Thanos (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Thanos is a fictional character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film franchise, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. He is portrayed by Damion Poitier in his original appearance in The Avengers (2012), and by Josh Brolin in subsequent appearances. In the films, Thanos is an alien warlord from the planet Titan who seeks to bring "balance" to the universe by eliminating half of all living beings in order to stabilize its overpopulation. To achieve this, he aims to collect the six Infinity Stones and gain god-like powers, which brings him into conflict with both the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy, who ultimately join forces to combat Thanos.

Thanos
Marvel Cinematic Universe character
Thanos as portrayed by Josh Brolin in a trailer for Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
First appearanceThe Avengers (2012)
Based onThanos
by Jim Starlin
Adapted by
Portrayed by
In-universe information
Full nameThanos
AliasesThe Mad Titan
The Great Titan
Affiliation
WeaponInfinity Gauntlet
FamilyA'lars (father)
Children
  • Corvus Glaive (adoptive son)
  • Cull Obsidian (adoptive son)
  • Ebony Maw (adoptive son)
  • Proxima Midnight (adoptive daughter)
  • Gamora (adoptive daughter)
  • Nebula (adoptive daughter)
OriginTitan
NationalityTitanian

The character received universal praise from both critics and fans alike, up to the point where Thanos has been described as "hands down" the best villain of the MCU,[1] as well as one of the greatest movie villains of the 21st century.[2][3][4]

Creation and development

Jim Starlin conceived Thanos during a college psychology course, Thanos was first introduced as a villain in a 1973 edition of The Invincible Iron Man. Starlin originally designed the character as skinny and lanky, but editor Roy Thomas suggested he "beef him up."[5] Thanos is a mutant member of the race of superhumans known as the Titanian Eternals. The character possesses abilities common to the Eternals, and is able to demonstrate enormous superhuman strength, speed, stamina, and invulnerability among other qualities.

The MCU began building towards Thanos in the first Avengers film, in which Damion Poitier portrayed the character in an uncredited cameo appearance.[6] In May 2014, Josh Brolin signed a multi-film contract to portray the antagonist, debuting in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Thanos was originally going to have a larger role in Guardians, but Joss Whedon felt that the character needed to be threaded more gently.[7] Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely noted that Thanos' lingering presence in the franchise helped legitimize him as a threat prior to Infinity War. Despite this, little screen time had been devoted to Thanos' history and motivations. Markus stated, "We don't get an element of surprise [with his introduction in Infinity War]... You can count on a lot of scenes where we illuminate a lot about him very early",[8] with McFeely adding, "It is incumbent upon us to give him a real story, real stakes, real personality, and a real point of view."[8]

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) went through numerous story iterations, and over the course of development Thanos' presence in the film grew. VFX Supervisor Dan Deleeuw noted "Thanos went from supporting villain to one of the main characters driving the plot."[9] In one draft, the film was told directly from Thanos' perspective with him serving as narrator.[10] Despite leading the cast in screen time in Infinity War[11] and being considered the main character of the film by many, Thanos had a secondary role in Avengers: Endgame (2019). McFeely explained "we had to give ourselves permission to backseat the villain [...] You're rolling around in the loss and the time heist, and you think it's sort of Avengers against nature."[12] Joe Russo stated that after Thanos was successful in Avengers: Infinity War, he is now "done. He did it. He's retired."[13] Markus and McFeely had difficulty in factoring the older, post-Infinity War, Thanos into the film due to the character already possessing the Infinity Stones, until executive producer Trinh Tran suggested that they kill Thanos in the film's first act.[14] Markus explained that the character's early death "reinforced Thanos's agenda. He was done . . . it was like, 'If I've got to die, I can die now.'"[14]

A major aspect of Thanos' comic book storyline is his attempts to woo the female manifestation of Death. This plot was omitted from the films, as the filmmakers instead chose to pair the character with Gamora and focus on their father-daughter relationship. McFeely explained this choice by noting "[Thanos and Gamora] had a lot of history we wanted to explore" that would add layers to Thanos and would avoid him becoming "the big mustache-twisting bad guy who wants ultimate power just to take over the world and sit on a throne".[15] Avoiding the Death storyline moved away from the tease Whedon used in The Avengers with the character, where Thanos felt that by challenging the Avengers, he was courting death. Though the tease was purposely ambiguous, Whedon felt when he featured Thanos he did not know what to do with him and "kind of hung [Thanos] out to dry". Whedon added that "I love Thanos. I love his apocalyptic vision, his love affair with death. I love his power. But, I don't really understand it." Whedon enjoyed the approach the writers and Russos took in Infinity War, giving Thanos "an actual perspective and [making] him feel righteous to himself", since the Death storyline was "not a concept that will necessarily translate".[16]

In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos is shown to be a skilled physical fighter, and wields a Double-Edged Sword in combat.[17][18]

