A while back, SMOKIN’ ACES writer-director Joe Carnahan made a cryptic post at his blog: just a picture of X-MEN comic character Juggernaut. This led to speculation (by me, anyway) that Carnahan might be tackling the character for one of the rumored X-MEN ORIGNS spinoff flicks.
Turns out that was a goose chase of the wild style — Carnahan was apparently just considering a Juggernaut story for his first foray into writing for comics. Alas, Carnahan’s plans for the muscled mutant conflicted with another of Marvel’s colossal and needless company-wide crossovers, so no Juggs from Joe. But he was instead offered — and accepted — the chance to work on another lesser-known Marvel character, TASKMASTER.
Though he’d always inevitably suffer a beating at the hands of whatever superhero he’d face, Taskmaster is a cool character from a conceptual standpoint. A morally ambiguous mercenary, Taskmaster possesses “photographic reflexes”, allowing him to mentally store and mimic the actions and abilities (within human limitations) of anyone he watches, granting him the physical skills of characters like Captain America, Daredevil, Hawkeye, Elektra, Bullseye, etc.
While it’s disappointing that Canahan won’t be bringing the character to screens (which would be very cool), it’s good to see Hollywood creative types venturing into different mediums. Carnahan says “I’ve always been a latent comic nerd and this will represent my opening salvo into that world. I’m being given the opportunity to literally build this character’s origin story as well so I’m looking forward to pushing it as much as possible.“
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