>O-T Fagbenle ("The Handmaiden's Tale") has joined the cast of Marvel Studios' BLACK WIDOW in an undisclosed role. Sources indicate he might be playing the main villain, described as "tough, dangerous and mysterious, but also powerful, smart and sexy", and rumored to be Taskmaster.
>Scarlett Johansson headlines the cast, which also includes Florence Pugh ("Fighting with my Family") as a spy on the same level as Romanoff, but who doesn't share her moral compass; and David Harbour ("Stranger Things") and Rachel Weisz ("The Favorite") as Russian spies and contemporaries of Romanoff that have been masquerading as an affluent American couple.
>Directed by Cate Shortland, BLACK WIDOW follows Natasha Romanoff, a spy and assassin who grew up being trained by the KGB before breaking from their grasp and becoming an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avenger. The release date is set for May 1, 2020.
The movie is partly set in the past and partly in the future. I think Widow will face a teenage Taskmaster in her past and whoop his ass, then in the present she will meet him again and he will have moves from Captain America, Spider-Man and whoever else
Anthony Morris
oh look another diversity hire. pathetic.
Hunter Ramirez
>he will have moves from Captain America, Spider-Man and whoever else >loses anyway
Aaron Ward
Isnt the character black i thought he was, he just wears a skull a hood at all times. This actor is a literal who compared to Gylenhaal so he'll not get told to show his face off
Sebastian Sanders
Taskmaster has been unmasked several times. He's white.
Hunter Morales
Nah he's white. But I agree if he just wears the sk- I can't even finish that sentence he probably won't even wear a mask.
I really, REALLY hope they don't fuck up Taskmaster. He's easily my favorite Marvel villain, and I would hate if they A) Remove his brash overconfidence B) Make him just a sexist asshole C) Remove his salt of the Earth charm. I don't want a straight villain who is just killed off.
Jacob Wright
He was fairly "tan" in that solo series he had a couple years back if I remember correctly. We don't EVER speak of that one, user!
Cameron Morales
Are they going to make the Taskmaster job against Black Widow? That's fucked up. I still don't agree with this. The point of the movies was that it was easy to follow. This has to be extremely good to be worth giving a shit about.
Elijah Flores
That's unfortunate.
Brayden Lee
The real question is can he legion arrow on knockdown and will MODOK come in for the assist?
Yeah they're going to go with this Taskmaster, MCU just doesn't give a fuck anymore. Also prepare for him to be killed and discarded.
Justin Sanders
>Taskmaster >villain Fuck Marvel if they're wasting one of the most interesting but still practical to showcase in film backstories they've got.
Nolan Adams
That sounds too generic to be Taskmaster desu, if he's the big bad and not a mid tier baddie
Isaiah Long
Damnit. Somebody stop this casting department.
Cooper Martin
You're fucked user they are doing Taskmaster as dirty as possible.
David Hughes
My prediction is this movie will have a time jump. In the beginning we see young black widow fighting and beating this dude. In the end, we see him in modern day in full gear skull and all.
And what does that have to do with his character? Why MUST he be white?
Jeremiah Wood
>Acting
Robert Perry
Wig in orbit
Still not confirmed that this dude (or any other black dude rumored to be cast in BW) is Taskmaster. The trades make no mention, and I think the speculation started on secondhand reporting from fansites that were just trying to guess at a reasonable villain.
Landon Nelson
Why must Madea be a black actor?
Brayden Cooper
How 'bout you answer the question?
Dylan Martin
New to the Socratic method. OK I'll use simple ideas. Character have experiences based on world view. White have different world view than black. Black have different world view than white.
Ethan Turner
No different than using the Sam Jackson Fury.
Jaxson Bennett
So by extension are you saying that any white character can be replaced with a minority?
Isaiah Jackson
That's a fundamentally flawed comparison my dude. Madea's character is about being, she's only ever been played, directed, and written by one single man for his plays about the Black Experience in America.
Taskmaster is a comic book villain with plenty of experiences that aren't intrinsically white, and who's worldview isn't shaped by growing up in the poor part of Chicago but by being a superpowered mercenary.
In any case, this is still a dumb argument because there's nothing credible to suggest that he's Taskmaster yet. OP is kind of wrong to imply that
Christopher Fisher
is about being black* in a way that most characters aren't about their race
Noah Ward
Because it's a creator owned Tyler Perry property, created, written and performed by Tyler Perry? Maybe once he's dead and you do a reboot, it can be a sassy white grandma.
