'Avengers: Infinity War' Directors Explain Why Thanos Is Important

Captain America: Civil War storms into theaters on May 6, but we’re going to jump ahead a little bit and talk about the next biggest movies: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Part 2. Every Marvel film has been leading up to a huge confrontation we’ll see in those films: Your favorite heroes vs. one singular villain — Thanos.

Thanos is an important character, but he’s not as well known as other super villains, like Magneto or the Joker. Yahoo Movies had the opportunity to sit down with Anthony and Joe Russo and ask why audiences should know his name. “He is the worst and greatest threat that the universe has ever seen and the Avengers have ever seen,” said Joe Russo. “The most compelling part of Civil War for us was leaving [the Avengers] in a very complicated place at the end of the movie because they are now about to face Thanos.”

How about a little background on Thanos? He’s an “Eternal,” a sort of godlike being from Saturn’s moon, Titan. The Eternals are known for their magnificent beauty, but because Thanos has genes that are sort of defective, his beauty is only on the inside. He was a brilliant student who gets corrupted by a fellow classmate. She encourages him as he starts killing and dissecting living things — it starts off as lizards, which is not great, but then his victims become other people from Titan, which is really, really not great.

He goes off to become a pirate and tries to ignore that whole “I want to kill you and look at your insides” thing. Yet he can’t shake that classmate of his who reveals herself to be the embodiment of Death. Death says she won’t love Thanos unless he kills for her. And he does. People, planets — all with the Infinity gauntlet, which gets its power from those Infinity stones we keep seeing.

He has super strength, invulnerability, and is brilliant. In short, he’s the most capable villain the Avengers will face. It’s a good thing they’re not in the middle of a big conflict. Oh wait. Civil War. “Will they be ready?” Joe Russo asked. “Can they pull together? How will they pull together? Is it reparable? And I think that it energizes and supercharges that looming threat.”

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So, are you excited about Thanos? Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Khail Anonymous, on Twitter.