Q+A Josh Brolin
THE ACTOR HIDDEN BENEATH THE MAMMOTH WEIGHT OF PURPLE CGI MUSCLE PROVIDES HUMANITY TO THE VILLAIN HOPING TO WIPE HUMANITY OUT
e’s a powerful being from an extinct alien world that ended up destroying itself. Venturing through deep space, he arrives wielding unfathomable cosmic powers on an idealistic quest to save the galaxy. In another story, that might describe a beloved superhero.
In the MCU, he is one of the darkest villains imaginable—thanos, the Mad Titan, who believes the only way to save half the universe is by exterminating the other half. We first glimpsed the violets kinned monstrosity at the end of 2012’s The Avengers, which set him up as the Final Boss of these interlocked movies.
In Avengers: Infinity War, Josh Brolin’s character Thanos becomes the central focus, and we’ll see his younger years on Titan, witnessing the forces that wiped out his homeland and sent him on a mission to “save” the universe through mass destruction. That’s a big job, so Thanos has been trying to acquire the Infinity Stones that, when combined into one all-powerful gauntlet, will allow him to bend time, space and reality to his will.
WHO spoke with Brolin about bringing to life Marvel’s “biggest bad” yet and whether there is something human in someone so determined to annihilate.
You’re playing a purple space tyrant, but does Thanos have a correlation to a type of person who exists in the real world?
That’s an interesting question because I’m the least educated person you’ll ever meet when it comes to this stuff. I knew nothing about Thanos. Nothing. And it was great. I got to start from scratch. I bring that up because you go, who is he? Kind of an amalgamation of people, to me. And who specifically? You want to really go out on a limb? Because it’s not OK to actually parallel with people. But he doesn’t divert from his intention at all. Who could be like that? [ Laughs] But at the same time you feel for him. You want to write him off as insane, and yet what he’s doing makes sense, if you break it down.
He’s bringing order, right?
You think of overpopulation and killing half the universe in order to save the other half and all this kind of stuff. It actually makes scientific sense. You have this struggle watching him. It’s this love/ hate thing, you know? So I don’t know … who in our society do we love and hate?
He looks like a thug. Like a Neanderthal. He has that swagger of someone who uses his strength to intimidate.
And that’s great. And that’s your perception of it. You see this lughead and this guy who you pigeonhole right from the first cosmetic reaction to him. And what I see is in this guy’s eyes. This super-super-superintelligence. There’s this constant contrasting thing about this Neanderthalic lughead who’s way more intelligent than anybody else
in the movie, by far.
Is he cold the whole way through, or does he feel any affection for Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and
Nebula (Karen Gillan), who he trained to be child soldiers?
Yeah, I do think he does. When you see the relationship with Gamora and you see that evolve— God, I wish I could tell you. I can’t! When [directors Joe and Anthony Russo] came up to me after we had done maybe three-quarters of the film, they said, “It wasn’t necessarily intended that you feel for this guy as much as you do.” Obviously he has a grand plan, like somebody who’s pulling in kids for their own selfish bloodshed. But he has a capacity to love very much and very deeply.
What is it that damaged Thanos? Where does this pain and anger come from?
He’s different from his family. They’re all Titans and they all look similar, but he was born deformed. You see how he grew up, you see he was like the Quasimodo of this time, or if you’ve ever read Perfume [Patrick Süskind’s 1985 novel about a serial killer who craves beautiful scents but is disgusted by the smell of humanity], it’s a great parallel to Thanos. He stuck out. He was an anomaly. He was a freak. And that led to this apparent insanity.
You’re playing Cable in Deadpool 2 as well. Deadpool is so self-referential, I wonder if they ended up slipping Thanos jokes into your dialogue.
I can’t imagine there’s not going to be any. [ Laughs] I’ll put it that way. I’m up here right now in snowy Vancouver doing reshoots for Deadpool. Given that it’s a satire of all superhero movies, especially Marvel movies, how can you not?