Hotly Anticipated 'Black Widow' to Hit Theatres May 2020

I, like many other fans of the #MarvelCinematicUniverse, am looking forward to the release of Black Widow in May, 2020.

Part of it is I have a hard time believing just how far Scarlett Johansson has come. She's now 35, but I can distinctly remember when she graced movie screens in The Horse Whisperer in 1998 at the age of around 14 or 15. At the time, I just figured she was a child actress who would probably slide into obscurity as many others have done. Thankfully, I was wrong, and she's become one of the strongest female lead characters in a franchise to date.

Black Widow, also known as Natasha Romanoff, was originally a challenging character for me to get into and feel any sort of connection with. I thought she was a super cool character, to be sure, and I knew then she would become a pretty significant part of the #MCU, but the challenge for me was that there were so few female roles that could really be held to the same level as the male-dominated ones as I was growing up that my brain probably underwent a sort of shock in seeing her. She kicked serious butt in her first appearance in Iron Man 2, and has essentially become one of the definitive strong females in the MCU.

It's important that Black Widow is coming out now. There are many women, especially young women, who are looking for more than your stereotypical bombshell on screen, and this is a film that will feature the woman that sort of started it all, at least as far as the MCU would seem to be concerned. Sure, there's Captain Marvel, and Okoye of the Dora Milaje, but Black Widow has undergone such development throughout her multi-film story arc that it will be interesting to see what sort of identity she forges outside of her Avengers team.

Although this film is set after the events of Captain America: Civil War and would seem to feature a Black Widow that is effectively re-establishing her identity without it being so closely aligned with that of Captain America, it seems to suggest that the character will be returning to her roots. I don't mean to suggest that the character will be returning to the same sort of way that she was in Iron Man 2; given what seems like a million years has gone by since the events of that movie, it would be almost an insult to the character to have her demonstrate very little development. I mean we are finally going to see some backstory for Marvel's favorite spy.

It will be disappointing in some respects to see Black Widow without Steve Rogers or even Hawkeye by her side; some of my favorite character interactions in the MCU films were between Natasha and Cap, and her interactions with Hawkeye at the start of Avengers: Endgame were heartbreaking. Those were the interactions that truly illustrated the human side of the cool Russian agent, and her expressions as she responded to the look of genuine pain on Hawkeye's face when they met in Japan showed just how far her character had truly developed from the butt-kicking fighter to someone you could really resonate with.

I, along with my two Marvel-loving daughters, will be in line to watch Black Widow when it hits theaters in May, 2020. I am hopeful that they will continue to be able to see strong characters like Okoye, like Captain Marvel and especially like Black Widow in the years to come so they know that seeing a strong female character lead their own movie is no longer a rarity but something that can be embraced.