Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules
still apply.
- This thread is for talking about the live-action films, TV shows, animated works, and related content that use the Marvel brand, currently owned by Disney.
- While mild digressions are okay, discussion of the comic books should go in this thread
. Extended digressions may be thumped as off-topic.
- Spoilers for new releases should not be discussed without spoiler tagging for at least two weeks. Rather, each title should have a dedicated thread where that sort of conversation is held. We can mention new releases in a general sense, but please be courteous to people who don't want to be spoiled.
If you're posting tagged spoilers, make sure that the film or series is clearly identified outside the spoiler tagging. People need to know what will be spoiled before they choose to read the post.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I've turned around and do think that MCU Taskmaster can be reworked into something more Truer to the Text, it's just someone has to actually put the effort there to do so. What I'd also want is for whoever tries to fix Taskmaster to not go the easy route of doing so at the expense of the first movie. I don't like the comparisons to X-Men Origins Deadpool because that was a mistake that needed to be erased. Scrubbed from the record, only referred to disparagingly, and overall treated as a misstep and a black mark. MCU Taskmaster isn't that bad, there's things to work with, they just have to be...worked with.
x7: The references in her fighting style could probably be more explicit but yeah, the references there are still clear, as very evident by the rather thorough breakdown on her trope page. If anything Taskmaster's sword-and-shield fighting style are more unique staples that were completely missed - MCU Taskmaster doesn't pull her sword out until like the last 10 minutes.
All that said IMO the critical and fan response was surprisingly cold and brutal when it came to the fight scenes in Black Widow in general. The way people talk you'd think the CGI and green-screening were blaringly underbaked and that the entire finale was just 30 minutes of mindless noise. And Taskmaster quite frankly doesn't show enough how much the response eviscerates her.
Edited by Watchtower on Oct 17th 2021 at 11:13:54 AM
Regarding Black Widow, I enjoyed the movie when I watched it and I don't have that much issue with the treatment of Taskmaster in itself (although Tobias makes very good points), but it will be disappointing if that is the only MCU appearance of the character. And not one Truer to the Text.
Something that did rub me the wrong way though, especially because of Nat's ultimate fate - I kind of felt unsettled during the movie with how much physical beating Nat goes through. Like I know the intent is presumably to be grittier, but it sometimes feels voyeuristic.
And it does give me a bad taste in my mouth that she defeats the villain by letting him beat the shit out of her and degrade her. Seems like some of Whedon's ideas that shouldn't have returned did.
And as a side note, because of that "grittiness", there's like two notable scenes of Nat surviving a fall from a really high height that are just completely implausible for a normal human, even in a super-hero universe.
Related to future appearances of Taskmaster, something I'm conflicted about - spoiling just in case - so in light of all Nat went through and her ultimately being fridged, I don't know how to feel about the people she freed ending up doing villainous things voluntarily. I mean I guess she gave them a choice, which is important, but it cheapens her sacrifice. And it's not just the hypothetical with Antonia, Yelena ends up doing wetwork for Val and in Shang Chi, one of the random rescued Widows, "Helen", is fighting on an illegal blood sport circuit, and I would assume also joins the refashioned Ten Rings at the end.
You’d think she’d develop a resistance to fall damage at this rate
Therefore I propose she’s not actually dead, she faked her death like she does a lot
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
I don't think the Soul Stone would accept Faking the Dead. It appears to be very rigid on the sacrifice.
It does irritate me a little bit that we still don't really know what the Soul Stone does in the MCU. Not even What If...? gave us any new details.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."I still believe MCU Taskmaster might be easier to rerail into Finnesse rather than actual Taskmaster.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."We know exactly what the Soul Gem does. It's a fridge to stuff female characters into.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Thanos, slapping the top of the Soul Gem: "This bad boy can hold so many women"
Forever liveblogging the Avengers@Bocaj Well the prison cell that eternally reminds him of his mistake was due to his brother Zuras. An act of of absolute pettiness to forever remind his brother that he was right.
The eternal exclusion though that’s a brutal act done by the Eternals society. The uni-mind which is when all the Eternals decide on something decided on social exclusion on him and even Ikaris shed no tears for him. Which again is a lot as Mentor tried to beg “Please I no longer believe in my cause anymore it was all a failure don’t do this.”
Pretty brutal stuff.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."She worked for AIM because it was a branch of AIM that was specifically "fuck Hank Pym for being Ultron now" and since Finesse was one of his students, she wanted to. Help put him out of his misery.
She quit AIM and joined Nadia Wasp's GIRL group when she realized AIM was still AIM thus jerks.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersA bit late, but the problem with future films course-correcting Taskmaster to be more in-line with her comics counterpart as a cocky, funny mercenary is that what little glimpse of her true personality we do get at the end of the film doesn't believably set up for that, in my opinion.
Her reaction is a relieved, desperate "Is he gone...?" that sounds like she's begging for it to all be over so she can go live the normal life she was robbed of alongside all the other Widows. Not like somebody eager to jump into the criminal underworld marketing herself as a supervillain-for-hire or combat instructor.
Maybe time will change her demeanor, but nothing in the ending of Black Widow sets it up that way so it'd feel pretty jarring regardless.
Also yeah her fight scenes were good but we already saw all of them in the trailer footage, so I can't help but feel somewhat robbed in that department too.
Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Oct 17th 2021 at 4:36:52 AM
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!There have been more extreme personality shifts in the MCU so I doubt many would complain about future Taskmaster’s personality being at odds with a few lines from a previous film.
Zola used to be a scared reluctant minion, then he became a more ruthless and authoritarian villain than the Red Skull himself.
Thor used to be solemn and glowering, then he got redone into a well-meaning bumbler who makes it up along the way.
Doctor Strange was an egotistical maverick, now he’s an egotistical Chessmaster.
Strange would just use the time stone to try every sequence of moves until he found a winning combination. Yes, that's an absurd amount of determination when you consider even our best minds with supercomputers haven't found a way to solve chess yet, but this is the guy who stalemated Dormammu and checked over fourteen million timelines to find a way to defeat Thanos.
Edited by FGHIK on Oct 17th 2021 at 4:19:15 AM

Re: the Eternals punishment of Mentor. Wow that’s excessive. Couldn’t they just castrate him if the worry is him boning up a new Thanos?
Forever jail and rubbing his face in how many people Thanos kills seems excessive punishment for something he didn't have a lot of control over
Forever liveblogging the Avengers