Despite high fan demand, the road towards getting a solo Black Widow film made has been rocky at best. Whenever Berlin Syndrome director Cate Shortland was announced to helm the film in July, it seemed that it was smooth sailing for the film, but thanks to an article by IndieWire talking to one of the directors initially approached for the gig, the process of selection was anything but.
The director in question is Lucrecia Martel, best known for the psychological thriller The Headless Woman and the period drama Zama. According to the article, Martel met with Marvel to discuss directing Black Widow for the purposes of getting a female director to give a better perspective on Natasha Romanoff’s character development.
It seems, however, that that’s all Marvel was interested in, as Martel candidly told IndieWire:
They also told me, ‘Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that.’
She elaborates further on why this is an issue:
Companies are interested in female filmmakers but they still think action scenes are for male directors … The first thing I asked them was maybe if they could change the special effects because there’s so many laser lights. I find them horrible. Also the soundtrack of Marvel films is quite horrendous. Maybe we disagree on this but it’s really hard to watch a Marvel film. It’s painful to the ears to watch Marvel films.
From Martel’s own words, it seems as though she was not impressed with Marvel’s offer, and for good reason. Whether it be Alan Taylor’s notorious scuffles with the studio on Thor: The Dark World or even Joss Whedon’s creative disagreements on Avengers: Age of Ultron, micromanagement has been an ugly running theme for the studio.
Moreover, there’s a bigger issue in terms of Marvel and female filmmakers. In 20 films and counting, the only ones with a woman directing are this film and the upcoming Captain Marvel, the latter of which is only co-directed by a woman. With the vast pool of talented women working in the industry today and the amount of films Marvel has put out, this is simply unacceptable.
It must be said, however, that there is a chance this might be a similar proposition given to most filmmakers approached to direct Marvel Studios films. Still, action sequences are a fairly large part of these movies and depriving a filmmaker- let alone a female filmmaker in a male-dominated industry-
What do you think of Lucrecia Martel’s comments on being approached to direct Black Widow? Do you think Marvel should allow their directors more creative control on action sequences?
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Source: IndieWire
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