This is not a troll, just an opinion.
As the "Black Widow" ScarJo is just there for eye candy and shock value.
Yeah I have to agree with you. As much as it was nice to look at her, at the end of the day she was little more than a plot device that distracted from the main characters and performed tasks that should have been given to Pepper Potts.
(Eg: - Pepper is approached by Fury to keep an eye on him and help him with his condition. Then she somehow obtains some magic password to reboot War Machine remotely at the end.)
This would have been more consistent with how she was used in the first film, would have given Pepper more to do rather than stand in the background and whine the whole fim. The kiss at the end felt forced when Tony & Pepper bareley interacted and he spent most of the film oglling Black Widow in front of her.
I undertand people getting excited about the whole Marvel Universe angle, but with everything else going on and the number of new characters for the audience to follow (Nick Fury, Whiplash, Hammer and even Rhodes to an extent), it seemed a little fanboy-indulgent to include BW as token superhero that filled no role.
Furthermore the character felt clumsy & contrived- why was she hitting onto Tony so brazenly when she was going to reval her role a day later anyway? What was the confrontation with Pepper all about and how come it was left unresolved? And what's her job again? She's a paralegal / notary but accepted a job as a PA? -why would you do that, it's not the greatest career move no matter who your boss is.
But most of all there was no payoff - she was a mysterious 'girl with no name' that we never got to know and the only development was that she beat up a bunch of guys at the end - but her kick-ass abilities were established in her first scene so this was no great suprise. And the fight scene was a little redundant considering we had no emotional stake in her. I mean lets get real - if one of those guards had shot her would any of the audience (who wasnt a comic fan) really care? No we wanted to see what was going on with Tony.
A sexy distraction agreed, but like I said - a little self indulgent and I think the film would have been leaner without her.