The addition of actress
Scarlett Johansson to the cast of
Iron Man 2 has been one of the most polarizing topics among comic book movie fans leading up to the movie's release and it will likely continue to be a polarizing subject after its release. No great fan of her previous work, I was surprised to find myself impressed with her performance as a woman with something to hide, and equally impressed by her hyper-kinetic, lucha libre-inspired fight sequences.
When asked whether Tony Stark (
Robert Downey, Jr.) and James "Rhodey" Rhodes (
Don Cheadle) make a better "ass-kicking team" or if that title should go to the Black Widow and Pepper Potts (
Gwyneth Paltrow), Johansson chose the leading ladies.
"[The women are] more organized. We would just stack [the bodies]. With the brains and the muscle and the beauty and the blonde, I feel like maybe we have a great chance. It's true, we're unstoppable." Johansson went on to say that, while her character is inherently a sex symbol, she's so much more than that. And, if she wasn't, she wouldn't have been interested in taking the role.
"I've never really seen a film of this genre where the female characters' were—that their sex appeal sort of came second. Of course, they are sexy characters and you have a sexy secretary or a girl, you know, swinging around by her ankles in a catsuit, that's innately sexy. But, the fact is these characters are intelligent, they're ambitious, they're motivated and calculated to some degree...I probably would have—to be just a pawn in a story of a whole bunch of men kind of fighting it out and rolling around and getting down-and-dirty and there you are, to be like this sort of vision in a tight catsuit, is sort of a boring thing to me. And, I think that Jon [Favreau, director] really made that very clear in the beginning that he felt, as far as Black Widow was concerned—or that Natalie was concerned—that she was mysterious and nuanced and something to kind of peel back the layers to and that there was something there. He wanted that. And, I think that's why this film is much more dynamic for me as an audience member. You know, I've never been a huge fan of this genre really, and I think because it's always been sort of one-note and explosive...I think Gwyneth and I are able to, sort of, be the brains behind the operation in some aspects, there's kind of a happy medium there. It kind of adds to the charm, the charisma of the film and the finished product.
It's really kind of old fashioned actually, in the best sense of the word. These characters are kind of like those old femme fatales from the golden age of Hollywood."
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