BLACK WIDOW Star David Harbour Likes The Idea of a Red Guardian Vs. Captain America Cold War Story
Marvel’s Black Widow is going to introduce fans to a group of new colorful characters with Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff’s family of assassins. This makeshift family includes David Harbour as Alexei Alanovich Shostakov a.k.a. Red Guardian, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, and Rachel Weisz and Melina Vostokoff.
There’s so much that we don’t know about the history of these characters, but a lot of those questions will be answered in the film. But there are still some gaps that won’t be explored in the film and Harbour thinks that those gaps could allow for some fun storytelling about Alexei’s early years as Red Guardian.
“What’s funny about Alexei is you have this big 25 year gap that we don’t know about, right? We see him in Ohio and then we see him in the prison. Even before the prison there was a time when he was the Red Guardian, so he must have put the suit back on.”
Harbour goes on to talk about his character explaining that he likes to build himself up and impress others with big grand stories that may or may not have happened:
“There is this period of time where he talks about, he has all these stories about his life and about what went on, and they are questionable whether or not they’re real. And I like the act of what is real and what isn’t real and how hard he had to construct these realities for himself and how durable those realities are.”
He then goes on to tease that one of these stories could be Red Guardian’s clash with Captain America. The actor believes there’s a lot of fun and potential with exploring these two characters had they ended up facing off with each other during the Cold War:
“I do think that the classic Cold War thing is a really fun and funny dynamic between these two guys. The fact that they basically came up as nuclear warheads like in an arms race together. I think it’s just a really great concept that could be explored further.”
That would actually be a fun story to see! But, it might have to be a different kind of super-soldier-type character besides Steve Rogers, because during the Cold War Rodgers was still frozen in ice. I could totally see him facing off with the Winter Soldier!
There’s also a possibility that Red Guardian could meet Sam Wilson’s Captain America, and when asked about a possible team-up between the two, Harbour said:
“I don’t know if it’s team up with but I really love the Falcon character. I love Anthony Mackie just as an actor too. And now that he’s wearing the Cap suit and everything, and the amount of complexity that Alexei has with Cap in general — whoever wears the suit, he hates that guy.”
I have no idea what the future holds for Red Guardian beyond Black Widow, but he’s certainly a complicated character with an interesting backstory that would definitely be fun to explore, with or without a version of Captain America.
Source: /Film