contacted me and asked if I would be interested in talking about it. She and I spoke about the character, and I saw that there was a lot of things in Natasha that I was really interested in, and Scarlett and I got on so well so that’s how I started speaking to Marvel. She’s very hard not to get on with. She’s really lovely.”

Together with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, they decided that since expectations were high for Natasha’s first solo outing, they were going to go down a different route to the usual origin story… “Kevin was great because he knew that that the expectation would be that it was an origin story, so he wanted to shift it, and that gave us a lot of freedom.”

Unfortunately, there were a few restrictions for the movie in that [SPOILERS] Natasha sacrifices herself at the end of the most recent Avengers movie in Avengers: Endgame, meaning that Shortland, Feige, Johansson and co were making a film for a character that was already dead in the MCU.

“We had a definite time frame and we knew that she was going to sacrifice herself,” Shortland tells us. “So there were parameters. The script was really hard because you’ve got a character that’s really secretive so then it was about finding the heart of that story.”

Speaking of heart, Natasha could probably be considered the big badass beating heart of the Avengers itself. Since her introduction to the MCU, Natasha has really connected with her fellow superhero family. Whether it’s helping out Cap confront his own past in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to her long-lasting friendship with Clint Barton (might we finally find out what happened in Budapest?), to her doomed romance with Bruce Banner, Natasha really has made a makeshift family out of a bunch of people you wouldn’t expect.

However, in Black Widow, we find that the Avengers aren’t the only makeshift family in Natasha’s life. As a young girl, Natasha had been part of a secret undercover mission in the US with fellow Russian spies Melina (Rachel Weisz) and Alexei (David Harbour) posing as husband and wife and parents to young Natasha and little Yelena (Violet McGraw and later played by Florence Pugh).

Taking a seminal place in her formative years, it’s no surprise that the short-lived family had a big impact on Natasha and when she’s forced to meet them all again years later, she has to confront those feelings of loss and abandonment.

Creating a family dynamic out of Russian spies that are practically strangers and who haven’t seen each other in years was no mean feat. Luckily, everyone involved was entirely committed to building this strange familial relationship… “The actors are such fine actors, it was really about workshopping the script with them. We did a lot of improv with the script and Eric Pearson, the scriptwriter, was in rehearsals, so we could adapt the script to the actors and to their backstories.

“It was about making it reflect your family, or my family,” she reveals. “What are the truths of family? What are the things that happen and the slights that we carry with us that come out every Christmas…?”

At the centre of this odd little family is the ‘sister’ bond between Natasha and Yelena: “That’s the heart of the movie!” Shortland affirms. “It’s a great love affair, the sister relationship. What’s beautiful is it’s obvious from when people have watched the movie, is how much they get out of it, and how much joy Florence brings.”

Though Yelena isn’t Natasha’s real sister the two share a few attributes, including badass martial arts skills and a quick wit, meaning that even though the movie deals with intense themes, it doesn’t lose that fundamental Black Widow humour: “It was really important to use humour because the film’s about trauma,” Shortland tells us. “It’s not just about trauma, but trauma is an aspect of it. So we wanted to make it fun and to fill the film with laughter. Because even when we’re talking about difficult subjects, the girls are poking fun at it. To me, that says they’ve processed it and they’ve survived. They’re not victims if they can laugh at what’s happened to them.”

Indeed, for Shortland, she hopes that audiences can take a general positive vibe from the movie: “I hope audiences feel uplifted because they’ve seen themselves reflected,” she says.

“I also hope that they’re a little more forgiving,” she continues. “I think what’s interesting is that she has to forgive the people around her but she also has to forgive herself. I want them to think about survival and some of the difficult things that we deal with, both with our own things as women but also as individuals in a family.

“We don’t do it alone, we often do it with the help of the people around us.”

Find out how Natasha’s makeshift family helps her as Black Widow lands on Disney+ on 6 October.

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Following the events of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, we follow Natasha as she finds herself on the run and in solitude after breaking the Sokovia Accords. However, that solitude is short-lived and she soon finds herself pulled back to a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past, which includes some old-forgotten relationships with Yelena (Florence Pugh), Alexei (David Harbour), Melina (Rachel Weisz) and the nefarious Dreykov (Ray Winstone).

We spoke to the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, about giving a *spoiler* dead character a film of her own…

Natasha made the ultimate sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame. How does that figure into how you tell the story of this film?

Well it meant we very specifically knew there was a large period of her life that we didn’t know about. Not just her childhood, but this period of time between Civil War and Infinity Warm and that period we felt was ripe to creatively focus on, to be able to discover more about her past and more about her present, and give a hint at the legacy in the future all at the same time, thanks to [director] Cate Shortland.