Jacob Ortiz
Yeah but Ultimate Taskmaster sucks dick
Nathan Peterson
It raises a bigger question I think. What constitutes a "white experience" then? Is it all trivial enough that it can be improved by making them non-white? Can something be identified as white without being supremacist in tone?
Andrew King
Don't see how you came up with that line of thinking, but what I'm saying is who fucking cares if they're pulling from Ultimate instead of 616? Most of the shit in these movies isn't comic accurate already, why die on this hill?
Luke Long
We can speak about Ultimate Spidy he was too good for this universe.
616 Task is a fun, genuinely interesting character with a fun history and fantastic powerset for movies. If I had to name a character that would be great to see adapted onto the big screen for both the action and the charm Task would be at the top of the list Ultimate Taskmaster on the other hand, is none of these things, and there's nothing to be gained from pulling inspiration from him
Camden Carter
You have no idea what his characterization will be like. They could pull from both versions or more than likely put their own spin on. And if they fuck up what you believe to be true to his character, feel free to judge it all you want. But you're literally overreacting to a casting choice that lines up with how he appeared in a Marvel comic.
Or you could do the smart thing and stop giving a shit about the MCU post Endgame.
Logan Lewis
>He thinks Marvel movies stay true to their 616 comic counterparts.
The thing is that the "white" identity is really incoherent and all the attempts to turn it into one are only done by white supremacists. It's really hard to argue that there's a shared experience of whiteness between everyone in *America* (where the definition changed so many times), let alone the entire world. OTOH, African-Americans as a group have a mutual shared history and plenty of shared group experiences and subcultures that stretch back centuries. That's why you see so much media that is about "Black experience" stuff in America, and so rarely see stuff for other races and ethnicities.
The best and most natural way to approach this is from the lens of coherent subgroups and nationalities that already exist. Movies like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" or stuff about Irish-Americans or Polish-Americans or German-Americans or the dozens of movies and books about Italian-Americans. Those are more easily defined by shared experiences like recent immigration and living in insular communities.
But again, those all have an element of being juxtaposed against a "default" culture. I think to a lot of people in America, "white" is shorthand for default, and that's hard to define beyond vague ideas about Americana and nation-building from the 20th century. Is "whiteness" just stuff like Leave It to Beaver, MASH, Jon Watts movies, and Of Mice and Men? If the "white experience" that people are looking for can only be defined by all the major building blocks of American culture that already exist, do you actually need to make anything new to reflect that?
James Gonzalez
peter parker had a quintessentially white experience. Black nerd in highschool isn't the same experience as white nerd.
Also, Collosus definitely has "white experience" as a russian. Captain Britain (Brian) is white because of his family's history of aristrocracy in britain and their fall out of it is relevant to his character.
Other characters that are white really don't have any need to be. Xavier could just as easily be latino. His background is unknown to most outside of his relation to Juggernaut. Some heroes aren't steeped in their background, some are. You'd have a real hard time arguing that tony should be anything other than white for at least another 20 years, because the idea of a legacy being built on generations of war profiteering in america being run by anyone but a white guy (jewish maybe) is unlikely. In 20 years, he could be black. But it'll be 50 years before he could reasonably be hispanic.
Adam Butler
Imagine unironically being named Fagbenle
Joshua Martinez
>peter parker had a quintessentially white experience. See this is funny, because a lot of black comic fans consider Peter to be more relate able than Miles - going so far as to call him the first black comic character. He's a poor kid from Queens with an abnormal family situation, cops nothing but shit from the media, pushing away the option solve a lot of his personal problems by giving up his ethics.
Cameron Davis
What does white or black experience even mean?
Michael Mitchell
Imagine Scarjo farting in your face, lads
Luis Ramirez
yeah but Parker is a nerdy dweeb and not a gangbanger drug-dealer
Hudson Richardson
You fucking moron.
David Collins
Isn't he an actual skullface now?
Brandon Diaz
That’s stupid.
Madea’s Ethnicity is amn important part of her character because her story is ABOUT being a black person in America. Taskmaster’s ethnicity plays no importance to his character because his story isn’t ABOUT being a white man. His story is ABOUT being an instructor and mercenary that has photographic reflexes and combat prediction as a super power.
Ayden Bennett
Most black people aren’t either drug dealers or gangbangers.
Landon Harris
The other user’s comparison is stupid but it’s equally stupid to ask why must someone be a certain race. Like why must Storm be black? Why must Cassandra Cain be a hapa? It’s just part of who the character is.
Grayson Reyes
Are you faggots seriously arguing about the race of fucking Taskmaster? Doesn't having these arguments with literally EVERY. FUCKING. SUPERHERO. MOVIE. get old?
