He is more human and relatable than the Mad God of Titan
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Josh Brolin was able to give Thanos an almost shocking amount of humanity and vulnerability, but at the end of the day, he was still a giant purple alien who was superpowered even before he had a single infinity stone. Kang is, by contrast, just a really smart guy. He’s a guy so smart that he discovers technology that allow him to manipulate time in ways no one else has been able to.
The fact that Kang is just a man makes him, in some ways, even more terrifying. His powers don’t come from a freak accident, but from his own intelligence, and that’s going to make him nearly impossible to defeat. He’s not the kind of villain that you can just outsmart.
OK, well, recap Thanos’ story for me.
We were first introduced to Thanos in The Avengers, when he found out that humans had located the Space Stone on Earth (in the form of the Tesseract). He allied with the disgraced Asgardian Loki, providing him with an army of Chitauri and a scepter containing the Mind Stone so that he might bend others to his will in his campaign to recover the Space Stone. Ironically, all this plan did was bring about the formation of the Avengers, who defeated Loki and took possession of both the Space and Mind Stones.
Then, in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Thanos tried again, allying himself with Ronan the Accuser to recover the Power Stone — only to be stymied by Peter Quill, a relatively inept scavenger. Thanos sent Ronan after Quill, with help from his best assassin, Gamora. Gamora took that opportunity to betray Thanos, attempt to sell the stone to the Collector and flee. Thanos sent Ronan again, with the aid of another of his assassin “daughters,” Nebula — but instead of returning the stone, Ronan decided to wield its power himself, and take revenge on the planet of Xandar for oppressing his people, the Kree. Nebula also defected alongside him.
Ironically, all Thanos’ plan did this time was bring about the formation of the Guardians of the Galaxy, who recovered the Power Stone and handed it over to the Xandarian peacekeeping force, the Nova Corps, for safekeeping. Thanos lost the stone and two of his best assassins, whom he had trained from childhood and treated as “daughters.”
Apparently, after all this, Thanos has realized that acquiring the Infinity Stones is not something that he can accomplished by delegating. His last on-screen appearance in a Marvel movie was the mid-credits scene of 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, in which he resolved to take matters into his own hands.
Since then, Thanos has been biding his sweet time. His latest implied appearance was in the end credits of 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok, in which what appears to be his flagship, the Sanctuary II, catches up with Thor’s Asgardian refugees. What happens next appears to be a matter for Avengers: Infinity War.
He is not just one character, but many
Marvel Studios / Marvel Studios
One of the trickier things to grasp about Kang is that there are a million different versions of him. The one we meet in Quantumania is not the same one that Loki meets in Loki, and it’s not the same one we’ll get moving forward. Because Kang is not just one character, Jonathan Majors is going to get to do a whole lot of experimentation as he plays different variants of him.
Even more crucially, though, Kang is like an enemy who never stops coming. If you beat him once, it’s not as if he’s gone forever. Like a many-headed hydra, he just keeps battling. While fighting Thanos required a little bit of time travel, defeating Kang is going to require a much more elaborate plan, and even then, it seems like it might not work.
Marvel’s run out of heroes — but there are plenty of great villains left
Marvel’s done such a good job of establishing a wide array of heroes that it’s basically run out of top tier IP for more franchises. Ant-Man should be indication enough that we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, and it only gets Hawkeye levels of mediocre from here.
You know what Marvel Studios hasn’t capitalized on? Its fantastic villain-centric comics.
We’ve already mentioned the wasted material of Thanos Rising. But in the comicverse, there’s also a whole run after Civil War where Green Goblin takes control of S.H.I.E.L.D. and assembles a «Dark Avengers,» re-appropriating our favorite hero costumes as villains: Bullseye becomes Daredevil and Venom takes over for Spider-Man. That’s just two relevant examples.
You can get rid of all of these except Spidey and the big dude.
Credit: marvel studios
We live in the age of the anti-hero
Just look at some of the biggest pop culture phenomenons over the past few years: Breaking Bad, Dexter, Mad Men. Or, if you want to go closer to home, Marvel’s own Jessica Jones or Deadpool.
