It’s been reported that Josh Brolin has been cast as the supervillain Thanos, first teased at the end of The Avengers, and who will likely be the main antagonist of The Avengers 3: Thanos, Finally. I can confirm that first hand—I heard this a few weeks ago, when it was strictly off the record. I don’t think it is actually on the record now, but the news leaked on Friday and is all over the place, so here we are. Kevin Feige cannot be happy with the sheer volume of information leaking from Marvel lately.
I’m REALLY into this choice. Brolin has the kind of gravitas a villain like Thanos needs. He’s an ancient, god-like being who is in love with Death and intends to impress it by killing all of the people, everywhere. Thanos is prone to speechifying, and in the comics has delivered some great villain monologues. I can’t wait to hear him as personified by Brolin, all menacing and gravelly and self-important. As with James Spader an Ultron, it’ll be a voice-over role, and we’ll get our first listen, as it were, in Guardians of the Galaxy.
They’ve been teasing Thanos since Thor, and in phase 2 have gotten serious about laying the foundation for his grand entrance into the cinematic universe. He’s after the “Infinity Gems”, all powerful objects like the Tesseract, that magic Kool-Aid from Thor 2 and the blue thing in Loki’s staff. Basically, the Deathly Hallows of comic books, except there are a bunch of them. We’ll see a new one in Guardians of the Galaxy.
The Infinity Gems also have a lot to do with bringing people back from the dead. So far, Marvel has invented a new way to resuscitate dead characters, but there’s one iconic Marvel character death linked directly to the Tesseract. I’m not saying they’ll stay dead forever, but I bet we see an Avenger die in phase 3. That’d certainly be motivation for the others to go after the Tesseract and disrupt Thanos’s plans.
