Marvel's "Adaptation Sickness"

Let’s be clear: The MCU isn’t above criticism. It has its share of problems and shortcomings, subtle and unsubtle, that are worth discussing. Even I’ve made that known before. But I find that people look for the wrong reasons to be critical of it anyway. This is especially the case with comic book fans.

I liked Black Widow, even with the extra money I shelled out to keep current with the conversation (nearly $40 CDN). It wasn’t perfect-it cribbed plot beats from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it felt like an overdue outing for the titular character-but it was quite enjoyable. I especially liked how it filled in the gaps between Captain America: Civil War and The Avengers: Infinity War without contradicting either movie, and how it gave me new characters to root for. I also liked how it touched on constructed families in a respectful way, and I thought it worked as a commentary on the sexism of Natasha Romanov’s character. Basically, I approve.

And that’s where my spoiler-free discussion ends. The one aspect that has people up in arms is the twist-reveal of its focal antagonist. More-specifically, how said antagonist was built up VS how said antagonist was utilized. So let’s dissect that. Let’s discuss Taskmaster.

In the movie’s first-act, Yelena asks Natasha how she broke free of Dreykov and The Red Room. Natasha, of course, mentions Budapest and Clint, but she zones-in on the day she supposedly assassinated Dreykov and his daughter. Fast-forward to the third-act, and Dreykov, who survived the explosion that supposedly killed him, requests that his silent assassin, codenamed Taskmaster, remove their helmet. Taskmaster does so, and Natasha sees the now-disfigured and adult face of Dreykov’s daughter staring back at her.

Cue the fan rage.

Despite Taskmaster being a popular Spider-Man villain in the comics, he was never as big as Doctor Octopus or The Green Goblin. He was never even as big as Venom! But that didn’t stop the outraged that such an iconic antagonist was “done dirty”. Like The Mandarin in Iron Man 3, The MCU butchered another baddie for the sake of a “woke agenda”. In this case, “girl power”.

I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a fan of The Mandarin’s reveal in Iron Man 3. I thought it left-field in execution, lacked build-up, contradicted what was established prior and substituted a potentially cool villain for a lame and half-baked one. It might’ve had mild foreshadowing early on, but it wasn’t executed well. This is also ignoring his comic book origins, because I don’t care about them. So yes, I get the ire there.

I don’t, however, get the ire over the Taskmaster reveal. I don’t get it for two reasons. The first is that it works relative to what was built up to. This was a ghost from Natasha’s past coming back to haunt her. Considering that Natasha’s whole arc was atoning for the red in her ledger, Taskmaster was a way of reminding her that the red wouldn’t go away so easily. It’s also, judging by the face behind the reveal, chilling to see.

The second reason is that it makes Dreykov a better antagonist. Dreykov has no qualms with manipulating women for his own, selfish goals. He’s so committed to the part that he’s even made his own daughter his puppet. It takes a real sociopath to do that, furthering my detest for him. This is how I think The Mandarin should’ve been handled in Iron Man 3: make the advertised baddie a helpless pawn for the actual baddie, and make that baddie threatening.

By the way, Taskmaster’s reveal actually fits with my plot-twist litmus test: it makes sense in context, and it progresses the story. Could it have been executed better? Maybe, but I think we got a decent enough version here. So much so, in fact, that Gail Simone liked it! How about that?

Anyway, this drives home a bigger issue with the comic fandom: so many people are insistent on “accuracy”, even when it clashes with the story at hand. We saw it with Mysterio in Spider-Man: Far From Home and the multiverse, and we saw it with Ralph Bohner in WandaVision. Both times, the twists, while silly, fit the themes of their respective stories. And now we saw it again with Taskmaster. But because it “wasn’t accurate”, it angered die-hards.

That’s a problem. For one, the source material isn’t that important when doings adaptations (though it shouldn’t be discounted). And for another, Marvel tells good stories because it discounts its source material when it clashes with their vision. It’s why Mantis doesn’t look like an ancient goddess with antennae in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and why Thanos’s motives were changed to population equilibrium in The Avengers: Infinity War. Sometimes, for the betterment of a story, certain concepts have to be discarded. This is no different.

And you know what? That’s okay! The MCU hasn’t hit the level of bloat that Marvel Comics has because they streamline their best ideas into mostly-contained narratives. It doesn’t always work, but The MCU has often been at its worst when acting as connective tissue instead of genuine craft. That’s something I wish more people understood.

Even if Taskmaster hadn’t worked, I still think fans are overreacting. Does it suck that Taskmaster from the comics is absent in Black Widow? I guess so. Do I wish that Taskmaster had more screen-time? Sure! But do I think this is a “disgrace”? Absolutely not!

But what do I know? I confessed to not reading Marvel’s comics!