No one is wholly good or wholly bad. That’s why we adore Game of Thrones, with its heroes who commit villainous act and its villains who have undeniable humanity. Blurring the lines between good and evil is the point of George R.R. Martin’s series, which deconstructs the common fantasy genre trope.
I need about 100x more of this.
Credit: marvel studios
Marvel movies almost always fail at making even the heroes relatable. Save for Black Panther, Marvel stories are usually irrelevant to the real world. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Superheroes inherently engage with our society’s ideals, morals, and struggle to be good. Shouldn’t Marvel reflect how difficult that question is to answer?
Which reminds me…
Wait, why does Thanos even want the Infinity Stones so bad?
Where Thanos of the comics may differ from his cinematic counterpart is in his motivation. Just as Darkseid was obsessed with the Anti-Life Equation, Starlin’s Thanos is obsessed with Death. That is, the sentient cosmic entity that represents the concept of death in the Marvel Universe: capital-D Death.
The Death of the Marvel Universe can manifest physically in a number of ways, but often appears as a humanoid female, even if skeletal. Death appeared to Thanos in his youth, presumably because of his obsession with death and nihilism, and the two formed a relationship — a relationship that apparently hit rocky shores when Thanos was first defeated by the Avengers. Since then, Thanos has been characterized by his desire to make a tribute to Death on a cosmic scale — i.e., cause a truly staggering number of deaths — in order to win back her affections.
Thanos’ “It’s Complicated” relationship with Death has never been directly mentioned in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, it seems to have been cheekily referenced in an end credits scene from The Avengers, in which the Other says that to attack Earth would be to “court death.”
Warning: This post contains MAJOR spoilers for the end of Avengers: Infinity War
Maybe I’m a monster, but the moment I cheered the loudest during Avengers: Infinity War was when all the superheroes disintegrated and the bad guy got his happy ending.
I’m certainly not a fan of genocide (to put it mildly), or even a Thanos groupie. But I do like compelling stories, and a villain-centric arc that refused to let the heroes win was the first time a Marvel movie has surprised me.
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So what’s the problem? Well, the ending leaves me itching for a Thanos prequel instead of the next Avengers or even Captain Marvel — which will undoubtedly undo this unhappy ending. And the knowledge that we’ll probably never get that prequel is why the Marvel Cinematic Universe is starting to lose me.
Every two-bit comic book fan will tell you heroes are only as great as their villains. Everyone, it seems, except for the folks at Marvel Studios.
I’m not the first to point out Marvel’s «villain problem,» or how evil characters tend to be disposable onscreen. Many had high hopes that the introduction of Thanos would fix this problem, but he’s only shined a spotlight on it. Marvel’s villain problem runs deep, requiring a total shift in the MCU franchise formula.
But it won’t be fixed until Marvel actually admits it’s a problem. Head of studio Kevin Feige told io9 that he recognizes the issue with their villains — yet he feels pretty OK about it. «It always starts with what serves the story the most and what serves the hero the most,» he said.
I could do with getting rid of, like, two-thirds of these characters.
Credit: marvel studios
But by failing to see how villains are as integral as heroes, the MCU fundamentally misunderstands what makes a good superhero story.
At first, the MCU got away with wasting great superheroes on forgettable villains who were plot devices disguised as characters. But Avengers: Infinity War showed how short-sighted that was. And it ain’t gonna cut it anymore.
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What happens in the end credits of ‘Avengers: Infinity War’
I’m tired of paint-by-numbers movies introducing hordes of new bad guys that the hero can Hulk-smash until the next round and round and around we go, ad infinitum. Infinity War’s ending was powerful because it finally broke from that cycle … until the end credits, at which point Nick Fury reminds us it’ll be business as usual soon enough.
What’s next for the MCU once it wraps on the biggest bad’s inevitable defeat in Avengers 4? I hope investing in villains is a top priority. From the looks of Venom, it just might be (though don’t put all your eggs in that basket).
Once the Infinity Gauntlet conflict ends, villains will be key to keeping audiences engaged in this increasingly expansive crossover machine. Here’s why, and how.
