All Natasha Romanoff, all the time. Lots of meta analysis, all in regards to Natasha as portrayed in the Marvel (and if we're lucky enough, somebody else in the future) comics and films.
Scarlett Johansson and Disney have reached a settlement over her blockbuster lawsuit that accused the studio of sabotaging the theatrical release of “Black Widow” to prop up Disney Plus…
Shang chi was already planned to release exclusively in theatre before the lawsuit dropped though
Hi anon,
So had Black Widow! That was part of the lawsuit, Disney never renegotiated contracts for its feature films for the post pandemic releases. They just decided on their own that they'd do a simultaneous online and theatrical release. They could have easily done the same thing to Shang-Chi, if the lawsuit hadn't happened.
The Russo brothers have "hit an impasse" with Marvel
Johansson's suing Disney for allegedly breaking her contract on the recent Black Widow movie, which was released simultaneously on Disney Plus via Premier Access and in cinemas. Her contract means that she's entitled to a percentage point of the box-office profits, which her agent claims would have been greater if the movie had not been released on streaming at the same time.
The Russo brothers are said to be worried about how any future Marvel movies could potentially be released and how their pay could be affected by streaming. Of course, Marvel's latest movie, Shang-Chi, has only been released in cinemas and the studio looks set to continue to release movies exclusively in theaters.
A couple of things. First of all:
Second of all, notice how the change has already been made. Disney knows better than to do the same mistake again, and released Shang-Chi exclusively in cinemas. Which means that following Scarlett’s lawsuit, the actors and all the people involved in this Marvel film, have been properly compensated by the company, as well as the cinema owners who weren’t robbed by Disney hogging ticket sales via Disney+ screenings.
I’d also like to point out that Shang-Chi, lovely film that it is, didn’t surpass Black Widow’s ticket sales even though it wasn’t released on Disney+. That should put every misogynistic idiot who thought BW didn’t do well in theatres compared to other MCU films, back in their pathetic place. It only makes one wonder just how much the ticket sales were damaged from the simultaneous release online and in theatres, especially since the movie was available on every torrent site from day 1.
Finally, if you didn’t notice it from my first point, the fact that the Russos will have to thank Scarlett for safeguarding their future salaries makes me cackle.
I really enjoy your breakdowns and other content. Looking forward to the rest of your Black Widow breakdown. That is all =)
Heya anon,
Oh thank you! So sweet of you to drop by with a nice word. I'm working my way through the rest of the breakdown for a movie, and should post the second part soon enough. Lovely to hear you've been enjoying my ramblings xo
do you have any good black widow-centric comic series/books/graphic novels? I'm working my way through Noto's Black Widow, but as a natasha fan I'm sad to say I have very little bw comics.
Hi anon,
Well Phil Noto is adored in my little corner of the internet, I absolutely loved the series he worked on and he is by far my favourite artist from the ones who've worked on Black Widow.
I can't really recommend a book. The one I've read, Black Widow Forever Red, wasn't one I particularly enjoyed. Too many original characters, too little Natasha.
If you're starting out though, some of the bigger titles that are also some of my favourite stories with Natasha are:
Black Widow: The Finely Woven Thread, by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto
Black Widow: The Name of the Rose, by Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuna
Black Widow: Widowmaker, by Jim McCann and David Lopez
Black Widow: No Restraints Play, by Jen and Sylvia Soska
Black Widow: The Itsy-Bitsy Spider, by Devin Grayson and J.G. Jones
In a guest star role, I also liked Natasha in the Daredevil: Man Without Fear, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. And finally, because I'm a sucker for teamups, I like Black Widow and the Marvel Girls: Unlikely Ally, by Paul Tobin , Salva Espin , and Jacopo Camagni.
Just wanted to say your blog has some amazing meta! You introduced me to a bunch of great Nat comics with some of your posts 😁 🥀
Hi anon!
Oooh that's so good to hear!! One of my absolutely favourite things is to introduce people to the wonder that is Natasha Romanoff in all her forms, so I'm really glad you got a good bunch of comic book titles to enjoy. A positive by-product of her inclusion to the MCU is the rebrand she went through in the comics as well, I absolutely love the more modern stories a lot more, so we have good stories to look forward to in the future!
Who knows what future movies or projects were ruined.
Okay, I don’t know how true this is - but this is huge fucking news.
I’ve been saying this for a while now, but Disney, Amazon and co. are trying to return to the studio system of the old Hollywood days that got - rightly - discontinued in the 1960s. Those were the days when each studio owned their own cinemas that could only stream their movies, where they owned actors who could only play in their movies (unless hired out by others) - and that led to people like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe etc. literally being owned by studios that fed them non stop pills and driven to overdose.
