Yahoo News Director Who Turned Down ‘Black Widow’ Drags Marvel Movies for ‘Very Ugly’ Sound: ‘The Way Music Is Used Is Actually Horrible’
Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel (“Zama”) was one of several female directors courted by Marvel Studios to direct “Black Widow,” the comic book tentpole centered on Scarlett Johansson’s assassin. Martel revealed in 2018 that she turned down the project after a meeting with Marvel in which the studio told her to focus on character and not the action scenes. In a recent interview with The Film Stage, Martel confessed she never ended up seeing “Black Widow.”
“No, no, no — I didn’t see ‘Black Widow.’ I tried to,” Martel said. “They contacted a great number of female directors. I never would have imagined that Marvel could contact and bring together a pool of directors and I would be a part of it; I never thought that would be possible. I would have loved to make a film with them but I would have had to provide something that I would like to see in that world.”
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Martel added, “It turns out some of the Marvel films are available on planes so I’ve seen a few. I find the sound in them is absolutely in very poor taste, the visual effects and the sound of the effects…It’s the selection of the sounds that they’re connecting to the effects, which is actually very ugly. And the way the music is used is actually horrible.”
“Black Widow” ended up being directed by Cate Shortland. Martel told The Daily Pioneer in 2018 that her interest in the Marvel film didn’t go beyond her first meeting with the studio because she was turned off by the company’s offer.
“I received an e-mail from Marvel for a meeting,” Martel said at the time. “So I went to the [Marvel 10th Anniversary] reunion. I actually signed this thing where I can’t talk about that reunion. Marvel and other such production houses are trying to involve more female filmmakers…What they told me in the meeting was ‘we need a female director because we need someone who is mostly concerned with the development of Scarlett Johansson’s character.’”
Martel continued, “They also told me, ‘Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that.’ I was thinking, well I would love to meet Scarlett Johansson but also I would love to make the action sequences.”
Disney delayed the release of “Black Widow” several times during the COVID pandemic before deciding to release the film in theaters and on Disney+ at the same time in July 2021. The film grossed $379 million at the worldwide box office.
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