Fix Marvel’s arms race for bigger, badder threats with better villains
Ever since the first Avengers, Marvel’s been chasing bigger catastrophes than the attack on New York — but that’s the wrong way to go about it.
The result is a franchise stuck in a disaster-porn arms race. The cost of this increasingly enormous and ridiculous scale is personal stakes (and apartment buildings). Infinity War kept needing to remind us that the risk of Thanos winning was universal genocide, because we’re that desensitized to world-ending threats.
Spider-Man: Homecoming, on the other hand, is a great example of how villains can ground the whole story, introducing personal stakes on a smaller scale. Yes, that’s kinda Spidey’s thing, while the Avengers deal with universe-ending stuff. But actually, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Civil War, Black Panther, and even Logan all took similar approaches to villains and scale.
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Kang’s motivation is easier to understand
Image used with permission by copyright holder
One of the things that’s so exciting about Kang is that, while we know he’s powerful, we don’t know exactly what he wants just yet other than to conquer. If you believe recent reports, though, it seems like Kang’s goal is to create a single universe where there are no superheroes, which is much easier to sympathize with than Thanos’ strange belief that half the life in the universe had to be destroyed.
Kang has seen the devastation that superheroes have caused, and he wants nothing more than to create a world where people can exist without them. It’s a smaller goal, and one that will also feel more personal for the heroes doing battle against him.
Wakanda can create AI stronger than Ultron
(Image credit: Marvel)
Ok, this is worrying. Shuri is in the midst of pointing out to T’Challa just how much smarter she is than Tony Stark when she offhandedly reveals that she’s figured out a better, easier way to create AI similar to Iron Man’s rogue creation — Ultron. That spells trouble for the MCU and, more imminently, Wakanda – as Shuri is looking to immediately implement these improvements in her home country.
Cap has already been to Wakanda
Not the biggest bombshell, granted. However, before Wakanda’s reveal to the world, very few knew of its existence. For Steve Rogers to be allowed on such hallowed ground speaks volumes about the respect he is given. It also gives us an indication (along with Bucky being there) as to why he ends up fighting in Wakanda in Infinity War. It seems all roads are leading to Wakanda; it’s setting up to the be the movie’s crucial battleground.
Stark might know that Thanos is coming
The very end of the first prelude issue signals a significant shift in how we might come to see Tony Stark in Infinity War-proper. He’s preparing for (in his words) “the end of all things.” Thanos is obviously on the way, but Tony is too stubborn to swallow his pride and give Cap a call. Iron Man’s mission is clear: he’s taking on this new threat. Alone. I have a feeling that he might come to regret that way of thinking.
Nobody knows where the Soul Stone is…
Much of the second prelude issue deals with Doctor Strange and Wong going over the locations of all six of the Infinity Stones. Subtle exposition, it is not. However, Wong plays up the fact that no one knows where the Soul Stone is. For the reams of knowledge he has at his disposal in the Sanctum Sanctorum, he doesn’t have a clue as to where the Soul Stone might lie. With this piece of information, it’s hard to look past the idea that the location of the Soul Stone will be the big reveal in Infinity War, possibly serving as a stinger before Avengers 4 next year.
…but we now know it’s the most powerful Infinity Stone
Wong said so himself. “It could be the biggest threat of all” hardly sounds like something that would cheer up the Sorcerer Supreme. We don’t know what it does (for now) and Wong is reluctant to reveal exactly what the final Infinity Stone is capable of and, yet, it’s something that we absolutely can’t wait to find out. For reference, we have Stones that can rewind time, take over people’s minds, create all-powerful Avengers, distort reality and spark dance-offs. If it’s bigger and badder than all of those – Iron Man, Cap and co are in for the fight of their lives.
Villains need their own arcs, developed over multiple movies
The first step is to invest time and effort into establishing villains who evolve throughout the franchise. Marvel was so careful about slowly introducing and incorporating its heroes into the larger MCU. Why don’t villains get half as much thought?
I’m legitimately crying.
