December 3, 2019 | 9:21am | Updated December 3, 2019 | 11:28am
We’re about to see how “Black Widow” got her venom.
In a two-minute teaser trailer for the upcoming eponymously titled movie, Scarlett Johansson’s worn-down Marvel superhero — née Natasha Romanoff — stares into a mirror, contemplating her life’s worth and future. “I used to have nothing. And then I got this job. This family,” she says as scenes flash by of her in ballerina class and blasting guns as an Avenger. “But nothing lasts forever.”
“I’ve lived a lot of lives, but I’m done running from my past,” she adds.
Spoiler alert: Stop reading now if you haven’t seen “Avengers: Endgame.”
Since Black Widow bit the dust in that franchise installment last spring, her standalone origin story is set between the superhero infighting of 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War” and the apocalyptic battle in 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War.”
The trailer shows Natasha, gun drawn, slinking through a dingy apartment in Budapest, Hungary, ready to confront an armed Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), whose equally svelte, butt-kicking pedigree is backed up by a thick Russian accent. (Of course.) A knife and fist battle ensues, with Natasha saying, “It’s good to see you, too … sis.”
And then they team up to tackle, in Natasha’s words, some “unfinished business,” going “back to where it all started.” The journey includes leaping onto and descending a perilously tall and narrow smokestack, jumping from a helicopter and … dinner with family.
“One thing’s for sure: It’s gonna be a hell of a reunion,” Natasha says before the trailer introduces David Harbour (“Stranger Things”) as Alexei Shostakov, a k a Red Guardian, a tattooed former vigilante who is still able to squeeze — barely — into his old, cheesy-looking Spandex duds. “Still fits,” he says after letting out a gleeful, guttural laugh. “Family. Back together again.”
But “The Incredibles” this ain’t.
In a Vanity Fair video interview released last week, Johansson shared that the movie is about “self-forgiveness.”
“And it’s a film I think in life we sort of come of age many times in your life and you have these kind of moments where you’re kind of in a transitional phase, and then you move sort of beyond it. And I think in the ‘Black Widow’ standalone film, I think the character when we find her is in a moment of real crisis. And throughout the film, by facing herself, in a lot of ways, and all the things that make her her, she actually kind of comes through that crisis on the other side and is able to sort of reset into a space where she’s a more grounded, self-possessed person.
“So that’s her journey,” she continues, adding, “Well, I hope, anyway.”
Johansson, who turned 35 on Nov. 22, is gathering Oscar buzz alongside co-star Adam Driver for “Marriage Story.” She also got engaged last May to “Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost, 37, after a two-year courtship.
“Black Widow” premieres May 1, 2020.