Virtually everyone agrees that Marvel Studios isn’t in the best place creatively right now (or corporately, for that matter, but that’s a whole other thing). Still, it’s hard to pin down what the number one cause of the decline in quality we’ve witnessed across Phase Four and now the beginning of Phase Five actually is. One absurd detail from the movie that in fact kicked off this diminishing era for the MCU, however, may just put the whole thing in perspective.
Twitter user @EPM106 went viral for highlighting a bit of Black Widow trivia that we had all forgotten about. It turns out that the moment where Natasha Romanoff and her Russian family eat dinner together, a hugely important one on a character level, was vigorously vetoed by both Scarlett Johansson and director Cate Shortland before producer Kevin Feige successfully lobbied to keep it in the film.
As the tweeter put it, “This is still the funniest thing in the world to me. How did we get to the point where the head producer is the only one involved with any interest in having scenes where the characters talk to each other[?]”
Yes, the fact that Marvel filmmakers and its stars don’t see the point in having scenes where the characters are allowed to breathe and exude some personality other than being really good at kicking people is being taken as a sign that the franchise has really lost its way.
Although, on the other hand, it’s made clear that Feige’s storytelling instincts remain as accurate as ever. It’s particularly interesting to remember this in the wake of reports that the Marvel prez is looking to partner with more experienced directors.
Having said that, this situation is somewhat of an inversion of what happened on Avengers: Age of Ultron, which saw Joss Whedon having to fight Marvel to get to keep the character-based farm scenes.
On the whole, maybe we can say that the less Feige is directly involved, the worse of the MCU is.
Or, as another fan put it…
Marvel might not be in tip-top shape right now, but we should still be grateful that Kevin Feige isn’t going anywhere.