Credit: marvel studios
This shift toward villains would set the stage for more meaningful conflicts, and allow for experimentation with the kind of stories Marvel tells. Why not bring Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan back for a prequel? Or zoom in on Thanos and Gamora’s backstory?
There’s a reason Loki was crowned «best Marvel villain» for so long. It’s because the first Thor movie was as much his origin story as Thor’s. Loki’s reappearances across the franchise made us as attached to him as we were to any Avenger.
Then there’s Captain America: Winter Soldier and Civil War, which succeeded because the original Captain America established the foundation of Bucky’s character — and then twisted it and his relationship to Cap in a gut-wrenching way.
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And don’t forget Erik Killmonger, who captivated our hearts and minds in about 30 minutes of screen time. Black Panther started with Killmonger, as J’Bou tells his son the story of Wakanda, leading to an entire opening scene establishing Erik’s motivations.
Касса США за пятницу, 27 апреля: фильм «Мстители: Война бесконечности» изумляет стартовыми сборами
- Текст: Юрий Данилов
- Фото: Disney
В Америке все, кто хоть как-то причастен к миру кино, внимательно следят за стартом в прокате блокбастера Marvel/Disney «Мстители: Война бесконечности» (Avengers: Infinity War). В пятницу, 27 апреля, фильм демонстрировался в 4474 кинотеатрах. Это рекорд для игрового кино и второй результат за всю историю североамериканского проката после прошлогоднего мультфильма «Гадкий я 3», вышедшего в 4529 кинотеатрах.
Масштабная и пафосная экранизации комиксов начала своё победное шествие по просторам Америки вечером в четверг. На начавшихся в 19:00 сеансах превью «Война бесконечности» заработала огромные 39 миллионов долларов. Это четвёртый результат в истории домашнего проката. Впереди только фильмы «Звёздные войны: Пробуждение силы» ($ 57 млн), «Звёздные войны: Последние джедаи» ($ 45 млн) и финальный эпизод франшизы о Гарри Поттере ($ 43,5 млн).
А из фильмов киновселенной Marvel предыдущий лучший результат превью вечера четверга до сей поры принадлежал ленте «Мстители: Эра Альтрона» ($ 27,6 млн).
В пятницу триумфальное шествие новой картины по просторам Америки и примкнувшей к ней Канады продолжилось. По данным boxofficemojo.com, сборы первого дня достигли 105,97 миллиона долларов (включая 39 млн, освоенных в четверг вечером). Аналитики полагают, что сборы уик-энда составят 235-240 миллионов долларов. И это будет второй в истории результат после фильма «Звёздные войны: Пробуждение силы» (247,9 млн долларов). Хотя может случиться и рекорд. Многое будет зависеть от проката в субботу.
Мощный, местами рекордный старт отмечен и за пределами Америки – в Великобритании, Германии, Бразилии, Южной Корее. За два дня фильм собрал 95 миллионов долларов, хотя вышел далеко не везде.
Но вернёмся в Америку. Остальные фильмы в пятницу катастрофически отстали. Такое впечатление, что из них выпустили воздух. Второе место досталось ужастику «Тихое место» (A Quiet Place), собравшему 3,27 миллиона долларов в 4101 кинотеатре. Вся касса картины в домашнем прокате – 140,8 миллиона долларов, собранных за 22 дня.
Третье место заняла комедия «Красотка на всю голову» (I Feel Pretty), освоившая за восьмой день 2,58 млн долларов. Вся касса фильма – 24 миллиона долларов, прогноз на второй уик-энд – $ 8 млн.ОбъявлениеСериал Флеш многих оставил под глубоким впечатлением. Мы вам предлагаем флеш дата выхода серий. Смотрите и ничего не пропустите.
…but we now know it’s the most powerful Infinity Stone
Wong said so himself. “It could be the biggest threat of all” hardly sounds like something that would cheer up the Sorcerer Supreme. We don’t know what it does (for now) and Wong is reluctant to reveal exactly what the final Infinity Stone is capable of and, yet, it’s something that we absolutely can’t wait to find out. For reference, we have Stones that can rewind time, take over people’s minds, create all-powerful Avengers, distort reality and spark dance-offs. If it’s bigger and badder than all of those – Iron Man, Cap and co are in for the fight of their lives.
