I found myself especially drawn to the exchange between Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). Barton had been put under Loki’s control, and forced to kill a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. After Natasha smacks Clint’s head against a metal railing, what she jokingly refers to as “cognitive recalibration,” he slowly comes back to himself. Highly troubled by what he did under Loki’s mind control, Clint asks:
Clint: “Tasha, how many agents did I…?”
Natasha: “Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself, Clint. This is Loki. This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for.”
Clint: “Loki, he got away?”
Natasha: “Yeah. Don’t suppose you know where?”
Clint: [Shakes his head] “Didn’t need to know. Didn’t ask. He’s gonna make his play soon though. Today.”
Natasha: “We gotta stop him.”
Clint: “Yeah? Who’s ‘we’?”
Natasha: [Shrugs] “I don’t know. Whoever’s left.”
Clint: “Well, I…if I put an arrow through Loki’s eye socket, I’d sleep better, I suppose.”
Natasha: “Now you sound like you.”
Clint: “But you don’t. You’re a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why? What did Loki do to you?”
Natasha: “He didn’t, I just…”
Clint: “Natasha.”
Natasha: “I’ve been compromised. I got red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out.”
It’s easy to think that Hawkeye and the Black Widow are out of place on this Avengers team. Neither has real superpowers. And, as Clint says, they’re spies, not soldiers. But it’s their humanity that makes them important. They help us see the world of the Avengers through human eyes.
Granted, neither Clint nor Natasha is just an ordinary person, but they also don’t have magic or high-tech armor or super soldier serum. Yes, they both can fight extremely well. And Hawkeye rarely misses his mark. But mostly, it’s their grace under pressure that makes them heroes. They don’t buckle under extremely trying circumstances.
In fact, when we first see Natasha in the film, she is tied to a chair, a beautiful damsel in distress being beaten by members of the Russian military. She looks helpless, but a few moments later she frees herself and quickly knocks out the soldiers. Best of all, as she walks out of the interrogation hanger, she grabs her high heeled shoes, emphasizing both her elegant style and her fighting prowess.
Hawkeye is also extremely cool under pressure. When Loki (Tom Hiddleston) arrives on earth and begins attacking S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Clint saves Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) by knocking him out of the way of a blast from Loki’s magical Scepter. Clint then watches Loki kill multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, but he remains undaunted. He staggers to his feet and tries to shoot Loki at close range. Loki blocks the attempt, then says Clint has heart as he touches Clint with the Scepter which houses the Mind Stone. Clint’s blue eyes momentarily turn liquid black, and we watch in horror as he loses himself and becomes Loki’s mind-controlled slave. We literally see through Clint’s black eyes the danger any human would be in from the power-hungry Asgardian. Clint is a hardened fighter, but he shows that ordinary humans appear to be no match for demi-gods.
And not long after we see Clint’s moment of human frailty, we see another such moment with the Black Widow. Even though Natasha Romanoff seems to have ice in her veins, she can be rattled. After Loki’s attack of the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, we find Natasha in Calcutta where she has been sent by S.H.I.E.L.D. to bring in Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). At first, she is the icy cool Black Widow. She talks to Banner calmly, soothingly, flashing her dazzling smile. She tells Bruce that S.H.I.E.L.D. needs his help and that they want him to come in. When Banner says, “What if I say no?” Natasha smiles and says, “I’ll persuade you.” Then she shows Bruce a picture of the Tesseract Loki has stolen and explains that they need Banner to find the cube’s gamma signature in order retrieve it and prevent a global catastrophe. But when Bruce screams “STOP LYING TO ME!” at her, Natasha panics and grabs a gun she has hidden under the table where she is sitting. Bruce tells her to put the gun down so the Hulk doesn’t make a mess and we hear the thudding of Natasha’s heart. She’s scared, having gone from spy-in-control to facing the specter of the world’s most powerful monster.
It’s an important moment. As capable as the Black Widow is, she’s no match for the Hulk. She’s out of her depth, and she knows it. And the scene helps emphasize that we are treading in a world of Marvels. Natasha is our link to these unearthly beings. We see the heroes through her eyes. And, like, Clint, she sees with human eyes. But where Clint loses control due to the power of the Mind Stone, Natasha holds her own.
Which is of course why it was such a big disappointment that a Black Widow movie didn’t follow soon after The Avengers was released. I know people have complained about this before, but I’m going to say it again: How can anyone watch The Avengers and not see that Natasha Romanoff could carry her own film. She literally dominates every scene she’s in. She’s a great fighter, smolders on screen, and her back story is full of hardship, mystery, and intrigue. What was Marvel afraid of, that a Black Widow film would be too successful and they would have to pay Scarlett as much as her male counterparts?
Or what about giving us a Hawkeye and The Black Widow movie, if Marvel was so worried about having a female-led picture. After all, Hawkeye first appeared to fight Iron Man when the Black Widow recruited him back in Tales of Suspense #57. Renner and Johansson are great on screen together, so the pairing would have been fantastic.
But we didn’t get either of those films. Instead Marvel waited until Wonder Woman became a monster hit (maybe they were feeling sorry for D.C.?), and then they managed to schedule Black Widow for release during the pandemic (ok, that one really wasn’t their fault!). With no one able to go to the movies, we’ll never know how successful Black Widow might have been under normal circumstances. Not to mention that the film was already going to be hampered by being a prequel story since it wasn’t filmed in time to be part of the main MCU chronology.
But so it goes. We still get the Black Widow in all her glory in The Avengers. She even faces off with Loki, who despite being locked in a glass cage, seems menacingly dangerous. It’s human against Asgardian, but Natasha is undaunted by Loki’s threatening presence. Instead, she asks Loki to spare Clint’s life.
“Is this love, Agent Romanoff?” Loki says with a grin.
“Love is for children,” replies Natasha. “I owe him a debt.”
Here’s hoping that The Black Widow movie honors the debt Marvel has to this fabulous heroine. Natasha Romanoff deserves a great film. And if Clint Barton makes a cameo appearance somewhere in the film, that will be just fine too.
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