Josh Brolin first played Thanos in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, but it wasn't until Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 that we saw what his Mad Titan was truly capable of.
The villain was ultimately vanquished in Avengers: Endgame the following year. However, Brolin is expected to reprise the role in Avengers: Doomsday and/or Avengers: Secret Wars as a Variant (the prevailing theory is that we're getting a recreation of the iconic scene from Secret Wars, where Doctor Doom brutally kills Thanos).
Reflecting on his career in an interview with The Independent, Brolin looked back fondly on his time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
"There just seemed to be a perfect trajectory of 10 years," he recalled. "You're in a f***ing onesie, and you have dots all over your face, and it’s a joke, and you’re having to totally rely on your imagination. It’s so great."
Brolin has since worked with filmmaker Denis Villeneuve on the Dune movies and later shared his take on the director's plan to step behind the camera to reboot James Bond for Amazon MGM. "I think it’s going to be f***ing fantastic," the actor enthused. "I love spending time with him. I would do anything with Denis. Talk about a guy who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid."
Elsewhere in the conversation, Brolin was asked about the perceived similarities between his character, Monsignor Wicks, in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and President Donald Trump.
"I could make something up and say it was rooted in a kind of Trumpian greed," he started, adding that it wasn't the case. "Wicks garners a sense of power, then there are no boundaries."
"I’m not scared of Trump, because even though he says he’s staying forever, it’s just not going to happen. And if it does, then I’ll deal with that moment," he added. "But having been a friend of Trump before he was president, I know a different guy."
They got to know each other while Brolin was shooting Oliver Stone's Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. "I’m sure there was a lot of corruption involved," he says of Trump building a $400 million hotel, "in the middle of a cesspool city during the late Seventies – that’s interesting to me. Now it’s power unmitigated, it’s unregulated."
"There is no greater genius than him in marketing – he takes the weakness of the general population and fills it," Brolin noted. "And that’s why I think a lot of people feel that they have a mascot in him. I think it’s much less about Trump than it is about the general population and their need for validation."
It's hard to imagine anything Brolin has said being considered that controversial, but politics remains a divisive, hotbed topic, particularly in America right now.
Back to Thanos, and we'll likely get to see what the Russo Brothers have planned for Brolin when Avengers: Doomsday is released on December 18, 2026. Avengers: Secret Wars is scheduled to arrive on December 17, 2027.