For another look at what Infinity War may have in store for The Avengers, check out our definitive guide to the Infinity Stones.
But is Thanos an actual ripoff of Darkseid?
Yup!
Jim Starlin readily admits that he was inspired by Jack Kirby’s work on the New Gods and the Fourth World, which was super popular at the time, when creating Thanos.
“You’d think that Thanos was inspired by Darkseid,” he told Comic Book Artist magazine in 1998, “but that was not the case when I showed up. In my first Thanos drawings, if he looked like anybody, it was Metron. I had all these different gods and things I wanted to do, which became Thanos and the Titans. took one look at the guy in the Metron-like chair and said: ‘Beef him up! If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!’”
Darkseid and his servant Desaad, circa 1972.Jack Kirby/DC Comics
Thanos and his fellow Titans didn’t start out as Eternals, though — because the Eternals didn’t exist yet. Jack Kirby brought them into Marvel canon after his Fourth World stories were canceled at DC, which was three years after Starlin’s first Thanos story. Thanos and the Titans were eventually retconned into being an offshoot of the Eternals.
So, to recap: Jack Kirby wrote the Fourth World saga at DC Comics after Marvel Comics refused to let him do it there. Jim Starlin was inspired by the Fourth World to create Marvel’s Thanos, based partly on DC’s Darkseid. Kirby left DC to come back to Marvel and wrote another Fourth-World-like pantheon of gods, the Eternals. And Thanos, who was inspired by Kirby’s original Fourth World work at DC, was retconned into being an Eternal.
If you’ve got all that straight, you might just have a future in comics journalism. But if you only take away one thing from this explanation, it should be this: Thanos is a ripoff of Darkseid, not the other way around.
From the Cover of Infinity Gauntlet #1. George Pérez/Marvel Comics
Bucky has been ‘rebooted’
Spoilers for Black Panther incoming. If you haven’t seen it then A) What is wrong with you? and B) Bye-bye. For now.
With Bucky Barnes put on ice (literally) in Wakanda, the post-credits scene tagged onto the end of T’Challa’s first standalone movie asks more questions than it answers. How’s Bucky doing? How did he get better, if at all? The first issue of the Infinity War Prelude answers that: Shuri has worked her magic.
While Black Panther’s little sis is all too keen to point out that there’s no “delete button” for Sgt. Barnes’ predicament, she has managed to reboot him. It begs the question: can Bucky still be controlled and, if so, by whom?
He brings the multiverse with him
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Anyone who has been following Disney’s acquisition of Fox knows that the Fantastic Four and X-Men are coming. Exactly when they arrive remains to be seen, but it seems likely that the threat of Kang could be intimately connected to the arrival of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, which could possibly be from another universe.
Regardless of where the X-Men and Fantastic Four come from, though, the multiverse also opens a wide array of other possibilities. We get to meet multiple different Spider-Men, and see Hugh Jackman play Wolverine again. None of this is directly related to Kang, but it’s all possible because of the direction that Marvel has decided to take its universe in, and Kang is a bit part of that.
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Wait, isn’t that the same origin story as the Inhumans?
Yeah, basically. Jack Kirby really, really liked shaggy God stories. He created the Eternals at Marvel Comics after creating the New Gods (a new pantheon of gods born after the old pantheon died) at DC Comics — and after co-creating the Inhumans (genetically advanced humans with godlike powers) with Stan Lee.
The Eternals and their foes, the Deviants, are two distinct races genetically crafted from proto-humans 5 million years ago by beings known as the Celestials (Ego is a Celestial, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). At a certain point, many of the Eternals traveled to Titan to begin a new life away from Earth. Those Eternals are known as the Titans, giving Thanos his most famous sobriquet, the Mad Titan.
And, though he was created by Starlin, Thanos bears a strong resemblance to one of Kirby’s Shaggy Gods: Darkseid.
