The Issue with Black Widow’s Fight style is it’s oriented for takedowns instead of knockouts. (Iron Man 2 Black Widow fight)

The Issue with Black Widow’s Fight style is it’s oriented for takedowns instead of knockouts. (Iron Man 2 Black Widow fight)

Black Widow vs Hammer Security — Fight Scene — Iron-Man 2 (2010): The fight scene most people think is legitimate in how it portrays a woman fighting men- “realistically”.

Wrong.

The most legit ko's was 0:25 , 0:48 (generously) 1:45 (And that’s if she choked him out squeezing his neck in-between her thigh & calf. If she just forced his head to the ground, he’d have a broken face but he wouldn’t be knocked out from that- so headcanon essentially) the rest of that should’ve been edited better. If that’s realistic to some folk, then Hollywood isn’t doing women in action movies any justice these days.

As opposed to better examples that aren’t bound by realism:

As entertainment the Widow hallway scene works, it’s fun but when ppl say shit like this:

“I loved this scene so much, I always keep rewinding it 🤣 I love the realistic portrayal of a woman fighting men. She uses gadgets to her advantage and her/their weight against them.”

“I love the realistic portrayal of a woman fighting men. “

“realistic-“

Nah, a realistic fight is Desh vs Bourne, that’s realistic, why? Exchange, resistance, Bourne was so desperate he resorted to throwing shit at the dude just to buy 2 seconds of breathing room or an opening; but only if you want to argue realism. 

• Because most of what what happens in Widow’s fight happens in most action fights (telegraphing, waiting, playing up damage so they get in cue), the point is to maintain the illusion so viewers immerse so deep you don’t notice that the whole thing’s a practiced dance.
• With women participants or most of the time when they lead the dance, the illusion is harder to maintain. Especially if she isn’t a fighter in her personal life.

Steve vs Winter Soldier Round 1 was stylistic but even that was more grounded because the EDITING/ The cuts were on point.

Otherwise, the rest of this Widow fight is not believable, (mind you- i stand by what I said in the Ruth post where Scarlet sells it better, YES! But is it realistic? Hell no) it just got even worse with Ruth & some of Yelena, so in comparison Scarlet’s Widow is obviously better in execution.

I repeat:

They (MCU) shoulda made her (Widows as a whole) super soldiers like in ultimate avengers, a lot of her impacts wouldn’t down a grown man. That knee strike is a big maybe, the nut shot would buy her maybe 60 seconds, the widow bites are her only guarantee —legit enough to KO in ideal conditions, the other 90%? Whack.

“You’ll note that we have 12 super soldier candidates, for whom we are developing 12 different serums, it’s unique for every person.”(Bruce Banner 2006, Ultimate Avengers)

• Natasha is one of those candidates, thus a super soldier, tho a lesser potent serum. Which is how she was able to force a needle into Hulk’s hide with her bare hands, which is a minor detail that only now have I noticed. A normal man wouldn’t have been able to do that even with standard steroids.
• That’s what the MCU should’ve done, & if not immediately, by CA:WS or AOU she should’ve gotten something after Steve’s thawing.
• Or the Red Room should’ve been a Super Soldier program, didn’t they do some shit with red fart dust or something? Instead of mind control via some funky hormones, just make them bootleg super soldiers.

These small af women kind of needed to be enhanced in some way, if the fight process going to be like what we’ve been getting, otherwise step up the women’s choreography game. 

Or enhance them so their punches have more weight, and them throwing grown men makes more sense. That actually makes things more fun to watch tbh, like with Trinity’s fights.

The only reason why Silk Spectre in Snyder’s film gets a pass is because the way that action is shot & the nature of the setting: it’s not realistic. And the actress sells the fuck out of those fights. She’s not enhanced but her status as a vigilante in that movie puts her on a level above the average man and by design it’s not — “Realistic”

No quips, no jokes. 100% deconstruction of the opponent

In Marvel movies it’s more “realistic”, and the  price of realism is believability. The more you make it realistic, the more you limit your ability to sell it.

I look back on this Ironman 2 Widow fight with positive outlook but only when compared to what we got now, but that Ironman 2 Widow fight wasn’t the perfect gem we think it was in terms of “woman wins against a man (realistically)”.

Fuck nah, ya’ll need to watch more shit. 

minimum effort, no flips

Laurie wasn’t doing no fancy shit, her movements were minimum but her dodging, her weaving was so precise, it looks amazing, still to this day. 

