The marketing for Thunderbolts* showed many characters from previous MCU projects as part of the roster. Aside from Bucky Barnes, There were characters from Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and most prominently, three characters from Black Widow. But one of those characters, Antonia Dreykov, aka Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), did not last long in the movie. In fact, she’s killed by Ghost early in the first act. But via Polygon, we’ve learned that the original Thunderbolts* screenwriter, Eric Pearson, originally had a much longer arc in mind for her. And she lived till the end of the movie. Here’s what he had to say:
It was decided after my work. When I sat down to watch the first cut, one thing was totally different and shocked the hell out of me, and it was that. Everything else, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s the movie that I wrote!’ But that decision…you’d have to ask [director] Jake Schreier or [Marvel Studios president] Kevin [Feige] or [co-credited screenwriter] Joanna [Calo], maybe. But if I were to guess, it would be to get the reaction that I had as an audience member, like, ‘Whoa, we’re upping the stakes, we’re doing something drastic really fast, and we’re putting everybody on edge.
Pearson also added that Taskmaster had a whole subplot in his draft, and that she bonded with Ava/Ghost in particular. She also added humor to the film in a sense, as her backstory is so tragic, she’d often point it out to the rest of the team whenever they wallowed too much in self-pity. There was also a running gag about how Taskmaster kept forgetting she didn’t have to kill U.S. Agent/John Walker anymore. Pearson said “She was struggling with her own memory-loss stuff. And there was a gag where she just kept restarting the fight and forgetting that they had made up and become friends.” Ok, we have to admit, that would have been funny to watch.
Was it a mistake to cut all that Taskmaster stuff out? Hard to say. Thunderbolts* has a pretty tight script with a lot of characters to service, and it does a pretty good job at that. Adding one more for the full movie might have bogged it down, and been one character arc too many. All of that would have added to the running time as well. Still, it’s wild that the movie’s credited screenwriter didn’t even know until he saw the final film. Marvel Studios, you sure do love to keep your secrets. Even from your own writers it seems.
Content shared from nerdist.com.