Scarlett Johansson admits that joining a comic book franchise — and taking on a butt-kicking character like Black Widow — was something of a challenge. “This was a whole new bag of tricks for me. It was a lot to immerse myself in,” she says of “Iron Man 2.” “Training like that is hard. It’s a lot of work. You basically suck until you get it right.”
But she was committed to getting it right — and doing as much of the stunts herself as possible. “You’re asked to completely abandon everything that you think about this person and go with the story,” she says, putting herself in the audience’s shoes. “And then all of a sudden they do a fight sequence and you only see the back of their head and you go, ‘Wait a minute! I want the money shot! I want to see them fight! I didn’t want to be the back of the head.’”
One aspect of the film that Johansson was particularly thrilled about was what was left out about Black Widow. “We know nothing about her romantically in this film,” she points out. “It is refreshing. There is something nice about a character being dedicated to something other than finding love.”
Of course, if there’s going to be more Black Widow on screen, that may come up. “She never does have a relationship with Iron Man, certainly not in the comics anyway,” Johansson says. “Daredevil, she does, so you’ll have to talk to Ben Affleck about that.”
