By Matt Price, Features Editor

Tony Stark hires Natalie as his assistant, but he soon discovers her secret identity is the Black Widow, and must determine if she will be a friend to Iron Man or a foe. Black Widow fares much better in later films, including two Captain America movies and The Avengers, before essentially being reduced to a love.

She's been in a comic-book movie before — some would consider 2001’s “Ghost World” her breakout role — but the costuming is tighter and expectations higher for Scarlett Johansson in “Iron Man 2,” opening May 7.

Johansson plays the Black Widow, who in the comics is a Russian spy-turned-superhero who fights crime in a skintight catsuit. Johansson said she knew from seeing the character and production sketches that she’d be in something that fit her form.

“So I had a freak-out moment, but then it only lasted about a half a day and then it’s like, ‘Suck it up,’” she said while promoting the film at Comic-Con. “You’ve got to just do it and so I never turned back after that. I just went, like, full force and did it.”

“Iron Man 2” is the sequel to the highly successful 2008 film “Iron Man,” which starred Robert Downey Jr. as weapons manufacturer Tony Stark. When Stark is kidnapped, he’s forced to create a suit of armor to escape — and to keep his injured heart beating.

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Johansson is an addition for the sequel as Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow.

“We don’t know necessarily whether the character is villainous,” she said. “She does have a dark past, and I think that she is very seductive and distracting and we are .. not sure exactly where she's coming from and what her intentions are necessarily.”

Johansson said the Black Widow uses a smorgasbord of fighting styles, all of which needed to work in conjunction with the costume.

“One thing obviously important for my character is that the costume moves,” she said. “You know the character is an expert of hand-to-hand combat. She’s a mixed martial artist. She comes from a dance background. There’s some, like, gymnastics thrown in. It’s kind of everything all thrown into one big sort of fighting machine, so a big part of me is, like, ‘Can I move in this? Can I run in it?’”

She said ultimately, intensive training and repetition prevailed.

“You just have to put in the hours,” she said. “That’s what I realized, is that just putting in the hours and doing the training and repetition and basically just befriending the stunt team and spending all day, every day, just over and over and over and over until you sell it.”

Johansson said the Black Widow character remains mysterious in “Iron Man 2.”

“This movie is not about revealing the Black Widow identity,” Johansson said. “Hopefully if the character continues on, whether that be through ‘Avengers’ or something like that, we’ll be able to explore more of her past.”

“The Avengers” is the big Marvel movie that is planned to join the stars of the Marvel Comics films “Iron Man,” “Thor” and “The First Avenger: Captain America” together. Joss Whedon (“Serenity”) was recently reported to be in final negotiations to direct that film.

Johansson is signed on for multiple Marvel films, and could become part of the “Avengers” team.

“I didn't go into this going ‘Oh this is the last I ever want to see this character,’” she said. “I would love to see the character come back and, as I was saying, kind of reveal more about herself.”

She said usually actors in a film just have one shot to connect with the audiences as a character over a two-hour segment.

“So for me to be able to bring something like this back and kind of develop the character is exciting,” she said. “And something that we don’t normally have the opportunity to do as actors.”

Johansson said that even though new characters have been added for “Iron Man 2” — including her Black Widow, Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer and Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash — she felt like it all balanced out well in the end.

“I think the fans will be really excited to kind of be taken on all these different journeys,” she said. “They all really play into one another and it doesn't feel like a lot of different films coming together. It really feels like an ensemble.”

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The final trailer for Marvel's Black Widow has just been released, and it seems to reveal more about the film's new Marvel supervillain, Taskmaster. For those not familiar, Taskmaster's primary 'power' is having what are known as photographic reflexes, which allow the villain to copy any physical feat he observes. Previous Black Widow trailers have already hinted at Taskmaster having learned quite a few moves from The Avengers - including Black Panther's claws, Captain America's shield skills, and Hawkeye's uncanny aim with a bow and arrow. However, the final Black Widow trailer reveals that Taskmaster has also been studying one key piece of Natasha Romanoff's history: her big Black Widow debut in Iron Man 2!

Taskmaster learning #BlackWidow moves from her 'Iron Man 2' fight and then using them? pic.twitter.com/RT1GF6cnad

— Lights, Camera, Pod (@LightsCameraPod) March 9, 2020

As you can see in the tweet above, when Black Widow's sister Yelena (Florence Pugh) is giving the monologue about Taskmaster, we see the villain watch a massive TV screen, on which we see Scarlett Johansson's big action sequence from Iron Man 2 playing. Clearly, Taskmaster is getting ready to take on Natasha Romanoff, arguably the greatest warrior the Black Widow program ever produced.

If you (somehow) don't know, Iron Man 2 introduced Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff as a SHIELD undercover operative assigned to masquerade as Tony Stark's personal secretary. However, when the situation gets hectic in act three, it's up to Natasha to storm the H.A.M.M.E.R. facility to free Rhodey's War Machine armor from Ivan Vanko's control. Fans hilariously remember how the scene played out: as Black Widow is kicking ass like a ninja goddess, Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan is just trying to keep pace by taking out one H.A.M.M.E.R. goon. After that one scene, Marvel fans all over the world were in love with Johansson as Black Widow - and that love has never died (even though the character has).

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We've already seen teases in the other Black Widow trailers of what happens when Taskmaster battles Natasha using her own martial arts moves. Needless to say, it's going to be one hell of a fight!

Upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1st, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier August 20th, The Eternals on November 6th, WandaVision on December 20th, Loki in Spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, Spider-Man 3 on July 16, 2021, What If…? in Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021, and Black Panther 2 on May 6, 2022. Marvel Studios Disney+ series without release dates include Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, and She-Hulk.

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