#Taskmaster Can Imitate These Iconic MCU Superheroes in Black Widow

Black Widow villain, Taskmaster, remains a mysterious presence. Hidden under a mask, the skilled bad guy will put Natasha and her comrades through their paces, with the identity of Taskmaster sure to provide one of the movie’s biggest shocks. One thing we do know though is how supervillain manages to be so formidable, imitating his opponents’ fighting style in order to mimic them and learn how to use it against them in order to always stay a step ahead. Discussing the character in the Black Widow: The Official Movie Special Book, Fight Coordinator James Young had this to say about the battles between Natasha and Taskmaster.

“Taskmaster is, by far, the hardest character that we’ve had to design for because you finally have a character that can look at what you’re doing, replicate it, and use it right back at you. And if you used it again, he will be ready for you. So, with the story for Taskmaster, we try to have a story for the fights. You see in the bridge fight that Natasha gets close to him and she tries to do the Widow move. But he’s seen it before. He’s done his research and completely just stuffs her! So, the hardest part for Taskmaster was to keep the fight engaging because it’s easy to replicate choreography, but we have to have story pieces around it.”

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Young also confirmed several heavy hitting superheroes that Taskmaster will be emulating in Black Widow, which includes several of her fellow Avengers.

“For me, it’s great what Natasha has to do during the bridge fight. She’s got to look at this person in front of her. What do they want? In that fight, Natasha has to ask questions the whole time. She doesn’t know why Taskmaster is there. Taskmaster has studied the Avengers; in the bridge fight you can see that. You see flashes of Captain America, you see flashes of Bucky, you see flashes of Iron Man, and you see Spider-Man in this sequence. How do you fight someone that can embody all the Avengers at once? The hard part of the fights is to make those moments read, but it’s the moments you’re going to remember. My favorite moment from that fight is when Natasha takes a beating just to get that grappling hook on Taskmaster’s leg.”

Black Widow will provide some insight into the origins of one of the founding Avengers, even revealing details regarding the famous mission in Budapest. At birth, the Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanova, is given to the KGB, where she is groomed to become the ultimate operative. When the U.S.S.R. breaks up, the government tries to kill her, before the action moves to present-day New York, where she is now working as a freelance operative. Now, Natasha Romanoff suddenly finds herself alone and forced to confront a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Romanoff must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.

Black Widow stars Scarlet Johansson reprising the role of Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, William Hurt as Thaddeus Ross, Ray Winstone as Dreykov, O.T. Fagbenle as Rick Mason, and Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff.

Thanks to Marvel Studios pushing back their entire big screen line-up, Black Widow is now set to open on May 7th, 2021, more than a year after it was originally scheduled to be released, with rumors continuing to circulate that the movie will hit Disney+ alongside a theatrical release. This comes to us from Marvel’s Black Widow: The Official Movie Special Book.

Topics: Black Widow