Black Widow's Red Guardian is a bombastic character who, among other things, spends much of the film carrying on about his supposed rivalry with Captain America. However, as the actor behind him, David Harbour, rightly pointed out, there's a whole lot of tragedy packed beneath his comical surface.

Harbour broke down the Russian super-soldier's tragic nature during a press conference attended by CBR. "The funny thing about him is that it's sort of built out of the same -- or it hatches from the same egg, the pathos and also the humor of his character, because he is filled with grief and remorse about the choices that he's made emotionally, spiritually, nutritionally," said Harbour. "The comedy itself comes out of the ego that is built to defend against the feelings of that remorse."

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Red Guardian's regret stems from his decision to allow General Dreykov to place his surrogate daughters, Natasha and Yelena, into the Red Room program following the completion of their undercover mission during Black Widow's prologue. "So in other words, he has to be some bombastic, because he can't stop and feel these things, the failures that he made. So he has to build around him a world of a confabulatory, psychotic reality where he's the hero, and that's inherently silly. I mean, that's inherently funny," Harbour added.

Harbour went on to discuss the tragicomical nature of Red Guardian's family dynamic with Natasha, Yelena and their surrogate mother Melina when the four reunite at Melina's farm later in the film. "What I found developing, too, was there's almost a traditional shot, which I feel like is the perfect image for this movie," he said. "It's all of us around a table in these very specific positions, which I remember talking about that day that we shot it, but we're all in super suits, right? You have this almost Norman Rockwell thing of dad coming in last to sit at the head of the table, while eldest child sits here and mother and baby sit over here. I found us all sort of falling into these traditional cliche roles, and then riffing off of that."

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Interestingly, it was Harbour who improvised Red Guardian's most poignant scene, in which he sings Yelena's favorite song as a child, "American Pie," to her as an adult in an effort to comfort her. "So for this bedroom scene, I'm thinking, he's a failure as a father what can he do at the end of this scene?" explained Harbour in a previous interview. "This narcissist who also has a big heart. And so he brings up the song, basically as him saying, 'I tried.'"

Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow is currently playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premier Access. The film has pulled in $215 million, giving it the largest Pandemic-era opening since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in Dec. 2019.

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