By Garry Maddox
No arrogance. No hubris. Not even a whisper of big-noting.
If stepping up to the Hollywood big league to make Marvel’s Black Widow has changed Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland, she is doing a good job of hiding it as the superhero blockbuster starring Scarlett Johansson and reputedly costing more than $US200 million ($263 million) is finally about to open.
Scarlett Johansson (front) as Natasha Romanoff with Florence Pugh as Yelena in Black Widow. Credit: Marvel
The director of three films about vulnerable young women finding strength in trauma – Somersault (2004), Lore (2012) and Berlin Syndrome (2017) – even has a joke at her own expense when she mentions first talking to Johansson “on the zoom”. She pauses, then adds, “I sound so old when I say ‘on the zoom’.”
Shortland’s feet also seem firmly planted on the ground when asked – on the zoom, as it happens – what she has coming up. “I’m seeing my daughter do her dance performance tonight,” she says brightly.
Black Widow is the 24th movie in what’s known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which includes three of the eight highest-grossing movies in cinema history: Avengers: End Game (2019), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and The Avengers (2012). But in case you think it’s a big deal that it’s the first one with a solo female director – the only other woman director so far was Anna Boden directing Captain Marvel (2019) with Ryan Fleck – Shortland casually notes, “I’m not anyone’s guru”.
Nine years ago, she cycled to her local cafe in Sydney’s inner west for an interview with the Herald and talked candidly about how traumatising she found all the attention – the interviews, the photos, the unsolicited comments at industry events – as Somersault became a hit then swept the Australian film awards.
“I really felt I didn’t want to make films any more,” she said at the time. “I’m interested in ideas and storytelling, not in getting my photo taken.”
Director Cate Shortland (left) with David Harbour, Florence Pugh and O.T. Fagbenle from Black Widow at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2019.Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
So after directing the telemovie The Silence (2006), Shortland and her filmmaker husband Tony Krawitz left for South Africa, where he was working on a script, and volunteered in a township to help HIV and tuberculosis sufferers. She took a long break from film-making, adopting son Jonathan then later daughter Ruby.
Her next two films when they returned to Australia were both adventures: she shot the German-language Lore in Germany even though she didn’t speak the language, then returned to make Berlin Syndrome. But nothing like the adventure of stepping into the Marvel universe.
Shot in the UK, Norway, Hungary, Morocco and the US, Black Widow’s big-budget action scenes include a shootout as a plane tries to take off, a helicopter raid on a Russian prison in the snow, motorbike, car and foot chases and intensely choreographed fights – one while hurtling from above the clouds to earth.
After seven appearances in Avengers movies starting with Iron Man 2 (2010), a damaged Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow (Johansson), is reunited with her estranged and somewhat eccentric Russian family in a story set back in the Marvel timeline.
With sassy sister Yelena (Florence Pugh), comically overbearing father Alexei (David Harbour) and intense mother Melina (Rachel Weisz), she hunts for the creator of the Black Widow program that kidnaps girls, cuts out their reproductive organs and trains them to be elite programmed assassins.
It takes the superhero movie into the #MeToo era, with villain Dreykov (Ray Winstone) exploiting what he says is “the only resource the world has too much of − girls”.
While Marvel reportedly canvassed more than 65 directors, Shortland landed the job after connecting with Johansson, who is also an executive producer.
Scarlett Johansson in Black WidowCredit: Marvel
“We found something in each other that we wanted to explore,” she says. “She’s a really intelligent, vibrant collaborator and I wanted to work with her when I started speaking to her ... And the same for her: she wanted to work with me.”
Shortland describes it as a gentle discussion.
“We just explored what had happened in our lives to get us to where we were and some of the things that would be interesting to explore in the film,” she says.
One of those things was Johansson’s realisation – as she has noted in interviews – that Black Widow had been hypersexualised as “a piece of ass” in the early Marvel movies and that she wanted the character to evolve now that she had grown herself. “I’m a mum and my life is different,” Johansson has said. “As a woman, I’m in a different place in my life.”
Shortland wanted to play with the idea of Romanoff as sexy femme fatale rather than perpetuate it.
“What’s really great for me is Scarlett has become progressively more political and she’s taken ownership of the character and the character has developed with her,” she says. “By the time we were making this film, we were able to comment on all this stuff. We were able to embrace and poke fun at it.
Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow.Credit: Marvel
“I don’t disagree with Scarlett but for me it’s not useful to think in terms of femme fatale or superhero because I was trying to get into the detail of the character and her sexuality is [just] one aspect of her.”
Shortland says preparation helped the step up to such a huge production. She created a series of 10-minute short films with editors to play to the filmmaking team, made a book of images and had deep discussions with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, Johansson and executive producers Victoria Alonso and Louis D’Esposito about the essence of each scene and what they wanted to achieve.
“By the time you’re shooting it, it’s an army putting it in place,” Shortland says. “What you have to do in amongst that is create a really quiet, safe space for the actors so that they can impro and find the joy in it and find the freshness”
So what was in those short films?
David Harbour as the comically overbearing Alexei in Black Widow.Credit: Marvel
“One was about movement within the army and guerilla warfare,” she says. “One was about the universe and transcendence and things like avalanches and dust storms – the ether. We talked about spirituality because we know what happens to [Romanoff] in Endgame.
“I wanted this film to be transcendent, so I used fireflies to talk about this beautiful light that she holds inside her and that’s part of who she is.”
Shortland made more short films featuring her favourite fight scenes to show the team how she wanted to portray Romanoff’s humanity. She was seeking grittiness, beauty and spectacle but also wanted audiences to feel the punches and see the bruises on her.
“I wanted to talk to women about their vulnerability,” she says. And for one key fight, “I said to the choreographers, ‘It has to feel like a woman being attacked on the way to the train station’.”
As huge as Black Widow is, Shortland says it is as personal as all her other movies.
“It deals with family and the idea of forgiveness,” she says. “We have to forgive the parts of ourselves that we’re ashamed of. And it often takes a community to help us do that.”
Shortland says she aimed to listen, stay open, be herself and realise that was enough while making the movie. “I’ve always felt like an imposter and on this job I didn’t,” she says. “And I think that liberated me hugely.”
Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (left) and Florence Pugh as Yelena in Black Widow.Credit: Jay Maidment
So what has directing Black Widow meant for her?
“I feel calmer,” Shortland says. “I feel like a calmer person because I did it. It was really hard. I was able to keep being a mum while I did it because I have an amazing partner. I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of this. We all stayed friends. We all still have fun together.
“And the studio was human. People talk to me about the Marvel machine [but] it’s like this bunch of beautiful film geeks and that was really fun to be around.”
When COVID-19 forced Black Widow to be postponed time after time for more than a year, Shortland says she felt sad for the media who kept publicising the movie.
“I didn’t feel sad for us because I was in LA and there were thousands of cases every day,” she says. “I was just more concerned about my daughter doing 10 months of Zoom school and keeping her sane.”
Asked how she feels about the movie finally being released, Shortland fires back one word: “Joyous.”
Black Widow is in cinemas on July 8 and on Disney+ for a premium fee on July 9.
“I want it to be empowering for everybody”
Cate Shortland has joined a generation of women who are directing superhero movies for Marvel and DC Comics.
Patty Jenkins led the way with the first Wonder Woman, which took a triumphant $US820 million at the worldwide box office in 2017, apparently alerting Hollywood to the fact that not only did females want to watch superhero movies, they could also direct them.
Director Patty Jenkins (left) with actress Gal Gadot on the set of Wonder Woman 1984.Credit: AP
Jenkins has since followed up with Wonder Woman 1984 and is down to direct Wonder Woman 3.
Other women since hired include Cathy Yan (Birds of Prey), Anna Boden with Ryan Fleck (Captain Marvel), Oscar winner Chloe Zhao (Eternals), Nia DaCosta (Captain Marvel 2), Ava DuVernay (New Gods), Olivia Wilde (reportedly Spider-Woman) and S.J. Clarkson (Madame Web).
While the percentage of women directing Hollywood movies remains low, the comic book studios are leading the way.
Shortland says that with Black Widow, she wanted to make an honest movie about a woman struggling with her identity who does not feel like a superhero at the start of the movie.
Brie Larson in Captain Marvel.Credit: Disney-Marvel Studios
“Black Panther, even Wonder Woman, gave us courage to say people will take this film seriously,” she says. “They don’t have to see a white man up there to identify with or go on the journey with.”
So does she want Black Widow − like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel − to be empowering for young women?
“I want it to be empowering for everybody,” Shortland says. “It talks to the bullied. It talks to the people who don’t have a voice. I suppose these people matter to me. And I think women are often in that situation.”