Black Widow’s Taskmaster Fighting Style Taken From Spider-Man and Winter Soldier

Much like his comic book counterpart, the version of Taskmaster that will end up appearing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Black Widow will be a master martial artist, one of the best in the craft. As evidenced by Black Widow: The Official Movie Special Book, the live-action version of Taskmaster has already studied not only the Avengers, but also most other powered beings in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In the special magazine, Black Widow fight coordinator James Young says Taskmaster draws his fighting inspiration from anyone from Spider-Man to Iron Man, Winter Soldier, and Captain America.

“Taskmaster has studied the Avengers; in the bridge fight you can see that,” Young says. “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.”

Though we’ve all see Taskmaster plenty of times in the film’s teaser trailers and associated marketing collateral, we have yet to find out who’s playing the character, leaving fans to speculate who the baddie’s real identity could be. Outside of plenty of fights against Taskmaster, Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson says the feature’s all about found family.

“It’s a film about self-forgiveness and it’s a film about family,” Johansson said last year. “I think in life we sort of come of age many times and you have these kind of moments where you’re in a transitional phase and then you move sort of beyond it and I think in the Black Widow standalone film I think the character is at, when we find her, a moment of real crisis, and throughout the film, by facing herself in a lot of ways and a lot of things that make her, her, she actually kind of comes through that crisis on the other side and we start to be able to reset where she’s a more grounded, self-possessed person. So that’s her journey, well, I hope anyway.”

Black Widow is currently set for release on May 7, 2021.

What other surprises do you think are in store for the next Marvel Studios movie? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!