Design and special effects

Digital Domain worked on creating Thanos for Infinity War and Endgame, producing over 400 visual effects shots.[19] The company created a new facial capture application called Masquerade, based on the concept of machine learning through computer algorithms, specifically for the film, beginning work on the system 3–4 months before filming began to develop and test it. They presented their results to Brolin, the Russos, and executives from Marvel ahead of filming to demonstrate the subtleties Brolin would be able to bring to the character, which helped inform Brolin how to portray the character.[19] Before the start of filming, Brolin's facial expressions were captured with ILM's Medusa system, which along with his motion capture data from set, were fed to Masquerade to "create a higher-resolution version of what Brolin did on set" so animators could apply that to the CGI character. Kelly Port, Digital Domain's VFX Supervisor, noted the design of Thanos took into account the versions that appeared in previous films, but were adjusted more toward's Brolin's features, which also helped with matching his performance to the digital character.[9]

Fictional character biography

Early life

Thanos was born around 1,000 years ago on the planet moon Titan to A'Lars, a powerful member of the Titans. At some point during his adulthood, Thanos came to realize that the growth of Titan's population would inevitably result in its downfall, proposing to kill half of the planet's population to save Titan. However, his people rejected his solution as pure madness and cast him out. Over time, Thanos witnessed the death of his people until he was the only Titan left.[20]

Conquest of the Universe

After seeing what happened to his planet, Thanos concluded that eventually the universe would suffer the same fate, making him believe that his goal was to destroy half of the population of universe setting him on the path to conquest. His conquest leads him to taking control of the Chitauri, Sakaaran, and Outrider armies. He would also rarely take in orphan children from planets including: Ebony Maw, Corvus Glaive, Cull Obsidian, Proxima Midnight, Gamora and Nebula who all went under extensive training under Thanos. Eventually, after venturing across the universe and destroying many planets by killing only half of the inhabitants, Thanos came across the six Infinity Stones. Thanos recruits The Other and Ronan the Accuser to his crusade; The Other hires the Asgardian Loki to retrieve the Space Stone that was being kept on Earth by S.H.I.E.L.D., however, Loki was foiled by the Avengers. When Ronan retrieved the Power Stone, he became inspired with its power and attempted to use it on himself while Gamora betrayed Thanos at the same time and further joins the Guardians of the Galaxy, who ultimately defeat Ronan and hide the Power Stone on Xandar. Angered at his recruits' failures, Thanos decides to search for the stones himself.[21]

Search for the Infinity Stones
Main article: Avengers: Infinity War

Thanos first decimates Xandar to take the Power Stone and intercepts the Statesman carrying the refugees of the recently-destroyed Asgard to take the Space Stone from Loki, who had taken the Tesseract before Asgard's destruction and unleashes the Hulk on Thanos, who easily overpowers him before Heimdall sends him to Earth before Thanos stabs in the heart in retaliation. Upon adding the Space Stone to his gauntlet, Thanos orders his children to retrieve the Time and Mind Stones respectively from Stephen Strange and Vision on Earth before killing Loki and leaving Thor for dead.

He then manages to retrieve the Reality Stone from the Collector on Knowhere, where he captures Gamora and brings her to his ship, using Nebula to make Gamora reveal that the Soul Stone on Vormir. There, she and Thanos meet Red Skull, who explains that taking the stone requires the sacrifice of a loved one, leading Thanos to tearfully kill Gamora in exchange for the stone.

He then goes to Titan expecting his children to have the Time and Mind Stones for him and is instead ambushed by Strange, Stark, Parker, Mantis, Drax and Quill. Nebula joins the fight and Thanos is pinned down, but just before Stark and Parker can remove the gauntlet from his hand, Nebula figures out that he murdered Gamora, leading Quill to attack him in a fit of rage and inadvertently mess up his allies' plan. The fight ends when Strange gives Thanos the Time Stone to save Stark's life.

Thanos then goes to Wakanda to retrieve the Mind Stone and is held back by Wanda as she tearfully kills Vision to destroy the stone, but her efforts are undone by Thanos using the Time Stone to revive Vision and subsequently ripping the Mind Stone from his head, killing him again. With all six stones, and in spite of Thor's efforts to avenge his losses, Thanos snaps his fingers and succeeds in wiping out half of all life in the universe, escaping to another planet and leaving the Avengers in shock at their failure to stop him.

Endgame
Main article: Avengers: Endgame

Twenty-three days after the Snap, Thanos is ambushed by a group of Avengers including Carol Danvers seeking to bring back his victims, but he reveals that he destroyed the stones to avoid temptation and make sure his work would never be undone. Thor subsequently decapitates him, giving the heroes a hollow victory.

