I'm not sure where you would push her social dynamics from here. We've seen her fight for what's right rather than operate in an amoral spy world. In The Winter Soldier, she leaked everything S.H.I.E.L.D. had to the public, in direct contrast to a spy lurking in the shadows. We've seen her have friends and joke. We've seen her in a romance, albeit a sucky one. In Civil War, she chose siding with a friend over pragmatism. Unless they make that SNL romcom a reality or do something equally ridiculous, making the world around her fluffier doesn't seem like it would stretch her. And she should never really lose all of her edge.
The only way I can think of to explore her evolution at this point is to go full circle. Put her back in the amoral spy world to show how human, optimistic, and idealistic she's become in comparison, and to have her struggle to walk the line between doing what she needs to do and falling back into her old life.
I don't think I'd buy her being uncomfortable in spy world, because she never really left. You watch her in Civil War, she's already kinda shown she knows how to play the spy role while being idealistic. You'd have to explain her taking a step backwards, I'd think.
I think the comics give us plenty of great vectors to explore her character further without closing off her circle. Infiltrating the Thunderbolts would test her, because it puts her newfound optimism not against normal spy stuff, but against supervillainy. Her in charge of The Initiative puts her in the role of trainer with charges to protect and mold, and we could get a really cool look at her circle there. The Champions angle, where she sort of has to get into something totally different from her experience: normal life with normal mundane people has something similiar, though that angle hews to close to the SNL skit. The A Force angle, where you give her another thing she hasn't had: female friendship could be cool on its own, or mixed in with one of the others. The Winter Guard angle could show why her being comfortable with the Avengers is a bad thing when that connects with the spy world.
The character is a spy to her core pretending to be an epic superhero, and so she's fundamentally flexible, so you really could throw her in space or in time travel and have a great arc, but I don't think she's enough of a superhero to replace Captain America in the WS formula, and she's too comfortable in the spy world to replace Bourne or Bond in their formulas. Something has to conflict or else it really should be a walk in the park for her, like her intro in Avengers, or taking down Vanko's HQ in IM2.
My main concern is with what would be interesting to me, and I don't claim to speak for the overall audience. However, this depends on three things being true: one, that the movie needs to attract people who aren't already fans of Black Widow, two, that making it lighter would attract those people, and three, that it wouldn't lose people who are fans of Black Widow in the process. For better or worse, she is one of the darkest members of the Avengers, the turn at the end of Civil War not-withstanding.
I do think that assumption one is reasonable. Every other successful superhero movie makes more fans for the character, that the concept itself piques the interest of people who haven't heard of the character. I don't think assumption two is relevant, not using spy tropes doesn't imply whether the alternative is darker or lighter
I do try to guess at the audience. So when every fourth person in every BW movie thread on every superhero movie fan forum is like "What is the point of this movie ever happening?" I take note, because that comes from somewhere.
If it were just about what I want, then I want:
"Red Midnight"
Pitch: 48 Hours meets Aliens
Short version: When the world goes dark, The Black Widow, Natasha Romanova and The Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximoff are the only ones who know how to stop Igor Stanchek, the Radioactive Man from plunging the world into a new, bloody dark age. To stop him, they'll have to travel the world, escaping Stanchek's Winter Guard, deal with Stanchek's dark connection to Natasha's past and help Wanda through the mental strain her growing powers are putting her under.
There's no way a Casino Royale or Mission Impossible re-skin could even compare, this kind of story does everything they hope to do, but also so much more.
BUT if they insist on doing a superheroism-lite MCU film for Black Widow, I think that Mission Impossible is probably the best shot they've got.
I agree, though doesn't Winter Soldier also sort of check off a box there since it had that whole spy/espionage vibe?
Some people don't care. Why not check it off again?
I mostly agree with this but I think you could get a lot more mileage out of the conceit of Budapest than just a 10-minute scene.
Imagine like Mr. & Mrs. Smith meets The Hangover or Rashomon. It could serve as almost a two-in-one BW/Hawkeye film and show not tell why they "remember [it] very differently".
Rashomon does sound interesting, that certainly would make for a very, VERY different kind of BW film. I also like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, though I don't think a Hawkeye/BW film is a good idea. And while you can get a lot of mileage out of them remembering Budapest differently, you can get a lot more mileage out of them remembering her being recruited differently, or characters remembering the Red Room differently, or something that builds to a meaningful climax and not a callback to a joke.
If Mr. and Mrs. Smith is the angle... let Bruce Banner be Mr. Smith.
