Since the first Thunderbolts* The trailer came out that sharp fans of Marvel Cinematic Universe have theorized about a certain gap between the cast list and the published footage. Black widow The villain Antonia Dreykov, also known as TaskMaster (Olga Kurylenko), appears on the poster and marketing of the film, but is missing noticeably in other scenes and recordings in the advertising material, which leads to speculation that its role in the film is quite minimal. That was true – although original Thunderbolts* Screenwriter Eric Pearson (Black widowPresent Fantastic four: First steps) tells Polygon that he wrote a much better bow for her.
He also says that he only found out how radically her role had been changed when he was sitting in an early demonstration and watching the film that “shocked hell”.
[Ed. note: Significant spoilers ahead about Taskmaster’s situation in Thunderbolts*.]
Image: Marvel Studios via Everett Collection
Black widow Sets up Antonia as the Cyborg -ized, Mind-Controlled Daughter and Ultimate Weapon of Dreykov (Ray Winstone), The General Behind Both the Soviet Version of the Super Soldier Serum Project that Produced Red Guardian (David Harbour) and the Torturous Room Program That Turned Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Her Sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) into Super Assassin. Until the end of Black widowDreykov is dead what Antonia leaves to bring her own super assassin capabilities (and the ability to imitate everyone in more profitable work and to serve as mercenary for CIA director and mega-schemer Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
If Valentina is available and there is a possible arrest for her many crimes at an early stage Thunderbolts*She tries to cover her traces by sending all of her employees into a high -security vault at the same time with different information and assassinations in the hope that they will pour out each other. Most of her Mercs – Yelena (from Black widow And Hawkeye), John Walker/US -agent (Wyatt Russell) from The Falcon and the winter soldierand AVA Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) from Ant and the wasp – Everyone survives the first confrontation of the group. Antonia not. Ghost shoots it down. There is no surprise where she survived this encounter, at least not in this film – it seems to die and be burned shortly afterwards.
All of this was a complete surprise for Pearson. “It was decided after my work,” he said to Polygon. “When I sat down to see the first cut, one thing was completely different and shocked me to the hell, and it was. Everything else said, I said:” Yes, that's the film I wrote! “But this decision …”
What Taskmaster was removed from the film, says Pearson, he doesn't know: “You would have to ask [director] Jake screens or [Marvel Studios president] Kevin [Feige] or [co-credited screenwriter] Joanna [Calo]Perhaps. But if I advised, it would be to get the reaction that I had as an audience, like: “Whoa, we increase the missions, we make something drastic very quickly and we all put everyone in the foreground.”
Pearson says that Antonia/Taskmaster survived in the final design of his script for the entire film and was the center of a “fairly large secondary store”. His script had Taskmaster with Ava, who, as we learned, Ant-Man and the waspreceived quantum shift powers in a laboratory accident in which their parents were killed, and was then found by Shield, raised in a laboratory and trained as a weapon. Pearson had the feeling that they would have a lot in common, as people who grew up in laboratories and were checked in this way.
“And Ava, after winning her autonomy in the chronology as a task master, she was a little with a big season, in a way how to freed yourself and her own person,” says Pearson.
He also believes that the presence of the task master has contributed to the fact that some of the tendency of the other characters are obtained into self -pity: “I mean, everyone has suffered a lot of tragedy there,” he says. “But she was a kind of ultimate tragedy. In the old tragedy she was at the top and the other, larger personalities – nobody could get out of line because nobody could say: 'I had worse than you.”
His version of Taskmaster also made it possible to forget a joke about her tendency that she had passed and tried to murder John Walker and go again. “On the comedy side she fought her own memory loss stuff, and there was a gag where she started the fight and forgot that they had come up with and became friends.” He says.
“You would discuss the plan how to get out [of the vault]And she would just be chased again, and they all have to swim together and pull them off and say: 'No, we know each other! We have already had this conversation! '”
Pearson wonders whether a reason why Antonia's lines were broken off was that this gag felt superfluous when the other great friend of the film was made around the film. “This could help another reason why they decided them from the film,” he says. “Bob obviously had memory problems as a large part of his character.”
Comic stories are what they are. There is always the random task master who could return at some point with a unveiling about how she survived this shot in the face: her extremely high-tech armor is part of her power, and we only see the bullet hole in her mask, not in her head. It is unlikely that Marvel Studios would deal with a figure that she killed so openly and abruptly – but hey, Guardian of the galaxy'S Gamora returned from the dead (over time loop Shenanigans), and Tom Hiddleston's Loki has “died” three times (and once a cosmic tree), but apparently it still comes back for Avengers: Doomsday. So it is always possible that she could still appear to hit Walker in the face a few more times. He deserves it.
Thunderbolts* Is now in the cinemas.
