Black Widow’s revenge
BLACK WIDOW SAUNTERED INTO MAINSTREAM consciousness in 2010’s Iron Man 2. Not walked—sauntered. Natasha Romanoff, the Russian agent turned U.S. spy played by Scarlett Johansson, first meets Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) when he’s working out in a boxing ring with his employee, played by Jon Favreau, the film’s director. Favreau’s Happy Hogan condescendingly offers to teach Natasha how to box, so she slips off her high heels, slinks into the ring and immediately kicks the man’s butt. That’s the joke: Surprise! This unbelievably fit woman can fight.
But it’s the moment after Natasha handily beats Happy that truly rankled fans. Stark turns to his assistant turned girlfriend Pepper Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. “Who is she?” Tony asks. To which Pepper replies, “Potentially a very expensive sexual-harassment lawsuit, if you keep ogling her like that.” Tony, after Googling for photos of Natasha in her underwear, quips, “I want one.”
Victoria Alonso, executive vice president of production at Marvel Studios, never liked the line. “It bothered me then and it bothers me now,” says Alonso, who was a co-producer of Iron Man 2. “I remember thinking, ‘She’s not a thing.’ But how apropos: the world sees a sexy woman and thinks that because she is beautiful, that’s all she has to give.” The scene feels like a relic of a pre-#MeToo Hollywood.
It was a different Hollywood, and certainly a different Marvel: for 10 years, more white men named Chris headlined Marvel movies than women and actors of color combined. It took 17 movies for the Marvel) and 21 to debut a solo female lead (Brie Larson in 2019’s ). Now, 11 years after she first appeared onscreen, the MCU’s first major female character is finally getting her own movie.
