Josh Brolin on Thanos, Cable and having once been considered for the role of Batman.
Josh Brolin is surely the man of the moment and the envy of many of his fellow actors when it comes to roles in the big comic book movies of 2018 with his upcoming appearances two huge Marvel properties this year. And now Brolin has confirmed that there was once a chance of him playing another comic book icon a few years back.
Whilst we are soon to see Brolin appear as both Cable in Deadpool 2 and as the ultimate threat to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, the actor recently confirmed the rumour that he was initially in the running to play Batman in Zack Snyder’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Speaking to Comicbookmovie.com, he had this to say;
“We indirectly talked about it, but we never got to the point because I wasn’t the guy for him (Snyder). I’m really glad it didn’t happen. I haven’t thought twice about it.”
Ben Affleck eventually won the role but it’s quite easy to envision Brolin in the part of Snynder’s take on the older, more grizzled version of the character, but it appears that Brolin is happy with that he never landed the part and this of course would’ve probably ruled him out of taking on his two upcoming Marvel roles.
Surprisingly, when asked which role he’d take if forced to choose between Cable and Thanos, he chose the Mad Titan, which may come as a shock to many, given that his work for the role required a lot of CGI and Motion-Capture work, which usually ends up with actors feeling somewhat isolated and surrounded by Green Screens, but apparently a quick chat with the Hulk allayed any of his concerns;
“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. And it was quite the opposite, having seen enough of the movie and realized how cutting edge this technical process is, y’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. At the beginning, before I said yes, 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.’ And that was then. They made huge leaps and bounds in mo-cap territory since then. There’s nothing not authentic about it.”
Brolin of course is no stranger to the world of comic book movies having previously appeared in both the second instalment of Sin City (Dark Horse) as well as Jonah Hex (DC) but with both of these films having received a poor critical reception and in turn, having had poor box office returns, it seems he’s much happier working in the world of Marvel.
Avengers: Infinity War opens in the U.K. and US April 26th/27th and Deadpool 2 opens in the U.K. May 15th and in the US May 18th.