This article contains spoilers for Black Widow.
Black Widow had to wait a decade and then some more to finally get her solo shot at the box office. While Natasha Romanoff is making a killing for Disney, a lot of Marvel fans are not happy with the creative choices regarding the movie’s villain, Taskmaster.
Instead of sticking to his comic book origins, Black Widow's Taskmaster sees Anthony “Tony” Masters get a gender-swapped identity to accommodate a plot written to have Antonia Dreykov, the main villain’s daughter, serve as a mindless envoy from the Red Room. Although that hasn’t stopped Black Widow from getting generally positive reviews, the lack of a proper antagonist has also been pointed out as one of the film’s weakest points.
This topic was specifically addressed by Black Widow's screenplay writer Eric Pearson, who told Collider that “because we were confined to between Civil War and Infinity War, we needed a villain threat that could potentially succeed and go unnoticed." Pearson added that they needed something that, coupled with the mind control mechanics seen in the movie, helped to tie all that to Natasha’s own cloudy past. After all, Black Widow finally solves the long-running Budapest mystery that she and Hawkeye have had for years, with even Loki poking at that specific point in her life to get in her head.
Pearson goes on to say, “what if in trying to save his daughter, we could rebuild it and discover this new photographic reflex thing where she's not fully who she was, but she has this extra talent?” Thus, the team is admitting they did want to reference Taskmaster’s source for his powers, even though Black Widow seems to explain that Antonia’s photographic reflexes are due to the chip installed in her suit and not a consequence of her near-death experience caused by Natasha.
Even if it makes perfect sense to give Natasha emotional ties to every plot element in the movie, the trauma she endured for believing she killed a child could have been implemented in some other way that didn’t hinder Taskmaster so much. The character’s costume alone got its trademark skull mask removed, most likely not to affect the film’s reception in the Chinese market, so very few of Taskmaster’s original traits actually made it to the big screen.
At the end of the day, the film seems much more focused on giving Scarlett Johansson the best sendoff possible for such an iconic role, even if it came too late for the Black Widow and her surrogate family. Plus, while the movie isn't as polished as recent MCU productions to fit in the Marvel narrative, it's still very much worth watching, especially for anyone who loves a good spy flick.
Black Widow is now playing in theaters and on Disney Plus with Premier Access.
Source: Collider