That’s the end point. That’s not the point we’re at now. But you’ll notice that in the last 3 or 4 years, every major production company now has a streaming platform. Much like up until the late 1960s in America, you can only see movies on company-owned platforms. This, with Johansson, is a huge step further - the largest production company in the world - who breached contract, not the other way around - are now essentially blacklisting Johansson from working with them for speaking out against them. Sure, this isn’t a blacklist on the level of the red and lavender scares - but if they can do this to Johansson, the biggest actor in the world, it sets a huge fucking precedent for blacklisting anybody who stands up for workers’ rights.
It also sees Disney - and other companies will follow suit, as they always do - moving a step closer to owning their stars. What Disney is trying to say is that Disney and Johansson are not equal partners in the contract, but that Disney has the ultimate say over everything. This idea that the contract is a formality is absolutely fucked, because it means that artists have no rights under the corporations, and if they want to continue to work they have to obey. Nobody is signing exclusive contracts yet, but you bet this is reverting to Judy Garland times.
We are not going forwards. The movie industry is going backwards to the days of Louis B. Mayer (and it’s capitalism’s fault) and we all need to boost the fuck out of this. The courts will handle the Disney case - but we must support ScarJo (I say as very much a non ScarJo fan) and make sure that she continues to have a career after this, to set the precedent that audiences will not stand for future blacklisting.
Ok, ok, this is all valid in terms of the enormity of the situation, but we should all keep it cool. This is a bogus story, and you can take that to bank. So guys, don’t get disheartened.
Yes, the relationship between Disney and Scarlett is tense at the moment, and that is expected, but they most definitely haven’t “blacklisted” her. And even if they had, they definitely wouldn’t tell it to wegotthiscovered.com.
Scarlett Johansson cannot be blacklisted. This isn’t the 60s, and it can never be. If Disney doesn’t want to cast Scarlett anymore, other companies will. Not only that, but Marvel itself basically admitted that Disney is in the wrong here.
This is a very different world, and production companies don’t operate as they used to. While 20th Century Fox and the rest do profit greatly from streaming services, they did their best during the pandemic to do right by their talent, to a certain point anyway, because that serves their interest. Because they know that the talent is an asset, and that they can never face them off publicly, because they would lose big. They definitely wouldn’t want to end up with the actors’ guild, and the bigger names, against them. Which is what Disney has done right now.
Disney is currently shitting bricks, and that’s what all those articles are. Because it has been exposed and its only viable reaction is to lash out. Because they’re fucked.
The theatre owners are pissed off. The actors are pissed off. The unions are pissed off. The other production companies who see lawsuits getting in line against them are pissed off. Disney has created a huge amount of hostility against them, and they’re in an incredibly tough spot.
So, let’s all keep our ears on the ground, but it’s absolutely to everyone’s best interest to not get riled up by clickbait, or lose hope. In the end of the day, Scarlett Johansson has been working in Hollywood for over 30 years. She has a long list of names that support her career, from agents, to network connections, to lawyers. She’s not an idiot who’d start a battle with one of the biggest companies in the world, if she didn’t know what exactly what she was getting herself into. I’m honestly just enjoying the ride, and laughing at Disney clearly frothing at the mouth.
I'm not over it. There's a kid with arrows, a little girl with falcon wings, and a boy with what appears to be a bowl pretending its Cap's shield.
And the little girl with the Widow's Bite is right outside her old house. In Ohio.
This is where she was buried.
Why would they put the quinjet scene in instead? I mean, I miss the vest. But otherwise, this is better. You could CGI the vest on her? (Or just allow the audience to make the connection that is the vest in Infinity War?)
I actually prefer the quinjet scene. Natasha has a purpose in the quinjet scene, it marks a new beginning for her, a chapter in her life where she’s not adrift, but part of 2 families, one of which she’s on her way to put back together. And we have her say that, out loud. She admits to herself, and to us, that she’s not alone. That she has a strong foundation, a whole bunch of people she’s bound to, she’s not untethered. It takes away some of the bitterness left by Endgame, where Natasha was portrayed as completely isolated, disregarded and easily disposed of. She’s not that, here.
This alternative scene, while very sweet, doesn’t really tell us much. Yes, there is a bright future ahead being built, and Natasha helped make that possible, she’s an inspiring leader. But we already have Yelena as proof of that, we don’t need the extras. I might also be carrying some bitterness over the necessity of children to validate Natasha’s existence, but I digress. Nice alt scene, lovely to see it, I’m glad they chose the one they did.
You'll die on this hill huh? Blog for a racist, antisemite, transphobe, who supports paedophiles. Sorry but I don't think I can follow you anymore.
Hello to you too anon,
I don't even know how to unpack this. I'm so tired of having to answer to this fucking nonsensical narrative you guys have built. This is why if Scarlett ever went on social she'd just post a middle finger and then ghost all of you. Beyond that, it really pisses me off that you keep flooding my inbox with this bullshit. I don't come to your blog to tell you what to talk about anon. I see a lot of stupid things posted on here, but I don't go in people's spaces and say "you're stupid", because that's just not productive, and it's not nice.