This sanctimonious heroic bullshit is getting old
Show of hands: How many times did you yell at the heroes of Infinity War for repeatedly losing stone after stone to Thanos because of an aggressively simple-minded and selfish moral compass?
Yes, I know Cap: «We don’t trade lives.» That’s the summary of this entire movie’s conflict. Thanos believes in sacrificing half the universe’s population for a greater good, while the Avengers think they shouldn’t have to sacrifice anything at all to save half of the universe’s population.
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That’s not only a really narrow definition of heroism, but also astoundingly unsophisticated ethics.
The Avengers could use some lessons from The Good Place, namely the trolley problem. Because the idea of sacrificing one to save the lives of many isn’t a rosy concept, but there’s enough ethical grounds to warrant some debate!
But no. Cap grunts, everyone agrees. Ultimately, we have their moral high horses to thank for saving Vision (not even) at the cost of half a universe full of lives. Hope that clean conscience is worth it!
Avengers’ morality is tired, outdated, and underdeveloped. Sacrifice is part of the superhero job description. Heroes do trade lives. Just ask 9/11 first responders, or other everyday people risking their lives for others. Hell, ask Groot! Or Peter Quill! Even annoyingly uncompromising heroes like Batman are willing to sacrifice reputation and love for the greater good of Gotham.
I’m only watching Avengers 4 if Vision stays dead.
Credit: marvel studios
This Care Bear heroism plagues the Marvel franchise, preventing fresh, original storytelling. Black Panther was the first movie in a long time to complicate the Marvel moral ethos. We can’t just keep relying on Cap and Iron Man’s creative differences.
It’ll be increasingly hard for us to care about another two hours of dudes in tights fighting when we know the good guy wins, almost always without consequence. Infinity War dared to break that mold, and we hope Avengers 4 genuinely wrestles with the mistakes the heroes made in it. But I’ll eat my laptop if the Infinity Gauntlet story doesn’t end with most of the heroes being revived.
I’m not arguing the bad guys should take over the MCU. But the MCU needs to let bad guys do what they do best: Force us and our heroes to complicate our understanding of what it means to fight for good.
If it doesn’t, we’re just going to keep getting superhero movies where the good guys win — because that’s how the MCU business model works. And that’s not ultimately very entertaining.
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Thanos had the best Infinity War arc, but it was still wasted
Sure, Thanos was better than, say, Ultron.
I was really hoping Thanos would kill Tony Stark.
Credit: Marvel Studios
But many comic book fans felt the movie squandered his story. Our own Adam Rosenberg wrote an explainer on the character’s comic book iteration, showing moviegoers just how many missed opportunities there were in Infinity War. Like how «the sight of a rough-skinned, misshapen Baby Thanos was too much for his mother to bear. It drove her instantly mad, and she tried to kill her newborn.»
It’s a detail that would have given much more depth to his and Gamora’s story.
For general audiences, Thanos came across as, at first, laughable. So much so that Peter Quill feels the need to speak roast Thanos, almost as if the movie anticipated the criticism. Marvel probably did anticipate it, because despite 10 years and 19 movies of carefully fitting superheroes into the Infinity War puzzle, it’s never really been about the villain. When the time came, they were like, «Shit — no one even knows why this big dumb purple gummy bear even matters.»
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Thanos isn’t as lame as the MCU has made him seem
Thanos was basically relegated to after-credits scenes for 10 years, only being more prominently featured in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1. as a disembodied giant stone monster.
Kang is more powerful than Thanos
Marvel Studios
Thanos certainly presented the Avengers with a challenge, and his power continued to grow as he amassed the various infinity stones. Kang, though, seems to have almost limitless power once he can access even one aspect of his hyperadvanced technology. Just allowing him to have his suit gives him the ability to shoot massive energy beams and move other people with his mind.
The version of Kang that we meet in Quantumania is severely limited by his exile, and even this version of Kang feels almost invincible. Kang has total control over all of time, and because he knows how to manipulate it, he can create and destroy almost at will. When he has reached his full power, he will prove to be almost impossible to stop.