Why do you think fans had such a deeply rooted interest in taking this deeper dive into Natasha’s past?

Because Scarlett Johansson is an amazing performer and with each and every appearance you learned more, you saw more, and you wanted to know more.

The fact that we finally have an entire feature dedicated to that is very exciting for all of us, and now that it’s coming out and people can see it, it’s even more exciting for all of us!

Could this look to the past apply to other MCU characters, or is this a particular case for Natasha?

Well, certainly this film and this story is a particular case for Natasha, but the notion of exploring the past, present, and future of the MCU is certainly in the cards for all of our characters…

The film opens up on a traumatic event that has shaped Black Widow, why did you decide to have such harrowing visuals immediately in the film?

Are you referring to the crying children? We needed to set the stage for what both of these women, all of these women, had gone through in their past and exactly what Ray Winstone –  the villain of our piece – had done, and what made him so evil in his dealings.

It ended up being one of our rare pre-opening title sequences that really helped set the tone and the backstory for Natasha’s character.

Black Widow is out in cinemas on 9 July.

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As the date for audiences being allowed back into the cool darkness of cinemas (for the UK) gets tantalisingly closer, Marvel has released a video celebrating the love of storytelling and the MCU’s most memorable moments… and they also give a hint of what’s to come in Phase Four, including a first look at Eternals PLUS the name for the new Black Panther movie!

Check out the video below and try not to shed a tear during the audience reaction for Avengers: Endgame…

The video opens with the late Stan Lee stating: “I love being with people; it’s the most incredible feeling in the world. That world may change and evolve, but the one that will never change – we’re all part of one big family,” as scenes from Marvel Studios’ Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Avengers, and Black Panther play, and so much more.

“That man next to you; he’s your brother,” continues Lee. “That woman over there; she’s your sister. We’re all part of one universe that moves ever upward and onward to greater glory.”

The video then centers on the magical viral moment of a movie theater audience erupting in cheers and excitement during the scene all of Marvel’s superheroes emerge from portals to fight against Thanos and his forces in Avengers: Endgame (the team at SciFiNow cannot either confirm or deny that perhaps they may have had a similar reaction during that scene…).

We then dive into footage of the upcoming Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, as well as a first look at the highly-anticipated Eternals!

So, what have we got to look forward to for Phase Four? Let’s have a quick run down shall we…?

Black Widow: July 9, 2021

In the action-packed spy thriller Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger. Find out more here.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: September 3, 2021

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organisation. The film also stars Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s friend Katy and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu and Ronny Chieng. Find out more here.

Eternals: November 5, 2021

Eternals features an exciting new team of superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ancient beings who have been living on Earth in secret for thousands of years. Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, an unexpected tragedy forces them out of the shadows to reunite against mankind’s most ancient enemy, the Deviants.

Spider-Man: No Way Home: December 17, 2021

Director Jon Watts returns to direct Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon in the follow-up film, Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: March 25, 2022

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, directed by Sam Raimi, will see the return of Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Benedict Wong (Wong), Rachel McAdams (Christine Palmer), and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Mordo), as well as the addition of Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch) and newcomer Xochitl Gomez who will portray America Chavez, a new fan-favorite from the comics.

Thor: Love and Thunder: May 6, 2022

During The Walt Disney Company’s Investor Day late last year, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed Christian Bale joined the cast of Thor: Love and Thunder as Gorr the God Butcher, alongside Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Natalie Portman (Jane Foster), and Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie) returning to their roles.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: July 8, 2022

The sequel to the history-making Black Panther, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, will explore the incomparable world of Wakanda.

The Marvels: November 11, 2022

The sequel to Captain Marvel flies higher, further, faster with director Nia DaCosta as Brie Larson (Captain Marvel) is joined by Teyonah Parris (Monica Rambeau) and Iman Vellani (Kamala Khan).

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania: February 17, 2023

Also highlighted in last year’s The Walt Disney Company Investor Day, Paul Rudd (Ant-Man) and Evangeline Lilly (Wasp) return in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania with Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors. Peyton Reed returns to direct the Marvel Studios film. Kathryn Newton joins the cast as Cassie Lang, while Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer return as Hope’s parents, Dr. Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, respectively.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3: May 5, 2023

Our ragtag bunch of space misfits will return as James Gunn is penning and directing the third film in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

Fantastic Four

Make way for Marvel’s First Family as Jon Watts is set to direct Fantastic Four, as announced by Feige last year!

For more on Feige’s plans for our next foray in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, check out our interview with him right here for SciFiNow+ (don’t forget to use our special code SciFiNow20 to get 20% off!).

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