Date of release: October 20, 2021 (Disney Plus)
Written by: Brenton Covington
Directed by: Bradford Baruh
”I am not at all, like, a Tom Cruise about this stuff, where I'm, like, 'I do all my own stunts.' I do not do any of my own stunts. And I do not want to. Put the guy in, he does it better than me. Please, I will go sit and hang out, and have a croissant.”
David Harbour, when he is honest and real. But I didn't need his words here to figure out that he was not doing any of his stunts. Just looking at Alexei's body build and how Harbour definitely was not on a diet while shooting BLACK WIDOW (in fact, the camera seemed to have captured his beer belly quite on purpose in a couple of shots, to show how unfit Alexei is as the former Soviet version of Captain America), and I wholeheartedly believe that he decided to sit in the corner and have a snack while watching the stunt performers do their job. He probably liked doing the job more than Scarlett Johansson, who was moaning about having to get into cold water for a scene. Something Harbour would have never dared because he doesn't do his own stunts, and getting into cold water is a stunt.
I did appreciate that this special gave some love to the stunt performers, with the inclusion of the two dozen Widows for the Red Room sequences that were made out of stunt performers, dancers, and other types of athletes and acrobats. A documentary of the BLACK WIDOW production would have been much better if it had focused more on the stunt work, but in the end, it's just another one of those making-of specials where everyone had only good words to say about the others. The focus on the stunt work and the costume department made this hour slightly more watchable than expected, but MARVEL STUDIOS: ASSEMBLED wasn't made for Disney Plus to be an interesting series about how films get made. It's another form of advertisement for when you have watched the film already, and are now being convinced to watch it again.
 |
| Being a Widow means you need to know ballet. |
