Black Widow, Scarce Resources And High-Stakes Stories : Monkey See : NPR This is a really good essay on the Black Widow problem in the new Avengers movie. Taken by itself, it's not actually terrible – the metaphors she represents are worth pulling into the light and talking about, and there are reasons why it has to be a female character that has to given them – but the problem is that there simply aren't enough prominent women characters in this kind of movie for us to take them in isolation. And that, I guess, feel like the most nuanced criticism one could level …