10 Recent Movie Characters Who Totally Deserved Better

The larger a movie's scale and budget are, generally the more characters it will bring into the fold, often resulting in a crowded, even overstuffed ensemble that the script must attempt to accomodate.

Balancing the interests of potentially dozens of characters isn't easy, though films like Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame have proven how nimble writing can do justice to a massive roster.

Yet those films are perhaps outliers, and there are far more examples of films that sadly just didn't deliver the goods where at least one character was concerned.

Perhaps the character was a fan favourite from the source material, or the marketing placed an over-eager emphasis on their role in the film, only for the end result to be strangely underwhelming.

Elsewhere, some of these characters were returning fixtures who ended up nudged into glorified cameo territory, and in one case a fan favourite character was brought back only to be brutally killed off in the opening moments of the new film.

All of these films certainly had a lot to juggle, but that doesn't entirely excuse the disappointing treatment of these potential-filled characters...

By far one of the most appealing aspects of Black Widow's marketing was the presence of iconic comic book baddie Taskmaster.

Due to the film's numerous delays, fans were left speculating for literally years on the villain's identity, with most believing Taskmaster would eventually be revealed to be Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), Rick Mason (O-T Fagbenle), or more outlandishly, a clone of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson).

Sadly the outcome was decidedly less interesting than any of those: Taskmaster is revealed late in the movie to be Antonia (Olga Kurylenko), the tortured, traumatised daughter of the film's primary villain, Dreykov (Ray Winstone).

The reveal wasn't inherently bad, but very little was actually done with it - Taskmaster was relegated to being a B-tier supporting villain when she absolutely could've been the primary antagonist on her own.

All in all, she was basically a mind-controlled zombie who, predictably, gets redeemed at the end and may never be seen again.

The action sequences also didn't do nearly enough with Taskmaster's ability to mimic her combatants' fighting styles, ensuring a fan favourite character was translated to the big screen with a mere shoulder shrug.