Black Widow Trailer Review: 8 Ups & 3 Downs

1. The Action Looks Insanely Good

Director Cate Shortland might not have a reputation for action movies yet, but this trailer is a hell of statement of her ability to make them. What we're looking at here is something that seems to blend the best elements of Bourne, Bond and Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Fallout - with a liberal dose of GI Joe (hey, you can't knock the action set-pieces in it, okay?).

The teaser has gone big on action, with hints that we'll see one big jailbreak and a major airbourne set-piece, plus an attack on the modern equivalent of the Red Room facility (we see Red Guardian fighting inside it). And there's more in there as well that suggests that we're going to get a fairly break-neck pace right the way through. And considering the need to deliver a closed-ended story that can't really inspire a direct follow-on sequel because of where it falls on the MCU timeline, that makes sense.

In the space of 2 hours or so, we need to see Nat dealing with the fallout of Civil War, then finding a reason to head back into her past, bring her team together, bust one of them out of prison, encounter Taskmaster, plan the big assault and then somehow get to the position that we find her in in Infinity War when she reappears with Cap and Falcon. That's a lot to ask of any single film and the answer is a hurtling pace, which means lots of action to cover the inevitable lack of exposition.

And now to the negatives...