Btw I rewatched Black Widow with my sister last night and I don't care what anyone says, that movie had the most terrifying villain in the MCU. "Taskmaster--", she wasn't the actual villain, she was a victim. You may complain over how it wasn't even Tony Masters, I get it, but that's not the point of the post. The villain was Dreykov. "But he's weak" oh yeah physically. He's not a purple alien or a crazy robot yeah. He's still terrifying. He was a human trafficker. He kidnapped little girls. He brainwashed them, he forcibly sterilized them, taking their choice of whether they wanted to be mothers or not —Natasha wanted kids, Yelena didn't but the point is the choice. He groomed them and turned them into killers, also had them trained into using seduction and sex as a weapon (you know what that probably means), literally chemically subjugated them so they couldn't even refuse. The ones who weren't useful enough for him or rebelled against him? He had them killed. He ruined thousands and thousands of lives.
He was a wealthy guy with huge political influence who viewed women as expendable resources to do his bidding and nothing else. Even his own daughter. So yeah, that's why I found him more terrifying than other villains. Because no purple alien with a gauntlet is going to come to kill people. But there are a lot of motherfuckers like Dreykov in real life. He's a realistic villain. That's why.
I really wanted to like that movie. As you say, the villain and the themes are great, I just really wish they’d done more with them. Dreykov himself is played completely seriously, but he only really shows up in the climax. So for most of the movie, whenever Nat and Yelena try to really reckon with the horror of what was done to them, it’s usually undercut with some stupid joke.
Now I know the MCU has always been quippy, but it was nowhere near this bad pre-Endgame. Compare the scene in Age of Ultron where Nat tells Banner about the Red Room. Now whatever people think of the actual content of that conversation (a lot of people like to miss the point on it but that’s a tangent for later) you can’t deny it’s played dead straight. Not a single cringe joke in sight. In Black Widow, a potentially interesting idea about the cycle of abuse inherent in Nat’s parent being victims even as they offer their “daughters” up to the same system is buried under sitcom-family jokes and Red Guardian being a buffoon. When the Guardians of the Galaxy can treat a similar plotline with more gravitas you know you’ve done something wrong.
I also think the fact the Red Room uses chemicals rather than the complex conditioning alluded to elsewhere in the franchise kind of pulls the movie’s teeth. Instead of exploring how these little girls can be so thoroughly warped as to be convinced that mass murder is right, and how difficult it would be to undo that, now they’re just straight up mind controlled, complete with magic off switch.
TL;DR, you’re right, but I wish the filmmakers realized that.