What I’ve heard is that the filmmakers decided to kill off Taskmaster early, after publicizing her appearance in the movie, in order to build up tension by showing the audience that any character could die at any time.
I don’t feel it worked. I feel they killed her off so early that they didn’t give the audience a chance to invest themselves in her character. So her death was no more significant than the deaths of the guards that Yelana killed in Malaysia. The scientist who got killed was a more significant character than Taskmaster was.
It also showed that the filmmakers were relying too much on gimmicks. I mean, seriously, a display to warn everyone the incinerator was going to go off in two minutes?
Since this was supposed to be like Marvel’s version of The Suicide Squad, they promoted a member who was killed off quickly. Just as many team members were in the DC film.
How was it very obvious? She was in the early marketing as if he were member of the team as much as the others. And while she was probably the least known character to MCU watchers, she was arguably the best known character to Comics readers (Taskmaster goes back a long way in the comics in different incarnations). While it was expected for a character to die early (because this is their version of the Suicide Squad) and it also made sense to be her because as I wrote way earlier in this thread her powers are the hardest for the casual movie watcher to understand, I think its a stretch to say it was very obvious. But maybe I am just picking nits.
If you incessantly watched ALL of the trailers and carefully pored over the posters and promotional materials like some kind of obsessed fan trying to discern some kind of spoilers, maybe you’d catch on.
“Very obvious”, come on now. That clickbait ScreenRant nonsense reads like parody.
Taskmaster’s limited presence in Thunderbolts* ’ trailers and promotional material raised questions about her role in the movie. Not only do the Thunderbolts trailers feature Taskmaster in only two scenes, but all the posters, banners, and images only included a masked Taskmaster, whereas the rest of the team appeared with their masks and helmets off* . Besides, Taskmaster actor Olga Kurylenko barely appeared in Thunderbolts* ’ marketing and interviews. As a result, it was rather obvious that Taskmaster would be killed off pretty early on during Thunderbolts* and her role would be something slightly more than a cameo.
Well done. (Not sarcastic, good on you, sincerely.)
Not obvious to most people going to see it though, I’m sure. And I watched more trailers and read more about it than your average moviegoer because I’m a big Marvel fan and a nerd. And I still didn’t assume she would be killed off early.
I did anticipate a reduced role in the film of some kind, since the character wasn’t treated very well in Black Widow (she was a plot point more than a character) and as you said, wasn’t a big part of the promotions. But I didn’t expect her to be killed off so quickly. Hell, when it happened, I expected her to come back somehow, maybe something in her high-tech suit could revive her in coordination with the chip that controlled her like a robot. It’s a comic book movie, less plausible things happen all the time.
So when she was killed, and that was it, it was something of a surprise. It also seemed like something of a waste, though I felt the same thing with the character’s use in Black Widow. The Taskmaster was a huge Avengers foe in the comics, and as a throwaway character in an offshoot film about just one Avenger (with an origin that had nothing to do with the original), what an awful treatment. The only villain I could think of that was wasted more was the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. (Though at least the idea was brought back for Shang-Chi, in a way slightly closer to the comic book version.)