Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
such_heights) wrote2015-05-03 10:40 pm
such_heights) wrote2015-05-03 10:40 pm
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Why I loved Natasha in Age of Ultron
Everyone's reactions to Age of Ultron are pretty much the epitome of 'mileage varies', not to mention that we all watch different things and take away different things. That's great, and I don't want to tell anyone that their opinions are wrong, but I do find myself in disagreement with many of them. See, I loved Natasha's arc in Age of Ultron, and here's why.
You know, I get it. I completely understand that we as Natasha fans feel defensive of her. She's hugely popular but still doesn't have her own film, there's barely any tie-in merchandise for her compared to the others, Scarlett Johansson gets plagued by ridiculous and gross questions about her character, and now apparently even her co-stars get in on the act sometimes. And it makes us feel wary of the trajectory of her character in the films and resistant to the idea of her being subjected to tropes we don't like.
"Then here comes this guy, who's not like anyone I've ever met."
I know the Bruce/Natasha romance wasn't to everyone's taste, but so help me I will die on this hill, I thought it was awesome. This is Natasha's fourth film in the MCU, and during that time we've seen a lot of different sides of her. Undercover agent in Iron Man 2, the instigator of the Avengers, on the run with Steve in Cap 2. We've seen her be badass, smart, vulnerable, competent, scared, funny, warm, manipulative and generally amazing. The Natasha we meet in Age of Ultron is, I think, the most defences-down version of her we've seen to date. She's comfortable with her teammates, who are giving her a sense of a place in the world after the events of Cap 2. And for the first time, we see her toy with the idea of being selfish, of going after something -- someone -- she wants for herself. Their first scene, flirting in the bar, she tells Bruce exactly how she feels, why she's interested, and what she sees in him. Then she runs with it. It's a fascinating match because I think they feel exactly the same way about themselves and each other - 'this person's amazing, but I'm a monster, I could never give them what they want'. Which makes me want to keysmash a lot and hug them both.
It all starts so well - gets the Steve stamp of approval, and we say how well Natasha and the Hulk work together in the field, which shows what a long way they've come since the Avengers and how much they must have worked together to make that possible. But once Scarlet Witch gets into the mix, she brings them right back to their worst selves. The Hulk causes horrible, pointless destruction among civilians, and Natasha gets a real whammy of a traumatic flashback to one of the worst points of her life.
"What did you dream?"
"That I was an Avenger."
So then we hit their scene in the farmhouse. And yes, absolutely the 'infertility / monster' line is badly done and needed to be written really quite differently to work, but if I can set that aside, everything else about that scene is amazing. Bruce retreats, like he always does, full of self-loathing and generally miserable after a particularly terrible Hulk experience. Natasha, amazingly, doesn't. Natasha beating up a billion bad guys with a shoe is a day at the office. But Natasha deciding to open up about her feelings to someone who she wants to think well of her is incredibly brave. It adds depth and range to her character, it shows her differently from how we've seen her before, it's awesome. We've seen her have a similar conversation with Steve, but something at play there was that she wanted him to trust her - she was being honest, but with a goal in her mind. Here with Bruce, she opens up to him just because she wants to, because she trusts him, and because she wants this for herself. She's having a moment of crisis about who she is, whether she can be an Avenger, but her trust in Bruce doesn't waver. Her choosing to make that disclosure to him is a powerful moment for her, something I doubt she'd imagine doing in a million years back around the time of her first appearance, not with someone like Bruce. I loved it.
Bruce and Natasha are the two Avengers who didn't choose to be what they are. Their origins are full of pain to themselves and others and red in their ledgers. They both consider themselves to be monstrous, to have horrors in their past they can never make up for. I find it compelling stuff, and it really lets us see into the heart of Natasha in a direct way that we haven't quite before. We know some of this, of course, but seeing her fear and doubt for real, not weaponised, not for show, just her, is powerful.
(Sidenote: we get a a lot about Steve and Tony's conflicts and journeys about their identities as heroes, and there's some of that in this film with Clint, about choosing to be an Avenger and the significance of that. What it means to be an Avenger is significant for all five of them! Then there's Thor. And *Thor's* conflict is over whether or not to be King of Asgard while he defends the Nine Realms, and I feel like him being an Avenger is his community outreach volunteering project at the weekends. Go see Jane, volunteer with the locals, that's a lovely day off from saving the universe. God love you, Thor, you rainbow-infused space unicorn.)
Then there's the moment of temptation for Natasha, that tantalising thought of what if they did just go, just quit, draw a line under it and go somewhere else and be someone new. The end of Cap 2 already started Natasha off on something of an identity crisis, with every cover blown and the ideals she was working for destroyed with the downfall of SHIELD. I think it's more than understandable that there's something appealing in just letting it all go and starting over. It's often Bruce's MO, after all, and it's a fantasy with power.
"I adore you. But I need the other guy."
But of course it's just a fantasy. Because Natasha Romanoff is a big damn hero and she's going to save the world, no matter what the cost. So she does something awful -- she takes away Bruce's choice. And she knows what a betrayal that is, and it's amazing. She could have tried to persuade him, they could have had a long drawn out argument, but there isn't time, so she does what she has to do. She knows there's no way back, that even after the fight is over and even if they both survive, he might never forgive her for this. She does it anyway.
She chooses, and it has real consequences - there's no happy reunion, at the end of the film the Hulk's just gone who knows where, and Natasha stays behind so she can train the next generation of Avengers, because that's who she is. It's really, really sad. It makes me really love her a lot.
