SNL And ScarJo Perfectly Rip On Outdated Rom-Com Tropes With Their ‘Black Widow’ Trailer

Avengers: Age of Ultron might be doing well at the box office but it’s blown a hole in Joss Whedon’s long-cultivated Good Guy Feminist image. Jeremy Renner’s interview fuckery and sneaky rape jokes aside, the movie’s been criticised for reducing Black Widow, one of Marvel’s most recognisable female characters, into a doe-eyed Love Interest whose only role is to “comfort” the Brooding Tormented Dude she inevitably ends up falling for (The Hulk, in this case).

Marvel in general haven’t passed the gender-equality test with flying colours lately either; a chock-full release schedule mapped out until 2019 only has one female protagonist, Captain Marvel, and there’s a noticeable lack of Black Widow merch out there for young female fans.

It’s against this backdrop (and the money-fuelled orgy of pointless testosterone that was Mayweather vs. Pacquiao) that Scarlett Johansson made her fourth appearance as the host of SNL, and the sketch of the night took a dig at the reluctance of the superhero genre to engage women by making Black Widow the centrepiece of a Hollywood exec’s idea of a female-centric movie: a typical New York rom-com.

A soundtrack featuring James Blunt and Regina Spektor? Check. A klutzy, klutzy protagonist? Check. A trio of sassy gay friends who only exist to provide advice to the main character? You bet your ass.

“The only thing missing in Black Widow’s life…was love.” Too real. Waaaay too real.