But lets do this again anon, let's roll one last time, and then goodbye to you, have a nice life. Let's take it by subject:
Racist: Really? I googled racist Scarlett Johansson and literally nothing came up, other than the whitewashing accusations over her Ghost in the Shell casting. First of all, while the race of an android is something that we can go on about for a long time, and the casting of adaptations of Japanese content is another thing we can go on about for a long time (because e.g. a couple of years after GitS came out, nobody accused the actors or producers of Detective Pikachu for whitewashing, even though most of the actors on it were white), lets say I agree with you, that Scarlett shouldn't have been cast in that film.
She apologised at the time, and said she wouldn't knowingly take away a role that was meant for a person from another race. After all, the role was meant to go to Margot Robbie initially, and when she dropped out due to scheduling issues, it went to Scarlett. So, the role of Major in Ghost in the Shell actually went from one white woman, to another white woman.
Are you gonna go after the casting people for this, or are you gonna keep accusing Scarlett for accepting a role that she thought was meant for a white lead? You don't need to reply, it was a rhetorical question, I know you're not actually interested in figuring out how racism works in showbusiness.
Lets keep going, let's say you don't believe her, and that it was entirely her fault, that at the time she took away a role that would otherwise have gone to a person of colour. Well, it's been 7 years since she was cast for that role. She's been in many, many films since then, and not once has she taken a role from a non-white person. I think 7 years is enough time passed to think this person has learned their lesson, and won't make the same mistake again.
Anti-Semite: ..................... Scarlett is Jewish, anon. She has family that died in concentration camps. See, this is how I know that you don't actually care about any of this, you just enjoy bitching on tumblr, so thanks for making my life easier. I guess I'd feel bad if I thought I actually made you uncomfortable.
Transphobe: We cannot actually know that? She hasn't made any anti-trans comments, but she hasn't supported the cause either so, who knows? Accepting the role in Rub and Tug was a mistake, and once she figured that out she admitted it, made an apology, and dropped the project.
And don't make me go over the whole "I could be a tree" thing again. I can't deal. She was giving an interview for a pretentious French magazine, and the interviewer was going on and on about the art that is acting (and saying some pretty questionable things while at it), and when he asked her "what do you think is the job of an actor?" she replied that actors are people who emulate other people and can transform themselves to anyone or anything else.
That was on a philosophical discussion about the actor's "job". She wasn't making a statement against trans people, in any way. She was a USB stick by the end of Lucy in 2014, she was just pointing out the obvious and then it was taken entirely out of context, and I swear my eyes will one day get stuck rolled at the back of my head, reading yet another tree "joke".
Supports paedophiles: No. What she's said is that she's known Woody Allen personally for 20 years, and that he's told her he didn't abuse his daughter, and that she believes him. That he isn't a paedophile. That is in no way "supporting paedophiles".
Do I agree with this? No. I think Woody Allen is a questionable figure, at best, but I can sorta understand her position. I've said this before, I don't know how I would feel if a friend of mine was hated by the general public because he was accused of doing a horrendous crime that had actually never been proven (or disproven), and therefore I can't judge her for deciding to stand by him on this, I don't think I would have been able to do the same, but Scarlett has proven that she'll say what she believes and deal with the consequences. Fair enough.
That's it anon. Thank you for sitting around for one last rant. If Scarlett has been accused for some other shit while I was writing this, maybe for killing Kermit the frog, who knows at this point, please, don't slide in my inbox, I'm done with this and I'm certainly not above blocking. Go on and live your guilt free life, stanning white men who have done waaaay more questionable things than most female celebrities could ever hope to do in a lifetime, and yet get away from scot free for you to drool over without shame.
Indeed they do. In situations like this the subject at hand (i.e. the lawsuit) is way outside their jurisdiction, since any comments made by the company are written and managed by the legal team and the board of directors, the PR has certainly gotten guidance, and the guidance is probably "churn out as much lovey dovey family friendly content as you humanly can and maintain an image of stability even though in actuality our asses are on fire".
That last part is assumed but not spoken during staff meetings.
Next on the list of useless men, Mr “I can’t remember the last time I was the lead in a film that wasn’t a complete box office flop”.
No matter the fact that Emily Blunt (who’s got 2 BAFTA nominations more than him and made $9 million to his $22 million for the female lead role in this film) is actually considering suing Disney over the Disney+ release of the film.
He could have shut up and not involved himself, but then again, he’s hoping Jungle Cruise will become a franchise, so obviously he had to support the corporate machine.
This is why men can never be allies. They can put on a show about how much they “support” their costars, but when the time comes for them to actually grow a pair? Forget about it.