Five years later, the Avengers initiate a plan to retrieve the stones from different points in time and undo Thanos' snap. In 2014, he becomes aware of the plan thanks to Nebula unknowingly connecting with her past self and follows the Avengers back to 2023, declaring his intention to destroy the universe and repopulate it with life that only knows gratitude and not loss, but not before those who were decimated are brought back by Banner. A final battle ensues, during which the Avengers attempt to send the stones back to their own time periods, but Thanos overpowers them, including Danvers. Stark ultimately wins the battle for the heroes by swiping the stones away from Thanos and using them against him at the cost of his own life. Once Stark snaps his fingers, Thanos can only watch as his troops are turned to dust until only he remains. He accepts his defeat before being disintegrated himself, the universe finally rid of him once and for all.

Appearances

Thanos initially made a non-speaking cameo appearance in a post-credits scene of the Marvel Cinematic Universe film The Avengers (2012), where he was portrayed by Damion Poitier.[22] Josh Brolin portrayed the character in later films, starting with the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), although he was uncredited.[23] Brolin reprised his role in a post-credits scene at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015),[24] and in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), where Thanos served as the primary antagonist. Brolin is also set to reprise his role in the upcoming Disney+ animated series, What If...?.[25]

Reception
Josh Brolin's performance as Thanos has been praised by many critics.[26]

The MCU's rendition of Thanos has received critical acclaim. Owen Gleiberman of Variety called Brolin's performance "supremely effective" and said, "Brolin infuses Thanos with his slit-eyed manipulative glower, so that the evil in this movie never feels less than personal".[27] Todd McCarthy echoed this sentiment, saying "Brolin's calm, considered reading of the character bestows this conquering beast with an unexpectedly resonant emotional dimension, making him much more than a thick stick figure of a supervillain"[28] Writing for IGN, Scott Collua pointed out that audiences "understand his perspective and believe his pain", making the antagonist surprisingly sympathetic.[29] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised both the character and Brolin: "[Thanos is] thunderously voiced by a dynamite Josh Brolin in a motion-capture performance that radiates ferocity and unexpected feeling."[30] The Atlantic called Thanos an "unexpectedly resonant monster, filled with sadness and even a perverse sense of honor."[31]

Critics noted that Thanos was a significant improvement over previous antagonists in the franchise.[32] According to Screen Rant, the MCU struggled to create captivating antagonists throughout its first two phases. However, this changed in phase three with well-received villains such as Killmonger and Vulture, culminating in Thanos, whose "repudiation of the MCU's narrative worship of its heroes creates a deep uncertainty in our expectation that follows through each encounter toward the inevitable, horrifying conclusion."[1] George Marston attributed Thanos' success to "the weight behind his character. Like the best villains in media, Thanos sees himself as a hero. It's the power of Brolin's performance that begins to draw viewers into that maniacal goal over and over, almost making Thanos seem likable or perhaps even reasonable, before the utter horror of him actually accomplishing his goal kicks in."[33] Similarly, The Washington Post declared Thanos Marvel's most compelling villain due to his "deep, reflective intelligence" as well as his "profound adherence to his belief system".[34]

Cultural impact

Thanos and his snap spawned much audience enthusiasm. The website, DidThanosKill.Me was created for fans to see if they would have been spared by Thanos or not.[35] The ending also spawned the creation of the Reddit subreddit, /r/thanosdidnothingwrong. A user within the subreddit suggested that half of the approximately 20,000 subscribers at the time be banned from the subreddit, in order to mimic the events of the film. After the community agreed to the measure, the moderators approached Reddit's administrators to see if the mass ban would even be possible. Once the administrators agreed to the random ban of half the subscribers, it was set to occur on July 9, 2018.[36] Notice of the impending ban made the subreddit's subscribers increase to over 700,000, including both of the Russos who subscribed.[37] Ahead of the ban, Brolin posted a video saying "Here we go, Reddit users," and ending it with a snap.[38] Over 60,000 people watched a live Twitch stream of the ban occurring, which lasted several hours.[37] The ban of over 300,000 accounts, which included Anthony Russo, was the largest in Reddit's history.[37][39] Those banned then gathered in the new subreddit, /r/inthesoulstone.[36][37] One Reddit user who participated described the ban as embodying "the spirit of the Internet" with people "banding together, en masse, around something relatively meaningless but somehow decidedly awesome and hilarious".[39] Andrew Tigani of Screen Rant said this showed "how impactful the film has already become to pop culture. It is also a testament to how valuable fan interaction can be via social media".[38]

A popular tongue-in-cheek fan theory regarding Thanos' defeat in Avengers: Endgame before the film's release claimed that Thanos would be killed by Ant-Man entering his anus and then expanding himself, blowing off Thanos' body (jokingly referred to by the portmanteau "Thanus").[40] Several internet memes were created by this. After the film was released and proved it wrong, Christopher Markus revealed that due to the strong nature of the Titans, Ant-Man would have been unable to expand himself and get simply crushed against the walls of Thanos' rectum.[12]

See also

References
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