Between Deadpool 2 and Avengers: Infinity War, Josh Brolin has laid claim to two of the biggest comic book characters of 2018 in Cable and Thanos, Marvel’s Mad Titan who is essentially death incarnate.
He’s also been held up as the main character of Infinity War in that Joe and Anthony Russo’s threequel has been structured around Thanos and his quest for all six Infinity Stones. In doing so, the Russo Brothers – not to mention screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely – hope to create a fearsome antagonist who is more memorable than the last 10 Marvel villains combined.
That’s something that Joe and Anthony Russo touched on during their extensive interview with The Telegraph (h/t ComicBook.com), where the latter filmmaker also addressed why Josh Brolin was perhaps the perfect candidate to play Marvel’s Mad Titan.
He’s such an amazing performer and so uniquely suited to Thanos. What we were looking for in the character of Thanos is the strongest, most intimidating figure in the universe. While at the same time we wanted to tell a story about a character with a really complex and empathetic interior life.
Six years after his first MCU cameo, Brolin’s über-villain is finally ready to enter the fray, and he’ll do so in spectacular fashion, as Infinity War‘s trailer campaign attests. Moreover, as Anthony Russo stressed to The Telegraph, bringing a sense of gravitas and humanity to a textbook antagonist is no mean feat, so Josh Brolin deserves praise for his performance – regardless of how Avengers 3 pans out later this month.
There are not a lot of actors that can give you both of those things. Josh Brolin is perhaps the best example that you can find where you have somebody who has a physical presence and brings that level of intensity and threat, while at the same time having another layer always at work underneath that, which is a very complex inner life and a lot of emotional depth and texture.
Josh Brolin’s one-two punch of blockbuster villainy begins when Avengers: Infinity War opens worldwide on April 27th, before Deadpool 2 heralds the Merc’s second coming three weeks later.
