Is Black Widow More Action Packed Than Marvel TV Shows Like Loki?
From a high-damage chase through Budapest to a free-fall fight scene, every spectacle in the new movie Black Widow is an attempt by Marvel Studios to give paying customers more bang for their buck at theaters. But on the small screen, the Disney -owned company is getting more granular, devoting multi-part series to less famous characters and taking some surprising stylistic leaps. This translates to deep dives into superhero psychology and, well, a lot more talking in Marvels three streaming shows that have premiered since January: WandaVision,The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki.  Black Widow is the studios first theatrical release since the rollout of these series, and its first in two years, thanks to delays due to the pandemic. In that time, the clout of movies as a whole has been called into question, especially as more studios drop their releases on streaming platforms and in multiplexes at the same time. Even Black Widow premiered simultaneously on Disney+ (for an extra fee of $30). One way to measure the contrasts between movies and televisionand Marvels strategy for locking in fans on two frontsis by using a stopwatch. The Wall Street Journal calculated the amount of screen time devoted to action in Black Widow versus the amount of action in its three Disney+ series. The tally included any burst of intensity lasting longer than a few seconds (when something exploded, when someone took flight) but some scenes required judgement calls (we ruled out a WandaVision sequence featuring floating kitchenware).