You know, I get it wasn't to everyone's taste! That's cool! But I think there's a lot of great stuff to be mined there for fanworks and I hope that people will, rather than that sad thing that often happens where we as a fandom talk about the ladies a bit but then go back to making things pretty much exclusively about the dudes. Give me Natasha fic, internet!
You know, I get it. I completely understand that we as Natasha fans feel defensive of her. She's hugely popular but still doesn't have her own film, there's barely any tie-in merchandise for her compared to the others, Scarlett Johansson gets plagued by ridiculous and gross questions about her character, and now apparently even her co-stars get in on the act sometimes. And it makes us feel wary of the trajectory of her character in the films and resistant to the idea of her being subjected to tropes we don't like.
"Then here comes this guy, who's not like anyone I've ever met."
I know the Bruce/Natasha romance wasn't to everyone's taste, but so help me I will die on this hill, I thought it was awesome. This is Natasha's fourth film in the MCU, and during that time we've seen a lot of different sides of her. Undercover agent in Iron Man 2, the instigator of the Avengers, on the run with Steve in Cap 2. We've seen her be badass, smart, vulnerable, competent, scared, funny, warm, manipulative and generally amazing. The Natasha we meet in Age of Ultron is, I think, the most defences-down version of her we've seen to date. She's comfortable with her teammates, who are giving her a sense of a place in the world after the events of Cap 2. And for the first time, we see her toy with the idea of being selfish, of going after something -- someone -- she wants for herself. Their first scene, flirting in the bar, she tells Bruce exactly how she feels, why she's interested, and what she sees in him. Then she runs with it. It's a fascinating match because I think they feel exactly the same way about themselves and each other - 'this person's amazing, but I'm a monster, I could never give them what they want'. Which makes me want to keysmash a lot and hug them both.
It all starts so well - gets the Steve stamp of approval, and we say how well Natasha and the Hulk work together in the field, which shows what a long way they've come since the Avengers and how much they must have worked together to make that possible. But once Scarlet Witch gets into the mix, she brings them right back to their worst selves. The Hulk causes horrible, pointless destruction among civilians, and Natasha gets a real whammy of a traumatic flashback to one of the worst points of her life.
"What did you dream?"
"That I was an Avenger."
So then we hit their scene in the farmhouse. And yes, absolutely the 'infertility / monster' line is badly done and needed to be written really quite differently to work, but if I can set that aside, everything else about that scene is amazing. Bruce retreats, like he always does, full of self-loathing and generally miserable after a particularly terrible Hulk experience. Natasha, amazingly, doesn't. Natasha beating up a billion bad guys with a shoe is a day at the office. But Natasha deciding to open up about her feelings to someone who she wants to think well of her is incredibly brave. It adds depth and range to her character, it shows her differently from how we've seen her before, it's awesome. We've seen her have a similar conversation with Steve, but something at play there was that she wanted him to trust her - she was being honest, but with a goal in her mind. Here with Bruce, she opens up to him just because she wants to, because she trusts him, and because she wants this for herself. She's having a moment of crisis about who she is, whether she can be an Avenger, but her trust in Bruce doesn't waver. Her choosing to make that disclosure to him is a powerful moment for her, something I doubt she'd imagine doing in a million years back around the time of her first appearance, not with someone like Bruce. I loved it.
Bruce and Natasha are the two Avengers who didn't choose to be what they are. Their origins are full of pain to themselves and others and red in their ledgers. They both consider themselves to be monstrous, to have horrors in their past they can never make up for. I find it compelling stuff, and it really lets us see into the heart of Natasha in a direct way that we haven't quite before. We know some of this, of course, but seeing her fear and doubt for real, not weaponised, not for show, just her, is powerful.
(Sidenote: we get a a lot about Steve and Tony's conflicts and journeys about their identities as heroes, and there's some of that in this film with Clint, about choosing to be an Avenger and the significance of that. What it means to be an Avenger is significant for all five of them! Then there's Thor. And *Thor's* conflict is over whether or not to be King of Asgard while he defends the Nine Realms, and I feel like him being an Avenger is his community outreach volunteering project at the weekends. Go see Jane, volunteer with the locals, that's a lovely day off from saving the universe. God love you, Thor, you rainbow-infused space unicorn.)
Then there's the moment of temptation for Natasha, that tantalising thought of what if they did just go, just quit, draw a line under it and go somewhere else and be someone new. The end of Cap 2 already started Natasha off on something of an identity crisis, with every cover blown and the ideals she was working for destroyed with the downfall of SHIELD. I think it's more than understandable that there's something appealing in just letting it all go and starting over. It's often Bruce's MO, after all, and it's a fantasy with power.
"I adore you. But I need the other guy."
But of course it's just a fantasy. Because Natasha Romanoff is a big damn hero and she's going to save the world, no matter what the cost. So she does something awful -- she takes away Bruce's choice. And she knows what a betrayal that is, and it's amazing. She could have tried to persuade him, they could have had a long drawn out argument, but there isn't time, so she does what she has to do. She knows there's no way back, that even after the fight is over and even if they both survive, he might never forgive her for this. She does it anyway.
She chooses, and it has real consequences - there's no happy reunion, at the end of the film the Hulk's just gone who knows where, and Natasha stays behind so she can train the next generation of Avengers, because that's who she is. It's really, really sad. It makes me really love her a lot.
You know, I get it wasn't to everyone's taste! That's cool! But I think there's a lot of great stuff to be mined there for fanworks and I hope that people will, rather than that sad thing that often happens where we as a fandom talk about the ladies a bit but then go back to making things pretty much exclusively about the dudes. Give me Natasha fic, internet!
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