The moves were sharper and meaner than any Widow, less energy spent on takedowns & more focused on knockouts. Better choreographed & edited. And looks better because it was NOT REALISTIC — her stylistic strength fit the setting. We gotta stop worshipping ”realism”.

 The Dark Knight started the trend and it’s been downhill ever since because even those movies’ choreography was lacking in many areas (especially after Batman Begins) and the main issue was realism.

Which is why nobody praises TDK trilogy for the fight scenes but EVERYONE still simps for that warehouse fight in BvS

The editing game has to level up for the women, especially if the movie staff insists on pitting them against more than one MAN and not a woman; because notice how these widows are rarely ever pit against other women on average but mainly men as if to say fighting skills can legit close the gap to best 200+ lbs, denser bones+++ PER Multiple men resisting 115 lbs of counterweight, that’s believable as long as she’s flipping.

Laurie didn’t flip once, she flipped HIS ASS:

But then again, the men fighting these Widows are not really resisting are they? They get hit, they’re stun locked so she can basically do whatever and control the fight because if they resist, then the actress is going to struggle more. Which is the point.

Laurie’s Silk Spectre in the movie fights like Washington’s “Equalizer”, brutal & minimum energy wasted.

The flaw of a Widow’s fight style is they’re sacrificing so much of their stance, footing and energy for theatricality; all just to get their enemies to the floor.

And apparently them hitting the floor means they’re out the fight. 

• The Widow style is designed for women to master it, that’s fine but it’s takedown techniques are not ideal when you need to KNOCK+OUT grown men beyond just taking them down.
•  I don’t doubt a woman could grapple a man to the ground with some well placed  counterbalance, & submission a victory but how the movies translate their takedowns, is not believable as a knockout. 
• Hollywood thinks knockouts and takedowns are the same thing. 

So Nat performs a takedown, I’m expecting bro to get up but he’s still on the floor and I’m like “Whoah what happened?! He fell asleep?”

And it looks like the women “should” win because of how extra they’re making it look but they’re really not doing much of anything beyond bruising & breaking noses, let alone knocking anyone out, most of the time anyway.

 Which is why they need to use the widow bite more to sell the fight. That’s how a WIDOW knocks out a 250 Ib security guard with a killcount, that Widow bite. And that’s something I can praise Yelena for in Thunderbolts she used that Widow Bite effectively.

(Granted the energy feedback of the bite wouldn’t have stopped the downward momentum of a SUPER SOLDIERS stab attempt, so that makes no sense but it draining his stamina slowly, that’s a cool way to use it defensively. At least she’s using the damn Widow bite for something other than decoration)

Scarlet’s Widow overall performs it better than the other 2 but even her fights fall short still, her takedowns are good but all their knockouts are silly. Because that’s the nature of their fight style, it seems more engineered to be a distraction to create an opening for a killshot- Like the widow bite? Or a gun? Or a knife stab? They need to spam that Widow bite or put guns in it.

 It’s basically an assassins dream fight style for misdirection, imagine if a Widow did that spinny shit, and after the guy gets up (because he’s not hurt lol), he suddenly realizes his neck is split wide open because she used that maneuver for something more than just throwing him down & while he’s bleeding out she’s on top of the other four guys just tearing them apart in similar fashion.

 That’s how a Widow should be shown to fight, takedowns mixed with knockouts, or in this case, blatant executions. 

“The Black Widow“ should have the same level of weight as “The Winter Soldier“, that’s the ONLY reason why Winter Soldier would entertain Natasha as a partner during his prime years. Because she’s the same level of beast as him, just not in the same way.  The MCU dropped the ball on that.

• Happy’s fight, while less cool, is actually more realistic because his opponent actually resisted in a realistic fight, but only if “realism” is the hill we want to die on.

Looking back on this, It amazes me how many people didn’t even notice or point out that she didn’t use her most valuable weapon in that hall way fight— The Wrist stingers/Widows Bite, she didn’t use them once. 

(If you want to say she’s that good, that’s not gonna work because most of what she did wasn’t enough to KO a  WOMAN, in fact most of those guys should’ve gotten right back up, which is the point of the widow bite or widow biting them mid spinny move. Since Disney doesn’t have the balls to make a Widow into the threat they should be.)

She used them in 2012 a few times which was good and in 2014, 2015, 2016, don’t recall her using them in IW against Promixa of all people but overall she didn’t use them enough, all things considered.

Instead of slowing down a fight to show her using it, just subtly put sparks in between her punches to visualize the bite being used mid-momentum and weakening her opponents to the point of eventual atrophy and collapse. 

