Thanos Vs. Cable: Josh Brolin Reveals Which Villain He Prefers Playing
Ask a group of people who they would choose between the intergalactic tyrant Thanos and the telepathic mutant Cable, and the results would likely be split. Both comic book dudes are hulking, wildly powerful, and will carry out a mission to thwart the efforts of fellow Marvel characters once they make their silver screen debuts, so it's hard to say which one is better than the other. But for actor Josh Brolin, who landed the roles of both Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Cable in Deadpool 2, there's a clear answer.
Speaking in an interview with Total Film Magazine (via CBM) while promoting his double whammy of comic book evildoing, Brolin revealed which of the two characters he prefers playing, admitting that he likes Thanos more than Cable.
"Look, I really like doing Cable, and it's practical. But I think if I was to have a preference, it'd be Thanos, just because my expectation was pretty low, given that I just thought I was a prop," explained Brolin. "And it was quite the opposite, having seen enough of the movie and realized how cutting edge this technical process is, you know? I was watching me. I was watching every twitch, every blink. I was watching my eyes. My actions. I was living through my intentions."
The actor added that at the start of pre-production for Avengers: Infinity War, before he agreed to play Thanos, he called up Marvel Cinematic Universe icon Mark Ruffalo, who has played the Hulk in a motion capture role since 2012, to get some advice.
"I called Mark Ruffalo and I said, 'What do you think of this?' He was like, 'It's going to be really uncomfortable in the beginning, and then you see the movie, and you'll just be absolutely blown away by the stuff you were doing,'" Brolin said of his talk with Ruffalo. "And that was then. They made huge leaps and bounds in mo-cap territory since then. There's nothing not authentic about it."
Avengers fans should take Brolin's remarks of moving from having "low expectations" of Thanos at the beginning to being "blown away" by the baddie as a good sign, since it demonstrates that the purple-skinned antagonist won't feel like a soulless, inhuman thing that was simply dropped in during post-production. On the other hand, Deadpool 2 hopefuls should avoid jumping to the conclusion that Brolin in any way disliked playing Cable, or that because the actor prefers his Avengers: Infinity War role a bit more that the forthcoming Deadpool sequel will somehow be less enjoyable than the long-awaited Avengers installment.
See Josh Brolin as Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War on April 27, and as Cable in Deadpool 2 on May 18.