WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BLACK WIDOW. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE
Goodness, when I woke up this morning I never thought I would be surrounded by hordes of Taskmaster fans on social media. After all, where have all of these people been for the past couple of decades since we’ve been making mainstream comic book movies?
For the uninitiated, Taskmaster is the bad guy in Black Widow that you see copying moves that have the anti-hero fight like Captain America, Black Panther, and Hawkeye. That is his superpower. He’s a neat character in the comic books.
Now a lot of fanboys are mad because we didn’t get sharp witted Tony Masters under the helmet and instead got a brainwashed daughter of the movie’s main villain.
Those who are being critical of the villain might think they’re right. But when you think further, they don’t want this version of the Taskmaster. They just think they do.
Let’s think about it. These girls were being kidnapped. Brainwashed. Sent out to kill. And then forced to commit suicide.
Do you think there is any sort of villain redemption from that which would be digestible? The answer is no.
They could not give us the Taskmaster we know. This is also one of the weaker MCU villains, but we’ve had lame bad guys before. I thought he looked too much like Snakeyes from G.I Joe, which the audience just watched a trailer for prior to the movie.
But hey, this is better than what we thought we were getting, which was a brainwashed Mileena being the killer in black.
Black Widow is still a solid action movie (my review HERE). And a middle of the pack Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. The stinger at the end of the credits is required viewing.
Don’t let some frustrated fan boys ruin a movie for you because of a villain they slept on for years and finally decided they wanted to be angry about.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they tried again down the road and got it done better than we ever thought they would.