I thought the opening of the movie was interesting and had an element of intrigue, but I thought the movie didn't fulfill that. I thought it wasn't that strong, and didn't do much interesting. Here are the ideas that God, if He wills, has blessed me with, for that:
Natasha helped SHIELD get Drekov as apart of her deal. She wanted to get out, when she'd discovered her sister, Yelena, was being primed for her final exam and first mission. Drekov used his daughter as a human shield and, to ensure her deal was secured to get her and her sister out and a new identity for her sister, Natasha refused to let him get away and killed him, his daughter dying in the crossfire. Yelena never forgave Natasha for this, essentially trading the life of a perceived innocent for Yelena's soul. Natasha lied to shield that Drekov was the only head of the red room that was, in order to prevent making an enemy of them, so her sister wouldn't be a casualty of them. Yelena was given a new identity off the books, courtesy of Nick Fury, and Natasha was given a job in SHIELD.
Taskmaster is a genetically experimented on and enhanced human, the perfect end result of the red room's experimentation, altered in the womb, to create a perfect soldier, capable of adapting to any scenario, through genetic and state of the art cybernetic enhancements, added over the decades. Starting off as a trainer of the black widows. After Drekov's death, he inherited control of the red room and took over, perfecting the mind controlling and using it on the members, enhancing the red room as a resource for countries all over the world. Taskmaster is symbolic of all of Natasha's failures and fears and consequences of having abandoned the red room to it's own devices out of fear and guilt. Taskmaster is a obsessive compulsive and a perfectionist, punishing anything less than a perfect result, exact to his plans. He almost admires Natasha's unwillingness to give up and ever present completion of missions, viewing her as among the best of the black widows. Maybe Taskmaster is played by Michael C. Hall?
At the start of the movie, Yelena has been trying to discover the truth of the red room and prove it's existence. Natasha comes to her, on the run, after the events of Civil War. Natasha's fracturing of her new family has led to her regret over the lack of connection with Yelena and her abandoning of the girls in the red room. Apart of the other reason is Natasha discovering Yelena has a hit placed on her. Natasha and Yelena seek out Melina (who Natasha had been keeping tabs on), who helps them break out Red Guardian, whose been locked away in a goulag for years (having been burned, after Natasha and Yelena escaped), to keep him quiet on his knowledge of the red room and the knowledge of how they operate, but kept alive due to his DNA's unique properties in fostering a variation of the super soldier serum.
Oh boy, less comedy. More dramatic intensity between the family. There's a lot of resentment, anger, feelings of abandonment. No charming family time. This is harsh.
Natasha seems to hate her "parents", as they were apart of what made her into a monster, they used her and threw her away. She sees their lives as a lie and them as one dimensional monsters, who care for nothing but being loyal to the KGB, the red room and the communist russian party. Over the movie, she begins to see them as flawed, damaged humans like her, who were afraid to leave and be abandoned by their people, in spite of how they were treated by them.
Yelena hasn't reconciled the idea of the people who raised her with the people who abandoned her, and feels self loathing and guilt over the life that was lost because Natasha wanted to prevent her from becoming like herself. Her arc is an acceptance of the fact that she feels like a monster, because of that life that was lost for her, and admitting to Natasha that she wasn't spared by her doing it, and that her resentment was further fostered by Natasha becoming a hero that Yelena feels like she can't be, as she feels like she's still a victim.
Natasha, in some way, resents Yelena for being angry at her for what she did, as she sees the idea that Yelena even has a moral stance to make as proof that Yelena was protected from what she'd had to do, which Natasha also resents, in a way, that Yelena has gotten out with a clear conscience. Natasha grows to accept that she abandoned her sister, as she was afraid to face her, not just as family, but as a reminder of what she did to secure her safety and admits that she, wrongly, has displaced her anger for the death of Drekov's daughter and what she did as a black widow, in general, onto Yelena, as she'd gotten away from it.
Red Guardian, someone who'd endured torturous experiments to become a super soldier in the name of the KGB, justifies what he did, as being for his country and hides behind his bravado and stance in that, but he's really someone old and with ptsd and regrets of a life he never got to really live, feeling like he'd failed those he cared about. He resolves to give his life to protect his daughters at the end.
Melina is a retired, despondent and bitter person, a concept of what Natasha could've been had she not gotten out. She's essentially waiting for death, now no longer having a purpose, after she was burned (like Red Guardians was) by the KGB and the red room after the Natasha and Yelena incident and after she'd aged, and has been on her own since, lacking connections. Melina feels a sense of betrayal for what Natasha did, like she got out, but Melina didn't, though she doesn't admit it at first, before revealing that she displaces blame of what the red room did to her, onto Natasha for, what she claims to see as, betraying their cause. Over the course of the movie, Melina admits to Natasha and herself, that she hates what she became, and she hates that she was too afraid to escape it. At the end, she sacrifices herself to undo the brainwashing of the remaining black widows.
At the end of the movie, after the black widows programming is undone, Natasha, Yelena, and all the other black widows fight Taskmaster simultaneously. Defeating him, by Red Guardian giving his life to damage Taskmaster's brain chip, and is defeated. Yelena wants to murder Taskmaster, but Natasha talks her out of it, leaving Taskmaster to be arrested by General Ross.
Natasha keeps the Taskmaster's plane and uses it to find Cap and help her friends escape.
THE END.
Please review and tell me what you think!