Sorry not everyone supports making movies inaccessible to thousands of people during a pandemic solely so that Scarlett Johansson can make more than the 20 million dollars she’s already made off of this one movie alone.
Hi anon. I accept your apology. I appreciate that you didn’t want this movie to be inaccessible to a large portion of the world whose cinemas aren’t open. So does Scarlett Johansson.
She’s suing because she alleges that Disney intentionally used the Black Widow movie’s dual release model to drive traffic to their streaming service instead of theatres (where she would benefit) without renegotiating her contract, therefore breaching it.
If Disney had paid her a chunk more for streaming, like WB did with Gal Gadot and WW84, this wouldn’t be happening. But it is, because they didn’t renegotiate so that they would get 100% of the streaming profits and she would get a much smaller percentage of an already cannibalised box office.
I’m not asking you to support her, I’m asking you to support labour compensation, even if you think it’s an extortionate amount. Do you know whose pockets that money is going into otherwise, anon? Skeezy execs who had nothing to do with this film, who didn’t even want it to be made.
It’s also worth mentioning that Scarlett isn’t the only one who lost her money in this specific breach of contract. Not only all other actors in the film probably had similar deals that were trashed when Disney did a simultaneous online and theatrical release of the film, but every other worker affiliated with the actors.
Agents, publicists, etc take a cut from the actor’s salary. They may be getting 5%, 10%, however much, but when Disney breached contract and forcibly reduced Scarlett’s salary, it did it for dozens of other people. Imagine how much loss of income that is, if you apply that principle to every other actor on this film, and every other film where a production company has done exactly the same thing.
Isn’t it funny how the Avengers assembled to protect Chris Pratt from a joke on twitter, but have zipped their holes when Scarlett Johansson entered into a battle against Disney that -if she wins- will help the entire industry and protect their own salaries, which has led to every actors’ guild supporting her in this endeavour?
Looks like the Avengers “family” is as useless and performative in real life, as it is in the fictitious world of the MCU.
I want to rewatch press interviews for Black Widow, because now that we know that Scarlett knew that she was about to sue Disney, the added context makes them so much more hilarious.
Are you as irritated as I am that even though Scarlett is getting all the support here, everyone is prefacing it with “i fucking hate this bitch but i guess she’s right”? Like, just leave her alone for one goddamn minute, everyone knows that supporting labor compensation doesn’t mean you agree with her other comments, Jesus. A tiny bit of respect for the guts this must have taken wouldn’t kill you.
Ahoy anon!
Eeeh, I'm not really irritated by it. At this point I find it amusing.
For one thing people on here will defend, or be batshit crazy against, anything, really. For another thing, it's almost a reflex on tumblr to say "I don't like Scarlett Johansson" out of a need to not get into an argument with anyone or, at least, out of a need to fit in/have the generally acceptable reaction.
Beyond that, asking for people to look into someone's actions and see something deeper than what's on the surface, is honestly too much. Most people are superficial, they don't look further than their initial reaction to things. Also, people prefer to be agreeable most of the time. So if an "authority" (in terms of communication) tells them "Scarlett Johansson is a rich woman and it's greedy of her to ask for more money" they'll be like "Yeah, that's true!". Then if someone else comes along and says "hold on just a sec, aren't you a billionaire corporation who stole her salary? That's wrong" those same people will go "Yeah, that's true!" and the end result will be "this rich person -who I've been told I should hate- had something done to them that I shouldn't agree with, so I should begrudgingly support them in this situation". And that's it. Obviously the 2 sentiments can coexist for someone who honestlly dislikes her for past controversies, but most of the time, it’s a reflex.
The general public doesn't go looking for explanations, anon. They won't look for hidden meanings, or agendas, or further understanding behind people's actions. The surface is easy. That's how we've been manipulated into electing idiots to govern us, into allowing corporate greed to corrode our societies and bring the whole planet to the brink of ruin. People won't look beyond the surface for things that could kill us all, don't expect them to look beyond the surface for entertainment news. Even if this the hugest thing that has happened in the industry since... God, I don't even know when. Not even Robin Williams had the balls to enter into a legal battle with frigging Disney! Hell, most of Hollywood was pissed at production companies over the streaming issue and nobody dared to create any ripples. And here comes 5ft nothing Scarlett and drops a fucking boulder into the lake!
Don't worry, Scarlett clearly has nerves of steel. I've been admiring this woman's perseverance for years, and yet I was in shock and awe when she dropped this bomb on us. She'll be fine.
Besides, what can they possibly say to her that she hasn't already heard? That's she's a bad actress? Pfff, been there, done that, stitched her own t-shirt. That she's a rich bitch? Yeah, she's a rich bitch who has enough money and balls to sue the mouse! That she's a horrible person? Nope, she's not, she's a blooming fucking tree who doesn't give a shit 🙃
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