Like Yelena did in Thunderbolts, easy fix. Just keep doing that, so while  Scarlet’s combat portrayal was better in hand to hand delivery-- Pugh is not far behind if she keeps this up. 

By mixing Widow-Fu with the Widow Bite to K.O, that’s a more balanced, more legitimate/ “REALISTIC”  Black Widow. 

All in all, the 2011 fight sold better on the first watch when i saw it in theaters, cause it was a new gimmick then.

And the number 1 issue isn’t Scarlet or any of the actresses, it’s how it’s shot & organized.

The only reason why Jason Bourne’s scenes sell so well for the most part (beside the shaky cam being annoying) is ironically —  the shaky editing, the snap cuts, by the time we know what even happened, the fight’s over or it transitioned. The momentum and speed or at least the illusion of it.

That’s how Bourne is depicted to be more than what a man should even be capable of, kinda like the Watchmen 2009 vigilante’s. That’s how a Widow should’ve been shown to be fighting, and if they wanted an explanation for her strength in realism? Bootleg Super Serum. Because Ultimate Avengers 06′ did it.

Sometimes to pull off a good fight doesn’t mean showing everything, because the more audiences see, that’s more that can work against the choreography if what the fighter is actually doing isn’t effective in the slightest to actually K.O someone, “realistically”. Leave some mystique, keep the illusion maintained..

Realism is not our friend in action genre, you’ll just bottleneck your options that way.

ESPECIALLY IF SHE IS NOT ENHANCED vs in a stylistic setting where her strength as a female is irrelevant- aka Kung Fu movies, anime, parody, etc.

-the MCU doesn’t want everyone to be super soldiers, got it but they & other movie studios need to exploit better techniques if they want base form women to be out here mopping up dudes. It can be done, but you just have to give a damn.

That widow bite needs to be spammed waaaaaay way way more, because that’s their biggest advantage. Anything less just looks too silly and telegraphed. Because that’s the price of wanting a woman to basically be Jason Statham, and not all his fights impress me either.

Spoiler alert: Being a Widow is not a insta-win formula

A 120 Ib woman slamming a 250 Ib man on the ground from a flip or kicking him in the chest (Yelena’s first fight scene in Thunderbolts*) isn’t going to down him for the fight-

at best that’s a set up for the ACTUAL finisher, snap his neck, dislocate his shoulder, widow bite his lower back, poison tipped knife, widow bite his temple & make his brain fry, idgaf, DO SOMETHING legit. 

Make a Black Widow scary, not predictable. That was one of the MCU’s greatest failures: not making the Widow’s & Red Room  more of a “Babayaga”.

A takedown is not a finisher, (again) Hollywood seems to think “takedowns” are “knockouts”. If that were the case, Khabib would’ve been winning fights in seconds during his UFC career.

• A takedown is taking someone down to the ground, grounding them which the Widow style does effortlessly,.
• A legit knockout is legitimately taking them out the fight, period.  (via broken bone, killing them, submission hold, nerve strike, elbow to temple etc). 

A Widow’s fight style is takedown focused to favor a woman’s lighter build; not knockout focused. The takedown is merely you buying a window to do something else to actually end the fight.

Realism, editing, mistaking takedowns for knockouts.
Top 3 reasons why a Widow’s fight style is lackluster,

The Iron Man 2 Widow fight is iconic, a good attempt at selling the concept, but overall not a realistic representation of women fighting legitimately against men because no woman is winning a fight against multiple men flipping around, let alone one (who can fight too) when all she can do is do stylistic takedowns which is only ideal against 1 person and her ground game better be on point to get that submission hold quick before he gets on top on her. It’s whole different ball game when he knows what he’s doing too.

Which is why her fight against Clint is one of her most underrated highlights of all time (tho she didn’t Widow Bite then either *smh), that was still a solid fight, dodged one of his arrows damn near point blank and she won legitimately- with an injury, against brainwashed Hawkeye of all people.

But other than that, Widow-Fu looks nice tho, but it’s not realistic- especially when they refuse to use the Widow bite.

If Hollywood wants women to be on that level, the ladies need to be smarter or enhanced; they’re not men and not every male character’s fight works either. 

These women need to be directed to throw their punches sharper, faster, going for throat, finger striking eyeballs, grappling & dislodging bones and joints — WHILE STANDING UP. 

Elite tier shit, Equalizer level combat. You don’t need super strength  to do that, but it does look more convincing when a Man does it, but it can be done. A woman’s punch is not akin to a child’s punch, they’re still grown adults, the actresses just need better direction.

 (and at minimum, the editors need to make up the differences in post.)