Thanos Not Involved In Guardians 2 Because He’s The “Main Character” Of Avengers: Infinity War

First introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe during the tail-end of Joss Whedon’s Avengers all the way back in 2012, moviegoers are still waiting for Thanos to make his decisive move – that is, to wage war on Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and their galactic allies.

Last we checked in on Josh Brolin’s Mad Titan, he was seen grappling with the all-powerful Infinity Gauntlet vowing to take matters into his own mighty purple hands. According to Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige, Thanos’ defining moment is on the horizon (more on that later), just don’t expect Brolin’s galactic menace to feature in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. In line with previous reports, writer-director James Gunn has stressed that Thanos has no place in the spacefaring sequel, which seems to be more concerned with his warring daughters, Gamora and Nebula, than the Mad Titan himself.

Chatting to Collider, here’s what Gunn had to share about the two sisters and the often fierce sibling rivalry between them.

“It’s about two sisters. It’s not about the sisters and their father. It’s about two sisters and what were the sisters’ problems with each other? And, you know, some of those things were caused by being raised by the ultimate abusive father. But it really isn’t about Thanos, and frankly, I just wasn’t inspired to put him in the movie. You know, I kind of go with my gut on these things and it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. It wasn’t the most fun part of the movie last time for me and I just didn’t really wanna do it this time.

And again, the relationship with Thanos has nothing to do with it. It’s not about their relationship with Thanos. It’s about their relationship to each other, and what is that? And that was interesting to me, and I thought that was important to our story, and that was important to our characters. What happened with them in the past—there’s a lot of stuff that happened with them in the past that affects our characters presently.”

So, when can we expect Thanos to finally leap from his levitating space throne and lock horns with the Avengers and Co.? In Infinity War, of course. In a separate interview with Collider, Feige went one step further to tease that the Mad Titan could be considered the main character of Joe and Anthony Russo’s star-studded ensemble movie.

“Thanos in Infinity War is – in a movie that has a lot of characters, you could almost go so far as to say he is the main character, and that’s a bit of a departure from what we’ve done before, but that was appropriate for a movie called Infinity War.”

Will the Russo brothers devote a significant chunk of screentime to Thanos come 2018? Perhaps similar to how Guardians handled the exchanges between Ronan and the Mad Titan three years ago? Time will tell. At the very least, Feige did stress that Guardians 2 won’t contain any direct ties to Avengers: Infinity War.

Per Comic Book:

“I always say, all the movies, Civil War is a standalone story about that, but that fit into it. This is even more of a standalone story than that. This is about the characters. This is about their evolution as heroes, as their own internal family, as the group, a group of characters known as the Guardians of the Galaxy. You know, the way this film ends, and the team at the end, will inform future things, but there’s nothing that nods directly towards it.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is next in line to tumble off the Marvel production line. It’ll be with us on May 5th and is the first of three Marvel movies slated for 2017 – Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok being the other two. Last but certainly not least, Avengers: Infinity War is booked in for release on May 4th, 2018.