‘Black Widow’ delivers another big-screen Marvel moment

Above: Scarlett Johansson stars in "Black Widow," which opens on Friday. (Photo/Walt Disney Studios)

Friday’s blockbuster wannabe is “Black Widow,” the Marvel Comics character played by Scarlett Johansson.

Wait, what? Didn’t “Black Widow” die in the 2019 film “Avengers: Endgame”?

Well, yeah – take a deep breath – but she had to go back into the past to do so, searching in an alternative timeline for one of the Infinity Stones – the so-called Soul Stone – where she meets Red Skull who tells her someone needs to die before the stone can be obtained, a task that falls to her so that her buddy Hawkeye (aka Clint Barton, played by Jeremy Renner) can correct the time “blip” that set the whole movie in motion and be reunited with his family and so that the other Avengers in the future can then go on and defeat the intergalactic threat Thanos … or (gasp, gasp) something like that.

You know time travel and alternate realities. Anything goes.

Anyway, “Black Widow” is set between 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War” and 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War.”

“Black Widow”: Our hero finds herself pursued by figures from her past. As a consequence, she is reunited with her former family unit – parental figures played by David Harbour and Rachel Weisz, a younger sibling played by Florence Pugh – as they all fight to survive.

With a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 83 percent, the critics are being mostly upbeat. Among the better ones …

Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service: “ ‘Black Widow’ has the look and feel of a globe-trotting spy thriller, and it isn't afraid to puncture some of the ‘Avengers’ mythology, including grappling with what it means to be a ‘hero.’ ”

Charlotte O’Sullivan, London Evening Standard: “There's an art to delaying the inevitable. By the god of thunder, director Cate Shortland demonstrates that art in this Marvel spin-off, which basically functions as a wondrous, two-hour-long goodbye.”

Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle: “Shortland has made a credible action film that also functions as a twisted family portrait as well as a story of a woman coming to terms with her past.”

The final verdict, of course, is up to all of you. So go, and vote with your pocket book.