Captain America may not have had a lot of nice things to say about Thanos in the two movies they shared, but Chris Evans has admitted that he can kind of see where the Avengers: Endgame villain is coming from.
In the new book Avengers: Endgame – The Official Movie Special, the actor discusses the Mad Titan’s mission to save the universe by killing half the population, explaining that the villain’s motivations make him strangely sympathetic:
“It’s easy, when the villain is so clearly bad, to hate him. Marvel Studios have done this strange thing with Thanos where they gave him a logical point of view, in my opinion. He’s a sort of masked misanthrope or something cloaked in a binary logic about the greater good. He’s not just this evil guy. He thinks he’s doing a good thing, which makes him sympathetic to some degree. Brolin really grounds him in this kind of human way so you don’t see a monster or a villain. You see a person who thinks they’re doing something good.”
Josh Brolin himself made similar points in an interview with Variety last week, describing Thanos as a “multidimensional character” that “nobody thought would be sympathetic.” As for whether or not we can expect to see the purple conqueror return in future outings, the actor explained that he’s contracted “on a one movie to one movie basis,” suggesting that Marvel probably doesn’t have a larger plan mapped out for the villain.
Meanwhile, Evans also looks to have finished his run in the MCU (be warned that a few spoilers lie ahead). Granted, Endgame certainly left Marvel Studios with some leeway for further Cap adventures, be it in his life with Peggy, or in one of the other timelines. But after the sense of closure that the film brought to his arc, do we even want his story to continue?
Perhaps your answer to that question is a firm “yes,” but regardless, the final minutes of Avengers: Endgame suggest that the franchise’s next era will see the emergence of a new Captain America. And we’ll presumably find out how Sam Wilson fares in the role when Falcon and Winter Soldier comes to Disney Plus.
